In the rugged, crocodile-infested waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria, an English air hostess turned professional fisherwoman carved out a legendary status, shattering expectations and an "ironbark ceiling" in one of Australia's most challenging environments. Jenny Lott, now 88, defied those who said she couldn't do it, mastering solo fishing in a wild frontier where one mistake could prove fatal.
From the Skies to the Seas: A Solo Journey Begins
After initial experience fishing with veteran skipper Cecil ‘Cocky’ Watkins off Townsville, Jenny Lott decided to go it alone. She bought a small boat named The Janet and skippered it solo from Baffle Creek near Gladstone back to Townsville. "People had told me I couldn’t do it, that I couldn’t run a boat on my own, but she ended up serving me well, that little thing," Jenny recalled. This first solo trip was a statement of intent.
Her ambition soon took her north to the Gulf of Carpentaria for prawn trawling. Working with Cocky’s brother, Mickey Watkins, and another fisherman, Johnny Merry, she found immediate success. "We couldn’t do anything wrong. There were prawns everywhere," she said. But the restless entrepreneur in her soon sought independence.
Mastering the Prawn Hunt and the Move to Barramundi
Seizing an opportunity, Jenny bought an 18-metre trawler called the Tony Christine, becoming a prawn hunter and the boss of her own boat with two crew. A critical skill she mastered was spotting ‘mud boils’ on the sea surface – sediment stirred up by marine life. An experienced skipper can differentiate between boils created by valuable banana prawns and those made by worthless catfish. For Jenny, spotting a prawn boil was like seeing a flashing "Payday" sign in the sky.
The competition was fierce, with boats racing to be first to a boil, sometimes employing decoy tactics. After two relentless years contending with long nights, hot days, and deckhands often distracted by rampant marijuana use, Jenny yearned for a change. In 1976, with her trawler facing survey issues but holding valuable licences, she sold up and bought a barramundi net fishing boat.
Solo in the Wild: Netting Barra in Crocodile Country
Tired of unreliable crew, Jenny eventually downsized to a nine-metre fibreglass boat with a shallow draft, purpose-built for working alone up the mangrove-fringed rivers and creeks. "I didn’t want steel because of rust and I didn’t want timber because of rot," she explained. Here was a convent-educated English woman, fishing solo for barramundi in Australia’s wildest and most dangerous waterways.
The work was brutally hard, rated "11 on a hard yakka scale of one to ten." Netting off beaches required moving anchors hourly to prevent them from being buried. The danger was ever-present: falling overboard in the dark with a swirling net and unseen marine life below was a terrifying prospect. Yet, she felt at home in the wild frontier town of Karumba, a place she described as a last bastion for those on the run, but where she felt safe as "just another fisherman."
Life on the water had its surreal moments. Alone on her birthday in Topsy Creek, a tributary of the Mitchell River, the silence was broken by Mickey Watkins rowing into view with a birthday gift: a bewildered piglet he’d caught on the plains. She kept it until it outgrew the boat. Another time, after her dinghy drifted away, she swam to retrieve it only to find her pet dog and goat swimming alongside her.
A Legacy Forged on the Water
Today, at 88, Jenny Lott lives on 10 hectares at Julatten, on the Tablelands above Port Douglas, in a house she built in 1993. She remains fiercely active, riding horses, maintaining her property, playing tennis, practising Tai-Chi, and serving as president of the Port Douglas animal rescue organisation Paws And Claws. Her father’s stolen war medals are a rare sore point in a life of triumph.
Reflecting on the self-reliance she honed, she said, "You are out there all alone. There is no one to help you. You have to do it all yourself." Her story is one of extraordinary resilience, placing her alongside legendary outback women like boss drover Edna Jessop. Jenny Lott didn't just break a glass ceiling; she navigated through the ironbark one of the Australian bush and its treacherous waters, proving that fishing isn't just something you do, but something you live.
