When the seas are wild, John Micic knows there will be kelp to be hauled.
For some three decades, the 60-odd-year-old has been either a harvester or processing factory worker in the unique King Island industry.
“Winter is the best. The weather is rougher. It stirs it up more,” he says alongside his trailer loaded with kelp he has dragged from a rocky foreshore on the island’s west coast.
“You work the tides. If you’re prepared to work hard, you’ll make it.”
Micic drives the kelp to the nearby factory where it is hooked to wooden rods and lifted by forklift onto metres-high drying racks….