Bush Summit road trip: Warren Brown visits Port Pirie
Despite decades of tradition, doing business in Port Pirie is getting harder. But this long-standing family seafood business is rising over the challenges.
When I was about eight years old, an aunt and uncle returned from a road trip and presented me with one of those ubiquitous plastic souvenir rulers, replete with a series of small colour photos depicting the wonders of South Australian industry at Port Pirie on the Spencer Gulf – the city’s unmissable lead smelter with its 205m tall chimney, the giant concrete grain silos towering over the docks and a grinning, whiskered fisherman holding a huge fish from the day’s haul.
These images still hold today. It was the unexpected discovery of lead, zinc and silver in 1883 at Broken Hill in NSW some 400km away that saw the construction of a railway connecting the desert to the sea which in turn sparked a sudden influx of European migrants to work at the new Port Pirie smelter.
At the outbreak of WWI some five hundred Russians were living in the community, the coastal town even boasting a Russian-speaking school and library.
But it was the Italians who seized on the fishing industry at Port Pirie – something that has now continued within the local Australian-Italian community for more than a century.
Sebastian Mezzino and his son Maurie are fourth- and fifth-generation Port Pirie seafood
providores, the family’s business dynasty tracing its beginnings as far back as 1914 when
Sebastian’s grandfather, a then-12-year-old Salvatore Caputo arrived in Australia from his
hometown fishing village of Molfetta in Italy.
He eventually settled down with his new Italian bride, established a family and started his own seafood business, S.D. Caputo and Sons, in 1951.
Always trying to get the best possible return for his catch, Salvatore decided to sell to the public direct, buying a ute and hitting the road to deliver fresh seafood throughout the Port Pirie area, the business expanding to eventually enjoy a long-running partnership with seafood distributor Safcol, which procured 90 per cent of its filleted fish from S.D. Caputo.
Today, the business operating from Port Pirie’s Fisherman’s Wharf concentrates on quality seafood having been joint winners of South Australian Seafood Retailer of The Year Award and gaining national recognition as a seafood supplier to My Kitchen Rules.
“Such beautiful seafood here, King George Whiting, snook, prawns, scallops,” says Sebastian as he guides me through the operations room where stainless-steel machines are tumble-scaling fish and expert filleters demonstrate their skill with slender, stiletto-style knives.
He points toward the precision knife-work taking place on the bench.
“But times are tough, the smelter has advertised for more employees and so we’ve lost a few of our filleters – and it’s not the kind of job where you can find them easily. We train them up and they move on.”
Indeed Port Pirie’s giant multi-metal smelter sitting squarely at the end of the main street has
always been something of a blessing and a curse for the town. With almost 900 employees it is an unquestionably valuable asset for the region, however there has always been concern about lead levels in the community.
In 2005 owner Nystar implementing an awareness campaign known as the Tenby10 Project to reduce the lead levels in children under five to 10 micrograms or less per decilitre of blood.
Yet Sebastian tells me he’s unfazed by the smelter — the family has lived here for generations and will continue to do so.
What concerns him is what he believes are more immediate issues in regional Australia. “There are huge labour shortages, we just can’t get people … and that’s not just here, we need doctors and teachers … and the cost of freight is killing business in the regions,” he says.
And of course the pandemic certainly shook up this long-running family operation which relies so heavily on the restaurant and catering industry. However son Maurie trialled an ingenious idea where customers could choose any crumbed item and have it cooked while they waited — the plan so successful a radio station survey saw S.D. Caputo awarded the region’s best fish and chips.
“It was touch and go for a while,” Sebastian says of the pandemic.
“Some people owed us a lot of money and we weren’t sure we’d ever see it come back, but you know, every single one of our clients paid us and that says a lot about our community.”
Originally published as Bush Summit road trip: Warren Brown visits Port Pirie
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