Until recently there sat a four-metre whale bone in Gary Tonkin's home in Albany, on the south coast of Western Australia.
For 30 years the 74-year-old scrimshander worked on the sperm whale's jawbone and teeth, creating intricate engravings telling the story of an American whaling ship, The Kathleen.
He had no intention of exhibiting his decades of delicate scrimshaw work on the bone until a friend told Mr Tonkin "this has got to go out to the public".
Now the jaw has a home at the Albany Historic Whaling Station in a permanent exhibition, the Art of Scrimshaw.
As recently as 45 years ago the Cheynes Beach whaling station was a fully functioning whale processing factory, the last such operation in Australia.
It was in the 1970s, when Mr Tonkin moved from Victoria to Western Australia as an export meat inspector, regularly visiting the whaling station in search of whale bones and teeth to scrimshaw.
Mr Tonkin would tune in to local radio, listen for updates on how many whales had been caught and jump in his car next day to head to the station.
"I'd pick certain teeth out for scrimshaw and I used to have to toss up between what I could afford and what would be a good collector's item," he says.
"When the whaling finished, I had to borrow plenty of money to buy some bags of teeth to keep me going."
To keep up his art form nowadays, Mr Tonkin goes to private collectors who occasionally sell whale teeth and bone.
"I'll probably [scrimshaw] until they put me in the ground," he says.
More than 50 years as a scrimshander
Mr Tonkin travelled back and forth from the United States completing residencies at whaling museums.
He has had his scrimshaw art showcased at the Australian National Maritime Museum and in galleries across the US.
Fittingly, the jawbone is displayed at the Albany Historic Whaling Station in what used to be a sperm whale oil tank.
The whale oil was considered the highest quality for transmission fluids and lubricants and was exported across the world.
Mr Tonkin was 21 when he was transferred to Albany and he fell in love with the seaside town.
"I was young and I wanted to travel," he says.
"I fell in love with the sea. The early diver crews took me under their wings and it was exciting having the whaling history [in Albany]."
It was there he was introduced to swimshawing.
"I used to just come out and be fascinated," he says.
"I can't explain it but it's the mystique of whaling history."
At the time the local museum was displaying an antique collection that included a piece of scrimshaw marked "Portland", Mr Tonkin's home town in Victoria.
"I just said there was a bit of a calling," he recalls.
Ship rammed and sunk by a whale
The practice of scrimshawing was typically a pastime of whalers and sailors at sea and is now considered a dying art.
Using tools that have changed very little to this day — including a scribe and knife — scrimshanders etch and carve pictures into whale bone or teeth, then rub soot into the engravings to create a black-on-white effect.
Mr Tonkin's work on the sperm whale jaw bone portrays the story of The Kathleen, a US whaling ship "rammed and sunk by an infuriated bull whale" in the early 1900s.
Each tooth represents an aspect of life at sea in a wooden ship and the hardships the crew faced, ranging from deaths on board to crews sharing a whale catch.
The little-known tale is documented in the book Bark Kathleen Sunk By a Whale by her master on the fateful voyage, Thomas H. Jenkins.
"Full of the mystery and thrill and terror of the deep sea", the book has been declared a culturally important work by US scholars and is in the public domain.
