Updated 3 February 2020. Added two additional images and captions.
1967 Errol & Jeff with Cordingley boards and Mini Minor at Doubleview; and
1971/72 Errol & Jeff with Holden Panel Van at Doubleview.
Errol Considine (now aged 68) stood up on his first wave at Trigg in Easter 1964 and was hooked and became a north end Scarborough grommet. After a career in journalism and PR, he is retired and lives in Floreat and still catching long boarder waves.
This is Errol’s story with photos…
I got the surf stoke in about 1964, aged 13, when my (late) elder brother Jeff started buying US surf mags and picked up a 9’6” Barry Bennett three-stringer second hand.
We bought decals of Californian board makers like Dewey Webber and Harbour and stuck them on our work desks at home, and plastered the asbestos walls of our back verandah sleepout at Doubleview with surf mag centrespread pics. I remember one was classic Butch Van Artsdalen on his backhand at Pipeline.
It all quickly became an obsession for both of us. We started going to screenings of surf movies at Dalkeith Hall and the Regal Theatre in Subi. California and Hawaii were the promised lands.
My then best mate Ian Langdon (a member of North End Board Club but in the ‘70s became one of the casualties who were lost too young in the drug years) came back from a year living in Bondi, when his father was transferred in his work, and had started surfing.
Ian bought a new 9’1” custom McDonagh single stringer. His father took us to Trigg Point in Easter ’64, with the new board in the back of their Holden station wagon. We took in turns of pushing each other on to the shore break just down the beach from the Point. In between lots of nose diving I stood up for the first time and planed straight into the beach.
I can vividly recall early in the following summer of ‘64-65, working out how to stop nose diving and making my first turn and cutting across the face of right hander at Scarborough for the first time… a new universe had opened up.
For Christmas 1964, Jeff and I got our first boardshorts, hand made by Jenny Cordingley. I couldn’t afford to buy a board but my brother and many of the local crew stored left their mals under the houses of mates who lived near the beach at Scarborough, like at Ian ‘Spydor’ Taylor’s place. So, while they were at work or at uni mid-week, I could pinch their boards and get waves.
The first week back at Churchlands High in 1965, the swell was up and it was offshore. Ian Langdon and I wagged school. It was epic and we had it all day, all to ourselves, Next morning, we were bragging to anybody who would listen how good it was and how they’d all missed out …then the stern voice of the Deputy Headmaster came over the P.A. ordering us both to front at his office immediately – yikes, somebody had dobbed. We both got six ‘cuts’ of the cane – three on each hand!
I took my first trip Down South with my brother and one of his Scarborough High School mates who also surfed, in December 1965. Click on this link to view My first trip Down South by Errol Considine published May 2017.
Image: 1966 Jeff and Errol surfing Down South. Photo courtesy of Geoff Moran.
Early days at Margaret River mouth – me on the wave and my brother Jeff paddling out.
Jeff started his career in architecture as a Cadet Draughtsman with the Department of Public Works in January 1966 and soon saved enough to buy his first car – a Morris Mini. Jeff took the Mini with Wayne Jacks and me onboard down to Yalls for the first time on the March long weekend that year to watch the State titles.
Image: 1966 Jeff’s Mini and our surfboards Down South. Photo courtesy of Geoff Moran.
My brother Jeff and the Mini which took us on some of our first trips Down South from 1966
The surf was great. The Saturday night scene at Caves House pub was wild – and another big change in our lives came about when we got home …Mum wasn’t to know about any of the goings on ‘Down South” – another window into the new universe had opened up …
By 1967/68, Scarborough mates like Peter Bevan, John Jacobs and (the late) Jim Rance had cars and so trips Down South became more frequent. Mates like Ron Marchant piled in too. By 1969, when I started work, we were making the drive down to Yalls most Friday nights on any weekend when we weren’t working.
Image: 1967 Errol & Jeff with Cordingley boards and Mini Minor at Doubleview. Errol Considine pic.
On the back street verge of our home at Doubleview with me and my older brother Jeff – looking at the Cordingley boards, hair and clobber, I reckon this was about 1967. There is a “Hot Generation” stencil on the bottom of Jeff’s board – and the classic and landmark Australian surf movie came out in ’67. The trusty Mini which took us on our first trips Down South is parked behind.
In those final couple of years at school, I had been totally stoked to finally get in to the Scarborough Board Club, which was run by President Ron ‘Doc’ Naylor, John Shackley, and Ken and Brian Trainer. Members included Ric and Rob Syme, Rod Slater, Ken McDonald and Wayne Jacks.
A couple years, later the new ‘super’ club of North Coast was formed – my brother Jeff was President and other members included Brian Hood, Greg ‘Pants’ Laurenson, Robin ‘Skullcap’ Sutherland, Bob Monkman, Terry Garrett, Gary ‘Gooselegs’ Vaughan, Ron Waddell, John Paris and Guy and Dean Fullerton.
The club comps and BBQs were legendary. North End once had a mid-winter comp at Halls Head, with perfect, long, super cold, two foot lefts running down the point – another now fabled wave which disappeared forever after the breakwaters were built at the mouth of the Mandurah estuary.
North Coast only lasted a year or so. With younger crew Peter Bevan and guys like John and Ross Booth we later formed West Coast Board Club, and so kept the club scene going for a couple of more years.
But that whole early board club scene all fell apart as guys started to get married, or take off travelling, and as the Age of Aquarius took people on different paths.
Image: 1971-72 Errol & Jeff with Holden Panel Van at Doubleview. Errol Considine
With the infamous ‘Yellow Peril’ FC Holden panel van at Doubleview.
Hair and clobber points to about 1971 or ’72.
When brother Jeff bought the van it was painted a dull chalky grey. He had it resprayed mellow yellow with blue wheels – which initially had it dubbed “the Noddy car”. It was fitted with foam mattress, customer cut around the wheel arches. It was brilliant to finally be able to go down south for the weekend and sleep warm and dry – and not have to drag our air mattresses into the drafty toilets at Yallingup when it rained!!
When Jeff moved on to a better vehicle, I took it over and painted a US Stars & Stripes on the inside roof… to give something more colourful to look at for anybody lying on their back, in the back! …about that time it became better known as “the Yellow Peril”!
Looking back now, we were the luckiest generation in Australian history. All those open horizons and being part of the incredible excitement of the shortboard revolution…without real crowd issues. We rented a dairy farmer’s old cottage on the Cowaramup-Gracetown road for $52 – for 12 months!
And how lucky to be ‘in’ on the discovery of new waves being found and ridden Down South. And get to surf them with just our mates in the water. Click on this link to view Some memories of early Three Bears by Errol Considine published February 2017.
…how quickly it would all change …
There were missed opportunities though – like being offered “any block you want” at Eagle Bay for $3,000 …and knocking the deal back …aarrrgggghhhhhh!
Image: 1971-72 Errol head dip at Scarborough. Photo courtesy of Ian Ferguson.
Likely taken at Scarborough ‘bout 1971 or ’72 I reckon, looking at the wettie and board – which was my first Tom Hoye-shaped Blaxell – the American expat master craftsman introduced us to the first generation of beautiful chamfered rails with centre thickness in the front half to give paddling buoyancy but thinner on the edge sitting into the face of the wave – this refining of the hard down rails innovation meant they would give great bite into back-foot bottom turns and good straight line trimming speed. That development survives in modern boards with hard rails in the tail.
My first job was as a Cadet Journalist with WA Newspapers, assigned to the afternoon “Daily News”. School surfing buddy Chuck Morton-Stewart got the same gig and was assigned to “The West Australian”. Peter Bevan, who’d also been at Hale School with us, had started at WA Newspapers the year prior as a Cadet Press Artist. Later, the three of us worked together to produce a couple of editions of “Country Surf”/“West Country Surf” – the first home grown surf magazine.
I got to do some neat stuff as a journo, like being amongst (perhaps) the first crew who rode waves at the back of Rottnest for a feature spread in the “Weekend News” (Saturday) colour magazine. We made the trip across to Rotto on the WA Newspapers’ luxury cruiser “Hiawatha”. Click on this link to view Rottnest Surfari 69 a Media junket first by Errol Considine published Jan 2018.
In May 1970, Chuck and I loaded up Peter Bevan’s Holden panel van (with bunks in the back) and we drove to Bells Beach in Victoria to watch the World titles. We all worked weekends and public holidays in the world of newspapers and so got six weeks annual leave and had saved our hols up to make that trip.
At Bells, we got to see our heroes like Nat Young and Wayne Lynch up close. We played pool with Michael Petersen at the Torquay hotel one night. He didn’t speak a word… just sort of grunted at us – weird!
After scoring good waves at Point Impossible, Jan Juc and Torquay Point, we travelled up to Sydney and had an epic week of pumping quality surf at Manly. We stayed at a classic two-storey white weatherboard house on the beach at North Steyne which was being rented cheap by some mates from Scarborough who’d moved east. The house is now long gone, replaced by an up-market tower of apartments.
After the Manly sojourn, we drove up the Pacific Highway and just kept scoring perfect and uncrowded waves – at Angourie, Kirra (with only a handful of surfers in the water in perfect pumping conditions on the Sunday afternoon we arrived!) and Snapper Rocks. Then on to Noosa and a week of perfection at First Point, Boiling Pot, Tea Tree and Granites. We slept under the PV at Nationals car park ….just a magic time. We surfed by ourselves for the early sessions as the locals didn’t seem to get out of bed till 10am, as it was pumping all day.
Image: 1971 Errol surfing Trigg Point. Photo courtesy of Ian Ferguson.
About 1971, I reckon – Autumn mid-week after early shift at work and borrowed Peter Bevan’s little ‘Blaxell’ double-ender to hit perfect, translucent blue, shoulder high waves at Trigg Point with sparkling sunshine and gusty NE wind – just pouring through this size and no bigger with only a handful of people in the water, bloody amazing. Trigg that afternoon was breaking like I’d never seen it before or since – a rare and memorable Perth wave session.
I did the cross-Oz drive back to Sydney and up to Coolangatta the following year in Mandurah surfer Marty Rawlinson’s Holden PV, along with other mates from the Scarborough crew – John Booth and Peter Murphy. We got lots of good sessions at Snapper Rocks, with Michael Petersen in the water dominating. Seeing his cutback close up (as immortalised in “Morning of the Earth’) was a breathtaking vision of classic Aussie animal beauty.
Image: 1973 Australian titles at Margies Main Break car park, Errol with Richard Harvey, Ric Chan & others. Photo courtesy of Ric Chan.
I conned my boss at 7 News into sending me to Margaret’s to report on the 1973 Australian Titles – here with Open title winner Richard Harvey from NSW. I didn’t mention to him that I’d been the author of a cover story for “Tracks” magazine, representing a local group of surfers who tried to stop the event going ahead and bringing unwanted crowds to our WA waves – ‘Mr Harvey’ had written a Letter to the Editor in the mag’s following edition calling me out across Australia as being a dickhead & total tool!! …awkward ….
In 1974, my fiancé Christine and I took off to South Africa. After some game parks touring, we ended up in Durban in June. I had six odd weeks of blue skies with epic warm water winter beach breaks every day, while waiting for my Work Permit to come through to take up a job as a reporter with the local afternoon newspaper, “The Daily News”.
I surfed a lot with Sean and Michael Thomson who went on to forge reputations as talented, deep tube chargers on Hawaii’s North Shore, and Sean took out a world title. They were great guys and just had the fantastic Durban breaks totally wired.
The following year, after a demo and riot following some front page stories I’d written, I was hauled in and interrogated by national security police. My Work Permit was revoked. The newspaper’s Editor got charged and was to later trial because of my reports but he eventually got off …anyway, Christine and I loaded up a fitted-out VW Kombi we’d bought, and took off north through South Africa to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), taking in Victoria Falls and all the sites. The country was in the middle of a civil war and often the only other vehicles we saw on the road were army trucks with sandbags and machine guns on the back!!
We headed back south and reached the ocean again at Cape Town for a few freezing waves and seeing the breathtaking sites before heading up the stunning ‘Garden Route’ to Jeffery’s Bay.
Back then J-Bay town had a caravan park, pretty crappy hotel and a few houses and shops. There was nothing at all at the Point. We ended up spending weeks with a circle of Kombis around a camp fire on the Point and only went back into town for supplies or to have showers at the caravan park.
When we arrived at Jeffrey’s it was flat with a howling offshore – the recipe at home in WA for no waves. But the locals said this was perfect – vowing the wind would push the South Atlantic autumn swells around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast to J Bay …and that’s exactly what happened. Epic waves – the best waves I reckon I have ever seen.
We also had couple of nice sessions at Seal Point, Cape St Francis – near the legendary “Bruce’s Beauties”, made world famous in the “Endless Summer” but learned that it breaks even fewer times each year than Meelup Point!!
Christine and I left South Africa, went to London and I got a job with a TV news agency helping to launch the first daily satellite news feed to all Australian TV stations.
We went to Cornwall a few times with another top South African surfer George Thompson who’d competed at World Titles in Peru and Puerto Rico, looking for waves. But we lucked out in the Old Dart and I didn’t get my Tom Hoye shaped board wet. After getting enough dosh together, we quit our London jobs and signed up for one of the early Contiki coach and camping hauls around Europe.
Back home to WA, we got married, got two children, and got a mortgage and so there was little time for surfing for a decade or so. I went back to TV news for TVW7 and at one stage for over a year was working seven days a week, picking up casual PR writing gigs on my days off.
I later became Chief of Reporting Staff for “Sunday Independent” newspaper; then Executive Producer and later News Editor for STW 9 News. In 1986, I was moved from Nine news into Bond Corporation. After Bond all fell apart, I was in corporate affairs for R&I Bank for a couple of years; then a disastrous return to Nine and Director of News; finally becoming a corporate PR consultant, which took me through most of the rest of my career.
I worked for all sorts of clients – like American billionaire Steve Fossett, on the mission team for his attempt to make the first circumnavigation of the world by hot air balloon.
In 2002, after Fossett’s take off from Northam, I followed the adventurer around the globe in his private jet with a press photographer and video cameraman. We captured pictures and got air-to-air interviews to feed out to the world media – 23 million people went to the mission website in just a few weeks.
Image: 2002 Errol on Fossett round-the-world media gig – Easter Island
The famous Easter Island heads, deep in the South Pacific off South America. Me on the left, flanked by American video cameraman, British video sound engineer and recordist, and American pilot and co-pilot.
We landed or made stopovers at Sydney; Auckland; Tahiti, where I saw Red Bull guys with a film crew riding massive waves on the outer reefs; Easter Island, with some good looking waves but no surfers; Punta Arenas on bottom of Cape Horn; Santiago, Chile; hopped over the Andes and across the vast interior or Brazil to Rio De Janeiro; refuelled at a James Bond type secret air base on Ascension Island the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where soldiers armed with M16s made sure we couldn’t leave the plane’s perimeter or take any photographs; on to South Africa and Cape Town and Durban, as we kept pace with Fossett’s balloon ‘Spirit of Freedom’; then to Cocos; Perth briefly; Ceduna on the Nullarbor; Woomera in outback South Oz; and Birdsville where Fossett came down near where the South Australian, Queensland and NT borders meet; and ended up in Sydney with me running a huge media conference. It was a dream gig.
Image: 2002 Errol on Fossett round-the-world media gig – Santiago Chile.
Just before take-off from Santiago, Chile to cross the Andes Mountains on the way to Rio – where we stayed a night on Ipanema beach but didn’t see any surf!
Over the years I’ve made surf trips to Bali, back to Noosa, three time to Honolulu (just riding Waikiki but driving along the North Shore’s famous spots from Haleiwa to Waimea Bay), and Maldives three times.
In the early 2000s, I briefly had a gig as Contributing Editor for “Longbreak” surf travel magazine (now online, check it out: https://www.facebook.com/Longbreak-371332382995982/ ) and scored some sweet assignments to ride waves and write feature articles on trips to Lembongan; Cocos, Noosa; Mauritius and Reunion islands; and back to the Maldives’ Dhonvelli resort and the fabled Pasta Point, plus an awesome week-long ‘Four Seasons Explorer’ luxury board trip to the southern atolls, with Tropic Surf – best surf trip evv-uh!!
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to Cocos #1. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
Photographer is the owner/editor, Cottesloe graphic design whizz Peter Dickson. Local tourism operators wanted to promote Cocos for surfing tourism but a couple of locals, who themselves often travelled around the planet to catch waves, were pretty aggro and unfriendly about us bringing any attention to their backyard! But costs, isolation and limited wave choices and dining/entertainment options means it will thankfully never be like Bali.
Image: Early 2000s Longbreak magazine trip to Cocos #2. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
see caption above
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to the Maldives. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
With Longbreak aboard Tropic Surf’s “Four Seasons Explorer” at a spot called “The Peak” in the Maldives southern atolls – bit challenging for an old guy on a Mal but made a few.
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to Noosa in Queensland. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
Noosa trip with Longbreak and a Tropic Surf day expedition to Double Island Point – a unique wave experience.
My son Christopher surfs and now lives in southern California and gets heaps of waves. We have had some incredible trips together over the years including an amazing week of beautiful warm water right hand point break waves at Cabo San Lucas on the bottom of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, with the wives along too; plus another great boys-only trip to El Salvador.
I was asked some years ago to join the board of Surfing WA, to help out when Mark Lane came back from his time with Surfing Australia on the east coast, to help revive the local body’s then fast failing fortunes.
I became Vice Chairman and worked with a great board, and with Laney and his team to help get the Drug Aware Margaret River Pro back up as a Prime rated event; and then to eventually win full Championship Tour status – and later to defend the event against forces trying to knock Margies out of the annual line-up.
I helped out with some of the Pro event media planning, and media and event staging, in the initial years. I also helped get up and host an event for our State Champions in the Prevelly event VIP area, which Surfing WA put on during the Pro event for some years, which I thought was important for our young surfers.
It was great to have been able to make a contribution to Surfing WA but I don’t believe in people hanging in those sort of positions forever. Boards need renewal and fresh ideas and so after some five or six years I pulled then pin after finding someone better to replace me.
By the late 1990s, as an office-bound guy not getting enough waves and with waning paddle fitness, I made the transition to longboards and joined Indian Ocean Longboard Club at Yallingup, and had a lot of fun times back down there over the years. But between the shark thing Down South and me finding it harder to take the Yalls sets on the head and longboard hold downs, my surfing time down there has scaled right back more recently. Last year, I joined Cottesloe Longboard Club to get some uncrowded comp heat sessions at Iso’s!
Last year, I also went to Exmouth for the first time with Margaret River local and former Indian Ocean Longboard member Ray Barker. We shared some great surfs with Brian Hood, former Albany and Geraldton board maker Bruce Montgomery, and Murray Smith – amongst those seeking winter refuge each year in warmer, kinder waves.
That all sort of dovetailed into me finally retiring in mid-2018, just shy of 50 years since I finished school and started as a cadet reporter back on 4th January 1969.
Image: 2019 ME ‘NOW’ #1
Mewith my prized circa 1976 ‘Oceans’ single fin shaped by Col Ladhams at Gary Grierson’s Osborne Park factory – which now hangs in my garage ‘man cave’.
Image: 2019 ME ‘NOW’ #2 – see caption above.
But there is still nothing anywhere in the world compared to the ‘rush’ you get when taking the corner past Caves House, then coming up over the hill past the Smith’s lookout, and seeing the white water pouring through up that majestic coast north to Three Bears and Sugarloaf.
Back in the early days when waking from our sleeping bags on Saturday morning at Yalls we could gauge swell direction and size, tide, wind direction and make some experience-based judgement calls on where the best surf would be happening …all before the days of any online tools.
And there is still the buzz when running into surf mates in the Yalls car park you haven’t seen for years … swapping yarns drawing on all those amazing memories of the amazing times we have lived through in the Down South story, and maybe pondering where it has all come to now on the Capes Coast which we had perhaps once thought of as our domain but is now part of the global ‘Margaret River brand’…and, of course it goes without saying: the older we are, the better we were !!
Updated 3 February 2020. Added two additional images and captions.
Errol Considine (now aged 68) stood up on his first wave at Trigg in Easter 1964 and was hooked and became a north end Scarborough grommet. After a career in journalism and PR, he is retired and lives in Floreat and still catching long boarder waves.
This is Errol’s story with photos…
I got the surf stoke in about 1964, aged 13, when my (late) elder brother Jeff started buying US surf mags and picked up a 9’6” Barry Bennett three-stringer second hand.
We bought decals of Californian board makers like Dewey Webber and Harbour and stuck them on our work desks at home, and plastered the asbestos walls of our back verandah sleepout at Doubleview with surf mag centrespread pics. I remember one was classic Butch Van Artsdalen on his backhand at Pipeline.
It all quickly became an obsession for both of us. We started going to screenings of surf movies at Dalkeith Hall and the Regal Theatre in Subi. California and Hawaii were the promised lands.
My then best mate Ian Langdon (a member of North End Board Club but in the ‘70s became one of the casualties who were lost too young in the drug years) came back from a year living in Bondi, when his father was transferred in his work, and had started surfing.
Ian bought a new 9’1” custom McDonagh single stringer. His father took us to Trigg Point in Easter ’64, with the new board in the back of their Holden station wagon. We took in turns of pushing each other on to the shore break just down the beach from the Point. In between lots of nose diving I stood up for the first time and planed straight into the beach.
I can vividly recall early in the following summer of ‘64-65, working out how to stop nose diving and making my first turn and cutting across the face of right hander at Scarborough for the first time… a new universe had opened up.
For Christmas 1964, Jeff and I got our first boardshorts, hand made by Jenny Cordingley. I couldn’t afford to buy a board but my brother and many of the local crew stored left their mals under the houses of mates who lived near the beach at Scarborough, like at Ian ‘Spydor’ Taylor’s place. So, while they were at work or at uni mid-week, I could pinch their boards and get waves.
The first week back at Churchlands High in 1965, the swell was up and it was offshore. Ian Langdon and I wagged school. It was epic and we had it all day, all to ourselves, Next morning, we were bragging to anybody who would listen how good it was and how they’d all missed out …then the stern voice of the Deputy Headmaster came over the P.A. ordering us both to front at his office immediately – yikes, somebody had dobbed. We both got six ‘cuts’ of the cane – three on each hand!
I took my first trip Down South with my brother and one of his Scarborough High School mates who also surfed, in December 1965. Click on this link to view My first trip Down South by Errol Considine published May 2017.
Image: 1966 Jeff and Errol surfing Down South. Photo courtesy of Geoff Moran.
Early days at Margaret River mouth – me on the wave and my brother Jeff paddling out.
Jeff started his career in architecture as a Cadet Draughtsman with the Department of Public Works in January 1966 and soon saved enough to buy his first car – a Morris Mini. Jeff took the Mini with Wayne Jacks and me onboard down to Yalls for the first time on the March long weekend that year to watch the State titles.
Image: 1966 Jeff’s Mini and our surfboards Down South. Photo courtesy of Geoff Moran.
My brother Jeff and the Mini which took us on some of our first trips Down South from 1966
The surf was great. The Saturday night scene at Caves House pub was wild – and another big change in our lives came about when we got home …Mum wasn’t to know about any of the goings on ‘Down South” – another window into the new universe had opened up …
By 1967/68, Scarborough mates like Peter Bevan, John Jacobs and (the late) Jim Rance had cars and so trips Down South became more frequent. Mates like Ron Marchant piled in too. By 1969, when I started work, we were making the drive down to Yalls most Friday nights on any weekend when we weren’t working.
Image: 1967 Errol & Jeff with Cordingley boards and Mini Minor at Doubleview. Errol Considine pic.
On the back street verge of our home at Doubleview with me and my older brother Jeff – looking at the Cordingley boards, hair and clobber, I reckon this was about 1967. There is a “Hot Generation” stencil on the bottom of Jeff’s board – and the classic and landmark Australian surf movie came out in ’67. The trusty Mini which took us on our first trips Down South is parked behind.
In those final couple of years at school, I had been totally stoked to finally get in to the Scarborough Board Club, which was run by President Ron ‘Doc’ Naylor, John Shackley, and Ken and Brian Trainer. Members included Ric and Rob Syme, Rod Slater, Ken McDonald and Wayne Jacks.
A couple years, later the new ‘super’ club of North Coast was formed – my brother Jeff was President and other members included Brian Hood, Greg ‘Pants’ Laurenson, Robin ‘Skullcap’ Sutherland, Bob Monkman, Terry Garrett, Gary ‘Gooselegs’ Vaughan, Ron Waddell, John Paris and Guy and Dean Fullerton.
The club comps and BBQs were legendary. North End once had a mid-winter comp at Halls Head, with perfect, long, super cold, two foot lefts running down the point – another now fabled wave which disappeared forever after the breakwaters were built at the mouth of the Mandurah estuary.
North Coast only lasted a year or so. With younger crew Peter Bevan and guys like John and Ross Booth we later formed West Coast Board Club, and so kept the club scene going for a couple of more years.
But that whole early board club scene all fell apart as guys started to get married, or take off travelling, and as the Age of Aquarius took people on different paths.
Image: 1971-72 Errol & Jeff with Holden Panel Van at Doubleview. Errol Considine
With the infamous ‘Yellow Peril’ FC Holden panel van at Doubleview.
Hair and clobber points to about 1971 or ’72.
When brother Jeff bought the van it was painted a dull chalky grey. He had it resprayed mellow yellow with blue wheels – which initially had it dubbed “the Noddy car”. It was fitted with foam mattress, customer cut around the wheel arches. It was brilliant to finally be able to go down south for the weekend and sleep warm and dry – and not have to drag our air mattresses into the drafty toilets at Yallingup when it rained!!
When Jeff moved on to a better vehicle, I took it over and painted a US Stars & Stripes on the inside roof… to give something more colourful to look at for anybody lying on their back, in the back! …about that time it became better known as “the Yellow Peril”!
Looking back now, we were the luckiest generation in Australian history. All those open horizons and being part of the incredible excitement of the shortboard revolution…without real crowd issues. We rented a dairy farmer’s old cottage on the Cowaramup-Gracetown road for $52 – for 12 months!
And how lucky to be ‘in’ on the discovery of new waves being found and ridden Down South. And get to surf them with just our mates in the water. Click on this link to view Some memories of early Three Bears by Errol Considine published February 2017.
…how quickly it would all change …
There were missed opportunities though – like being offered “any block you want” at Eagle Bay for $3,000 …and knocking the deal back …aarrrgggghhhhhh!
Image: 1971-72 Errol head dip at Scarborough. Photo courtesy of Ian Ferguson.
Likely taken at Scarborough ‘bout 1971 or ’72 I reckon, looking at the wettie and board – which was my first Tom Hoye-shaped Blaxell – the American expat master craftsman introduced us to the first generation of beautiful chamfered rails with centre thickness in the front half to give paddling buoyancy but thinner on the edge sitting into the face of the wave – this refining of the hard down rails innovation meant they would give great bite into back-foot bottom turns and good straight line trimming speed. That development survives in modern boards with hard rails in the tail.
My first job was as a Cadet Journalist with WA Newspapers, assigned to the afternoon “Daily News”. School surfing buddy Chuck Morton-Stewart got the same gig and was assigned to “The West Australian”. Peter Bevan, who’d also been at Hale School with us, had started at WA Newspapers the year prior as a Cadet Press Artist. Later, the three of us worked together to produce a couple of editions of “Country Surf”/“West Country Surf” – the first home grown surf magazine.
I got to do some neat stuff as a journo, like being amongst (perhaps) the first crew who rode waves at the back of Rottnest for a feature spread in the “Weekend News” (Saturday) colour magazine. We made the trip across to Rotto on the WA Newspapers’ luxury cruiser “Hiawatha”. Click on this link to view Rottnest Surfari 69 a Media junket first by Errol Considine published Jan 2018.
In May 1970, Chuck and I loaded up Peter Bevan’s Holden panel van (with bunks in the back) and we drove to Bells Beach in Victoria to watch the World titles. We all worked weekends and public holidays in the world of newspapers and so got six weeks annual leave and had saved our hols up to make that trip.
At Bells, we got to see our heroes like Nat Young and Wayne Lynch up close. We played pool with Michael Petersen at the Torquay hotel one night. He didn’t speak a word… just sort of grunted at us – weird!
After scoring good waves at Point Impossible, Jan Juc and Torquay Point, we travelled up to Sydney and had an epic week of pumping quality surf at Manly. We stayed at a classic two-storey white weatherboard house on the beach at North Steyne which was being rented cheap by some mates from Scarborough who’d moved east. The house is now long gone, replaced by an up-market tower of apartments.
After the Manly sojourn, we drove up the Pacific Highway and just kept scoring perfect and uncrowded waves – at Angourie, Kirra (with only a handful of surfers in the water in perfect pumping conditions on the Sunday afternoon we arrived!) and Snapper Rocks. Then on to Noosa and a week of perfection at First Point, Boiling Pot, Tea Tree and Granites. We slept under the PV at Nationals car park ….just a magic time. We surfed by ourselves for the early sessions as the locals didn’t seem to get out of bed till 10am, as it was pumping all day.
Image: 1971 Errol surfing Trigg Point. Photo courtesy of Ian Ferguson.
About 1971, I reckon – Autumn mid-week after early shift at work and borrowed Peter Bevan’s little ‘Blaxell’ double-ender to hit perfect, translucent blue, shoulder high waves at Trigg Point with sparkling sunshine and gusty NE wind – just pouring through this size and no bigger with only a handful of people in the water, bloody amazing. Trigg that afternoon was breaking like I’d never seen it before or since – a rare and memorable Perth wave session.
I did the cross-Oz drive back to Sydney and up to Coolangatta the following year in Mandurah surfer Marty Rawlinson’s Holden PV, along with other mates from the Scarborough crew – John Booth and Peter Murphy. We got lots of good sessions at Snapper Rocks, with Michael Petersen in the water dominating. Seeing his cutback close up (as immortalised in “Morning of the Earth’) was a breathtaking vision of classic Aussie animal beauty.
Image: 1973 Australian titles at Margies Main Break car park, Errol with Richard Harvey, Ric Chan & others. Photo courtesy of Ric Chan.
I conned my boss at 7 News into sending me to Margaret’s to report on the 1973 Australian Titles – here with Open title winner Richard Harvey from NSW. I didn’t mention to him that I’d been the author of a cover story for “Tracks” magazine, representing a local group of surfers who tried to stop the event going ahead and bringing unwanted crowds to our WA waves – ‘Mr Harvey’ had written a Letter to the Editor in the mag’s following edition calling me out across Australia as being a dickhead & total tool!! …awkward ….
In 1974, my fiancé Christine and I took off to South Africa. After some game parks touring, we ended up in Durban in June. I had six odd weeks of blue skies with epic warm water winter beach breaks every day, while waiting for my Work Permit to come through to take up a job as a reporter with the local afternoon newspaper, “The Daily News”.
I surfed a lot with Sean and Michael Thomson who went on to forge reputations as talented, deep tube chargers on Hawaii’s North Shore, and Sean took out a world title. They were great guys and just had the fantastic Durban breaks totally wired.
The following year, after a demo and riot following some front page stories I’d written, I was hauled in and interrogated by national security police. My Work Permit was revoked. The newspaper’s Editor got charged and was to later trial because of my reports but he eventually got off …anyway, Christine and I loaded up a fitted-out VW Kombi we’d bought, and took off north through South Africa to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), taking in Victoria Falls and all the sites. The country was in the middle of a civil war and often the only other vehicles we saw on the road were army trucks with sandbags and machine guns on the back!!
We headed back south and reached the ocean again at Cape Town for a few freezing waves and seeing the breathtaking sites before heading up the stunning ‘Garden Route’ to Jeffery’s Bay.
Back then J-Bay town had a caravan park, pretty crappy hotel and a few houses and shops. There was nothing at all at the Point. We ended up spending weeks with a circle of Kombis around a camp fire on the Point and only went back into town for supplies or to have showers at the caravan park.
When we arrived at Jeffrey’s it was flat with a howling offshore – the recipe at home in WA for no waves. But the locals said this was perfect – vowing the wind would push the South Atlantic autumn swells around the Cape of Good Hope and up the coast to J Bay …and that’s exactly what happened. Epic waves – the best waves I reckon I have ever seen.
We also had couple of nice sessions at Seal Point, Cape St Francis – near the legendary “Bruce’s Beauties”, made world famous in the “Endless Summer” but learned that it breaks even fewer times each year than Meelup Point!!
Christine and I left South Africa, went to London and I got a job with a TV news agency helping to launch the first daily satellite news feed to all Australian TV stations.
We went to Cornwall a few times with another top South African surfer George Thompson who’d competed at World Titles in Peru and Puerto Rico, looking for waves. But we lucked out in the Old Dart and I didn’t get my Tom Hoye shaped board wet. After getting enough dosh together, we quit our London jobs and signed up for one of the early Contiki coach and camping hauls around Europe.
Back home to WA, we got married, got two children, and got a mortgage and so there was little time for surfing for a decade or so. I went back to TV news for TVW7 and at one stage for over a year was working seven days a week, picking up casual PR writing gigs on my days off.
I later became Chief of Reporting Staff for “Sunday Independent” newspaper; then Executive Producer and later News Editor for STW 9 News. In 1986, I was moved from Nine news into Bond Corporation. After Bond all fell apart, I was in corporate affairs for R&I Bank for a couple of years; then a disastrous return to Nine and Director of News; finally becoming a corporate PR consultant, which took me through most of the rest of my career.
I worked for all sorts of clients – like American billionaire Steve Fossett, on the mission team for his attempt to make the first circumnavigation of the world by hot air balloon.
In 2002, after Fossett’s take off from Northam, I followed the adventurer around the globe in his private jet with a press photographer and video cameraman. We captured pictures and got air-to-air interviews to feed out to the world media – 23 million people went to the mission website in just a few weeks.
Image: 2002 Errol on Fossett round-the-world media gig – Easter Island
The famous Easter Island heads, deep in the South Pacific off South America. Me on the left, flanked by American video cameraman, British video sound engineer and recordist, and American pilot and co-pilot.
We landed or made stopovers at Sydney; Auckland; Tahiti, where I saw Red Bull guys with a film crew riding massive waves on the outer reefs; Easter Island, with some good looking waves but no surfers; Punta Arenas on bottom of Cape Horn; Santiago, Chile; hopped over the Andes and across the vast interior or Brazil to Rio De Janeiro; refuelled at a James Bond type secret air base on Ascension Island the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where soldiers armed with M16s made sure we couldn’t leave the plane’s perimeter or take any photographs; on to South Africa and Cape Town and Durban, as we kept pace with Fossett’s balloon ‘Spirit of Freedom’; then to Cocos; Perth briefly; Ceduna on the Nullarbor; Woomera in outback South Oz; and Birdsville where Fossett came down near where the South Australian, Queensland and NT borders meet; and ended up in Sydney with me running a huge media conference. It was a dream gig.
Image: 2002 Errol on Fossett round-the-world media gig – Santiago Chile.
Just before take-off from Santiago, Chile to cross the Andes Mountains on the way to Rio – where we stayed a night on Ipanema beach but didn’t see any surf!
Over the years I’ve made surf trips to Bali, back to Noosa, three time to Honolulu (just riding Waikiki but driving along the North Shore’s famous spots from Haleiwa to Waimea Bay), and Maldives three times.
In the early 2000s, I briefly had a gig as Contributing Editor for “Longbreak” surf travel magazine (now online, check it out: https://www.facebook.com/Longbreak-371332382995982/ ) and scored some sweet assignments to ride waves and write feature articles on trips to Lembongan; Cocos, Noosa; Mauritius and Reunion islands; and back to the Maldives’ Dhonvelli resort and the fabled Pasta Point, plus an awesome week-long ‘Four Seasons Explorer’ luxury board trip to the southern atolls, with Tropic Surf – best surf trip evv-uh!!
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to Cocos #1. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
Photographer is the owner/editor, Cottesloe graphic design whizz Peter Dickson. Local tourism operators wanted to promote Cocos for surfing tourism but a couple of locals, who themselves often travelled around the planet to catch waves, were pretty aggro and unfriendly about us bringing any attention to their backyard! But costs, isolation and limited wave choices and dining/entertainment options means it will thankfully never be like Bali.
Image: Early 2000s Longbreak magazine trip to Cocos #2. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
see caption above
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to the Maldives. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
With Longbreak aboard Tropic Surf’s “Four Seasons Explorer” at a spot called “The Peak” in the Maldives southern atolls – bit challenging for an old guy on a Mal but made a few.
Image: Early 2000s Errol on Longbreak magazine trip to Noosa in Queensland. Photo courtesy of Peter Dickson, Longbreak magazine
Noosa trip with Longbreak and a Tropic Surf day expedition to Double Island Point – a unique wave experience.
My son Christopher surfs and now lives in southern California and gets heaps of waves. We have had some incredible trips together over the years including an amazing week of beautiful warm water right hand point break waves at Cabo San Lucas on the bottom of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, with the wives along too; plus another great boys-only trip to El Salvador.
I was asked some years ago to join the board of Surfing WA, to help out when Mark Lane came back from his time with Surfing Australia on the east coast, to help revive the local body’s then fast failing fortunes.
I became Vice Chairman and worked with a great board, and with Laney and his team to help get the Drug Aware Margaret River Pro back up as a Prime rated event; and then to eventually win full Championship Tour status – and later to defend the event against forces trying to knock Margies out of the annual line-up.
I helped out with some of the Pro event media planning, and media and event staging, in the initial years. I also helped get up and host an event for our State Champions in the Prevelly event VIP area, which Surfing WA put on during the Pro event for some years, which I thought was important for our young surfers.
It was great to have been able to make a contribution to Surfing WA but I don’t believe in people hanging in those sort of positions forever. Boards need renewal and fresh ideas and so after some five or six years I pulled then pin after finding someone better to replace me.
By the late 1990s, as an office-bound guy not getting enough waves and with waning paddle fitness, I made the transition to longboards and joined Indian Ocean Longboard Club at Yallingup, and had a lot of fun times back down there over the years. But between the shark thing Down South and me finding it harder to take the Yalls sets on the head and longboard hold downs, my surfing time down there has scaled right back more recently. Last year, I joined Cottesloe Longboard Club to get some uncrowded comp heat sessions at Iso’s!
Last year, I also went to Exmouth for the first time with Margaret River local and former Indian Ocean Longboard member Ray Barker. We shared some great surfs with Brian Hood, former Albany and Geraldton board maker Bruce Montgomery, and Murray Smith – amongst those seeking winter refuge each year in warmer, kinder waves.
That all sort of dovetailed into me finally retiring in mid-2018, just shy of 50 years since I finished school and started as a cadet reporter back on 4th January 1969.
Image: 2019 ME ‘NOW’ #1
Me with my prized circa 1976 ‘Oceans’ single fin shaped by Col Ladhams at Gary Grierson’s Osborne Park factory – which now hangs in my garage ‘man cave’.
Image: 2019 ME ‘NOW’ #2 – see caption above.
But there is still nothing anywhere in the world compared to the ‘rush’ you get when taking the corner past Caves House, then coming up over the hill past the Smith’s lookout, and seeing the white water pouring through up that majestic coast north to Three Bears and Sugarloaf.
Back in the early days when waking from our sleeping bags on Saturday morning at Yalls we could gauge swell direction and size, tide, wind direction and make some experience-based judgement calls on where the best surf would be happening …all before the days of any online tools.
And there is still the buzz when running into surf mates in the Yalls car park you haven’t seen for years … swapping yarns drawing on all those amazing memories of the amazing times we have lived through in the Down South story, and maybe pondering where it has all come to now on the Capes Coast which we had perhaps once thought of as our domain but is now part of the global ‘Margaret River brand’…and, of course it goes without saying: the older we are, the better we were !!
STORY ENDS
Thank you Errol for your Then & Now contribution.
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