The ocean has always been a big part of the life of Margaret River’s surf industry legend Tom Hoye (age 74).
He is an accomplished surfer, windsurfer and renowned maker of handcrafted surfboards.
Tom taught himself how to shape surfboards with helpful tips obtained while working for US surf industry legend Jack O’Neill in the late 60s.
He has been credited with introducing twin fin surfboards to Australia in 1970.
This is the first of a three part series on Tom’s surfing life. It is based on his recollections and photos (unless stated otherwise).
#1. Santa Cruz to Margaret River
#2. Yallingup surfboard factory and shop
#3. Overseas surf trips and Cowaramup & Margaret River surfboard factories.
Series #1 covers the period 1960 to 1970 and Tom’s journey from USA to West Oz.
Jack O’Neill invented and started making wetsuits in 1952 in San Francisco. In 1958 he moved the shop to Santa Cruz, inland behind Pleasure Point, where he made the wetsuits and surfboards.
Around 1959-60 he started the shop at Cowells beach and moved the manufacturing to the 41st Avenue location where O’Neill Inc. still is today!
That was when he started using the name O’Neill’s Surf Shop. I started working there around 1962.
By sheer coincidence I lived in Santa Cruz and started surfing in 1960. Or 1958 if you count the time swimming out with a plywood skim board, trying to use it like a bogie board and getting around at Cowells point and the beach breaks with a blow-up surf mat. Got my first surfboard in 1960.
My first board bought from a hardware store was shaped by Mike Winterburn who worked for O’Neill’s. Mike was an innovative shaper, surfer, he knew how to get deeply tubed before I started surfing. He and Jack O’Neill influenced my attitude towards surfing and shaping almost completely. Mike went on to designing and building sailboats.
My Mike Winterburn board was 8’ long and a good shape too, it was ahead of its time, just 4oz cloth, real light. I surfed the board a couple of times, but it dinged very easily.
Photo: 1958 US surfer/shaper Mike Winterburn getting tubed on a good day at Santa Cruz river mouth.
I thought maybe I could make a stronger surfboard, if I glassed it myself. So, I went to the new Surf Shop to buy resin and fibreglass. I took it up to my friend’s garage and I glassed my first surfboard, with a layer of 10oz cloth over my 4oz bottom which made it super heavy, but I was stoked that I could run it into rocks and it wouldn’t break! There were no leg ropes and you are surfing in front of cliffs and lots of rocks in Santa Cruz.
I was age 15 and wondered how I could get another surfboard and thought I better get into the surf industry, so I went to the Surf Shop to try and get work there.
The Surf Shop had a sign in the window that said Wetsuit Lady Wanted, so I went into see Jack O’Neil and told him I could make wetsuits.
Jack O’Neill explained that he was looking for a lady. Not satisfied, I explained that I was doing a course at High School to be a salesman and could help-out at the front counter.
I was then able to arrange with school to get work experience. I was let out of school early each day, so I could work the last two to three hours of the day at O’Neill’s shop and on the weekends would do the entire day in the showroom. I was feeling pretty cool at that point, working in a surf shop, around 1963.
Mike Winterburn and George Olsen shaped. (Olson also went on to design some of the best sail boats in the area.), Richard Novak, (the fonder of Santa Cruz skateboards.) was doing the sanding and Phil Lingman was doing the glassing and glossing. I was rubbing the rails in front of the shop, while running the showroom. At that point O’Neill’s Surf Shop were finishing 5 boards a day, and the wet suits were starting to take off.
I worked the retail side of the business selling wetsuits, surfboards etc. All this time Jack was still trying to find the ‘Wetsuit Lady’. Jack’s brother Bob was hand cutting and making all the wetsuits.
Finally, I convinced Jack that I could help make the wetsuits, and for the next 4 to 6 months I made all the wetsuits for ‘O’Neill’s. We made all the styles you see today – we had diving suits with pants, jackets and beaver tails, long johns with no sleeves, short johns with no sleeves, single piece steamer suits, vests”. He finally found a “wetsuit lady”.
I was put in the glassing room and ended up glassing and finishing and eventually managing the surfboard building part of O’Neill’s till 1968. I started shaping a few boards from my house in 1966-67 with my Hoye logo. I used to book out materials from O’Neill’s shop at cost plus 10%. I was doing all Jacks glassing and doing my shapes at night.
Jack let me do that for two years before he finally let me go, only after I set up my own shop and showroom. Jack was a special person. What a lot of people don’t know about Jack is he was a total charger.
In the sixties, if it was big Steamer Lane, Jack was on it. There was one day around 1963-4. My friend Joel and I are fooling around on the reef at Steamers at low tide. Winter time, big swell over ten foot, strong side shore, totally blown out.
We see Jack heading out to the point with his 11 foot silver gun. He’s wearing a full steamer, hood and boots in 1963! We go running up to him. “Jack, what are you doing it’s blown out, and big.” “It’s offshore out there” he says, pointing out to third reef, and jumps off the point with a 30 to 50 foot drop into very cold water and starts paddling the few miles to get to the wave. No partner. Monterey Bay breeds white pointers in the deepest ocean trench on the planet! Third reef is like Cow Bombie in South West WA, around two miles out. We waited till we saw this tiny little speck with a track behind it, getting down the face of a huge peak, only to be overrun by a monster bit of white water totally out of proportion with his speed and size. We drove to the river mouth, where we waited for him to reach the beach after a 3 to 4 mile swim-paddle. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. He did the distance in a good time, I thought.
I could go on with Jack stories. He was like a father figure to me in the early days, I loved the guy. He did a lot for a lot of people and surfing. Live till you die, Jack’s life was a good one!
Editor’s note:US businessman Jack O’Neill passed away June 2017 age 94. He was credited with the invention of the wetsuit.
Photo: 1960s Tom Hoye surfing in Santa Cruz. Photo by Dave Singletary & text sourced from Images of America, Surfing in Santa Cruz by Thomas Hickenbottom with the Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society and the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum. Published 2009.
In 1968 the University of California was built, and the town doubled in size in two years.
I felt that I had to find somewhere rural, with good waves, where I could do a custom order shop, get a lot of waves and enjoy life. Around that time Paul Witzig had come to Santa Cruz showing the Evolution surf film. It had a picture of Wayne Lynch doing a bottom turn at the Margaret River main break. Travelling NZ Surf photographer Ric Chan took the Wayne Lynch pic at the 1969 National Titles.
I looked where Margaret River was on the world map and how it squared up to the Southern Ocean. Within six months I sold my house and everything else and was on a boat to Australia.
Upon arrival in OZ I worked for a year in Sydney, shaping for Bennett Surfboards in Brookvale NSW. Click on this link to view Origin of twin fin surfboards in Oz by Tom Hoye published 10 August 2016.
Photo: 1970 Tom with twin fin board at Bennett Surfboards Brookvale NSW. Photo courtesy of John Witzig and Tracks Magazine.
Image: 1970 Extract from twin fin article in Tracks Magazine.
In 1971 I left the shaping job at Bennett Surfboards and headed to West Australia in my red camper truck with wife Karen and daughter Donyale. Thanks to Berry Bennett, I had a shaping job lined up in Adelaide.
The shop was on the third floor in a down town area. One of the guys took me to a beach that had no waves and said this is the spot in town, but they went to Cactus on the weekends. It was the weekend, so I drove to Cactus, planning to go back and start work in the next week.
After surfing Caves for two days I decided that it would make more sense to get the waves rather than the money. So, I called the shop and said after driving so far, rather than going back in Adelaide, I would keep heading west.
Photos: 1971 Tom surfing Caves at Penong South Aust.
We stayed at Cactus for around, three months. Amazingly the first day, there was one guy surfing Caves. It ended up being a friend of mine from California, Dennis Conquest. I ran into his wife Sue sitting on the beach as I went into the water. They were with another friend of mine from Calif. Rick, who was living in Byron Bay. I didn’t even know they were in Australia. We were the only people there! Really nice day at Caves, shoulder to a little over head high, fun 😊
Dennis and Sue decided to stay and head west with us and Rick went back to Byron Bay. That gave me a surf partner and Karen and Donyale a friend on the beach. Only Dennis and I and Laurie Baily, the school teacher in Penong, were surfing through the week. With 10 to 12 surfers on the weekend. Too good, so many good waves at Caves.
On the day we left, we met three W.A. guys stuck in Penong with car problems. We were planning to have a last surf before we started driving west. So, we gave them a ride down to the break, had a surf and dropped them off in town on the way out. It was a blowy 3 or 4 feet. The three guys Tony Hardy, Ian Cairns and Phil Taylor were all surfing really well. I thought, what’s happening in W.A! It wasn’t till I got to W.A. that I learned that they were the top three surfers in W.A. that year.
I still have a tube that Ian Cairns got in 1972 in my head that sits there with all my own, like everybody that surfs has… tubes that you can’t forget! Car Park was 6 to 8 feet, had quite a few guys. George Simpson and Ian were surfing P. Break. I decided on P. Break. Paddling out I was looking into this perfect 8 to 10 foot empty barrel, thinking, hope I go ok this is looking heavy, then there was a dark spot in the foam ball at the back that turned into Ian busting through and carving a really good hack off the top as he exited the tube. Charge!
We arrived in the South West via Manjimup and Nannup during the Easter holidays in 1971.
Photos: 1971 Tom and family arriving in the South West with red camper truck.
Left: Moween Road heading to Margaret River 1971. “The road went for 30 miles and we saw two roos”.
Right: Track into Gallows 1971. We got that truck all the way to the beach had a surf and back without getting bogged. “The track went for 4-5 miles from the main road to the coast”.
Within a few hours of the Moween road photo I knew I would be staying in Margaret River, I liked the town, and knew the waves were good, but started to wonder about the reality of starting a surf shop there at that point.
I asked around town if anyone was making surfboards in the area. Someone said that there was carpenter, Geoff Culmsee who had just moved down from Perth and was making surfboards. The address he gave us was head north on Caves road, when you come out of the tree tunnel, you’ll be at the Moses Rocks turn off. Geoff’s place is the first drive on the left after Moses Rocks, as you go back into the tree tunnel.
We camped that night at the lower car park at the Margaret River point with no one there, woke up to the Easter Crowd and 6 to 8-10 foot beautiful conditions.
Photo: 1971 Tom surfing solid Margaret River point.
After the surf I met Tony Harbison, Kevin Merifield, and Howard “the ghost” Kent.
I also ran into Rob Ward, who I had become friends with in Calif. I had made a surfboard for him in 1968, when he was traveling through to Mexico. He was living in Perth and knew Tom Blaxell. Rob went back to Perth and got me a shaping work with Tom, before I got there. Which was good, because after not shaping in South Australia to say I was tight with money, would imply I had some.
My friends Dennis and Sue from Calif. met people who had come down from Perth that they knew, and they went back to Perth with them. Karen, Donyale and I decided to stay in the area for another week, now that I knew I had work in Perth. On the first drive from MR to Yallingup we stopped and visited Geoff Culmsee. He showed me where he was doing his shapes. I told him my plans and his comment was “I make a living from carpentry, not many surfers living down here”.
That afternoon we met with Dennis and his friends at Injidup car park. We had prearranged with them to have dinner there before they headed to Perth. The waves were around 4-6 foot, perfect! Dennis and I had a surf. I had a four hour session. Everybody was pissed off at me because they were all getting eaten by the mozzies for the last hour or so before I got out of the water. We went to another spot to eat. Took a week to live it down with Karen and Donyale!
Photo: 1971 Tom surfing Injidup car park during first week in SW.
Through the next week I met Glyn Lance, George Simpson and a few others.
On the second surf at Injidup I managed to sell my twin fin I wasn’t using to a guy after the surf. $75.00 in 71 made things seem real. It was a good week swell wise!
In Perth I parked my truck in front of the place Rob Ward was staying in Scarborough and lived there. I worked for Tom Blaxell for 6 months. In that time, I met Craig Brent-White, Steve Fordham R.I.P., Mark Forsyth and Jim King. Tony Hardy was also shaping for Blaxell.
Photo: 1971 Tom Hoye and Tony Hardy shapers for Blaxell Surfboards in Osborne Park. Tom Blaxell pic.
On the weekends, Rob and I along with everyone else, would head south. We left on Thursday night most weeks to get the extra day. Others were doing the same thing, most of them every weekend. Everybody was keen, good times, the amount of people coming down every weekend would get lost on the coast, not many crowded days and when it was it was there were only about 15 or 20 surfers.
In Oct. 1971 I bought materials for a few boards from Tom Blaxell, put them in the truck and headed south with the intention of starting a custom order surf shop somewhere around Yallingup.
We knew the area by then and decided that we would spend the first night at Bunker’s bay, out on the point. When we arrived, there was another car there. It was twilight, we wanted to eat and go to sleep. We thought we’d wait for the other person to leave.
We waited and it turned dark and the guy from the other car came over and said, are you guys planning to sleep here. We all had a laugh, because Hans Kopp was waiting for us to leave so he could camp there, it was the first night that he came down south with the plan to stay.
Hans Kopp and I are the same age. We both immigrated to Australia, for similar reasons in the same year from different countries. He spent time up north working the mines. Then moved himself to Perth and talked his way into a chef’s job at one of the Perth hotels with no chef’s experience, by saying he was a Swiss chef. He went to the first night of the job with notes all over his body so he could remember the recipes from the Swiss cookbooks he had been studying. His first night was a huge success. While in Perth he became a noted chef and discovered surfing and decided that to really learn it he had to move down south. I find it an amazing coincidence that Hans and I ended up on Bunkers Point that night with the same intention.
Photo: 1975 Yallingup surfers working on Peter Dyson’s property at Northcliffe. Peter Mac pic.
L-R Hans Kopp, Ian ‘Prive’ Morris & Peter ‘Mac’ McDonald
Thanks Tom, for your story and vintage surf images.
Coming soon Tom Hoye story #2. Yallingup surfboard factory and shop
Tom is still producing high quality handcrafted Precision Equip Surfboards in his Margaret River surf factory.
Precision Equip Surfboards Lot 4, 1 Burton Road Margaret River.
The ocean has always been a big part of the life of Margaret River’s surf industry legend Tom Hoye (age 74).
He is an accomplished surfer, windsurfer and renowned maker of handcrafted surfboards.
Tom taught himself how to shape surfboards with helpful tips obtained while working for US surf industry legend Jack O’Neill in the late 60s.
He has been credited with introducing twin fin surfboards to Australia in 1970.
This is the first of a three part series on Tom’s surfing life. It is based on his recollections and photos (unless stated otherwise).
#1. Santa Cruz to Margaret River
#2. Yallingup surfboard factory and shop
#3. Overseas surf trips and Cowaramup & Margaret River surfboard factories.
Series #1 covers the period 1960 to 1970 and Tom’s journey from USA to West Oz.
Jack O’Neill invented and started making wetsuits in 1952 in San Francisco. In 1958 he moved the shop to Santa Cruz, inland behind Pleasure Point, where he made the wetsuits and surfboards.
Around 1959-60 he started the shop at Cowells beach and moved the manufacturing to the 41st Avenue location where O’Neill Inc. still is today!
That was when he started using the name O’Neill’s Surf Shop. I started working there around 1962.
By sheer coincidence I lived in Santa Cruz and started surfing in 1960. Or 1958 if you count the time swimming out with a plywood skim board, trying to use it like a bogie board and getting around at Cowells point and the beach breaks with a blow-up surf mat. Got my first surfboard in 1960.
My first board bought from a hardware store was shaped by Mike Winterburn who worked for O’Neill’s. Mike was an innovative shaper, surfer, he knew how to get deeply tubed before I started surfing. He and Jack O’Neill influenced my attitude towards surfing and shaping almost completely. Mike went on to designing and building sailboats.
My Mike Winterburn board was 8’ long and a good shape too, it was ahead of its time, just 4oz cloth, real light. I surfed the board a couple of times, but it dinged very easily.
Photo: 1958 US surfer/shaper Mike Winterburn getting tubed on a good day at Santa Cruz river mouth.
I thought maybe I could make a stronger surfboard, if I glassed it myself. So, I went to the new Surf Shop to buy resin and fibreglass. I took it up to my friend’s garage and I glassed my first surfboard, with a layer of 10oz cloth over my 4oz bottom which made it super heavy, but I was stoked that I could run it into rocks and it wouldn’t break! There were no leg ropes and you are surfing in front of cliffs and lots of rocks in Santa Cruz.
I was age 15 and wondered how I could get another surfboard and thought I better get into the surf industry, so I went to the Surf Shop to try and get work there.
The Surf Shop had a sign in the window that said Wetsuit Lady Wanted, so I went into see Jack O’Neil and told him I could make wetsuits.
Jack O’Neill explained that he was looking for a lady. Not satisfied, I explained that I was doing a course at High School to be a salesman and could help-out at the front counter.
I was then able to arrange with school to get work experience. I was let out of school early each day, so I could work the last two to three hours of the day at O’Neill’s shop and on the weekends would do the entire day in the showroom. I was feeling pretty cool at that point, working in a surf shop, around 1963.
Mike Winterburn and George Olsen shaped. (Olson also went on to design some of the best sail boats in the area.), Richard Novak, (the fonder of Santa Cruz skateboards.) was doing the sanding and Phil Lingman was doing the glassing and glossing. I was rubbing the rails in front of the shop, while running the showroom. At that point O’Neill’s Surf Shop were finishing 5 boards a day, and the wet suits were starting to take off.
I worked the retail side of the business selling wetsuits, surfboards etc. All this time Jack was still trying to find the ‘Wetsuit Lady’. Jack’s brother Bob was hand cutting and making all the wetsuits.
Finally, I convinced Jack that I could help make the wetsuits, and for the next 4 to 6 months I made all the wetsuits for ‘O’Neill’s. We made all the styles you see today – we had diving suits with pants, jackets and beaver tails, long johns with no sleeves, short johns with no sleeves, single piece steamer suits, vests”. He finally found a “wetsuit lady”.
I was put in the glassing room and ended up glassing and finishing and eventually managing the surfboard building part of O’Neill’s till 1968. I started shaping a few boards from my house in 1966-67 with my Hoye logo. I used to book out materials from O’Neill’s shop at cost plus 10%. I was doing all Jacks glassing and doing my shapes at night.
Jack let me do that for two years before he finally let me go, only after I set up my own shop and showroom. Jack was a special person. What a lot of people don’t know about Jack is he was a total charger.
In the sixties, if it was big Steamer Lane, Jack was on it. There was one day around 1963-4. My friend Joel and I are fooling around on the reef at Steamers at low tide. Winter time, big swell over ten foot, strong side shore, totally blown out.
We see Jack heading out to the point with his 11 foot silver gun. He’s wearing a full steamer, hood and boots in 1963! We go running up to him. “Jack, what are you doing it’s blown out, and big.” “It’s offshore out there” he says, pointing out to third reef, and jumps off the point with a 30 to 50 foot drop into very cold water and starts paddling the few miles to get to the wave. No partner. Monterey Bay breeds white pointers in the deepest ocean trench on the planet! Third reef is like Cow Bombie in South West WA, around two miles out. We waited till we saw this tiny little speck with a track behind it, getting down the face of a huge peak, only to be overrun by a monster bit of white water totally out of proportion with his speed and size. We drove to the river mouth, where we waited for him to reach the beach after a 3 to 4 mile swim-paddle. To say I was impressed would be an understatement. He did the distance in a good time, I thought.
I could go on with Jack stories. He was like a father figure to me in the early days, I loved the guy. He did a lot for a lot of people and surfing. Live till you die, Jack’s life was a good one!
Editor’s note: US businessman Jack O’Neill passed away June 2017 age 94. He was credited with the invention of the wetsuit.
Photo: 1960s Tom Hoye surfing in Santa Cruz. Photo by Dave Singletary & text sourced from Images of America, Surfing in Santa Cruz by Thomas Hickenbottom with the Santa Cruz Surfing Club Preservation Society and the Santa Cruz Surfing Museum. Published 2009.
In 1968 the University of California was built, and the town doubled in size in two years.
I felt that I had to find somewhere rural, with good waves, where I could do a custom order shop, get a lot of waves and enjoy life. Around that time Paul Witzig had come to Santa Cruz showing the Evolution surf film. It had a picture of Wayne Lynch doing a bottom turn at the Margaret River main break. Travelling NZ Surf photographer Ric Chan took the Wayne Lynch pic at the 1969 National Titles.
I looked where Margaret River was on the world map and how it squared up to the Southern Ocean. Within six months I sold my house and everything else and was on a boat to Australia.
Upon arrival in OZ I worked for a year in Sydney, shaping for Bennett Surfboards in Brookvale NSW. Click on this link to view Origin of twin fin surfboards in Oz by Tom Hoye published 10 August 2016.
Photo: 1970 Tom with twin fin board at Bennett Surfboards Brookvale NSW. Photo courtesy of John Witzig and Tracks Magazine.
Image: 1970 Extract from twin fin article in Tracks Magazine.
In 1971 I left the shaping job at Bennett Surfboards and headed to West Australia in my red camper truck with wife Karen and daughter Donyale. Thanks to Berry Bennett, I had a shaping job lined up in Adelaide.
The shop was on the third floor in a down town area. One of the guys took me to a beach that had no waves and said this is the spot in town, but they went to Cactus on the weekends. It was the weekend, so I drove to Cactus, planning to go back and start work in the next week.
After surfing Caves for two days I decided that it would make more sense to get the waves rather than the money. So, I called the shop and said after driving so far, rather than going back in Adelaide, I would keep heading west.
Photos: 1971 Tom surfing Caves at Penong South Aust.
We stayed at Cactus for around, three months. Amazingly the first day, there was one guy surfing Caves. It ended up being a friend of mine from California, Dennis Conquest. I ran into his wife Sue sitting on the beach as I went into the water. They were with another friend of mine from Calif. Rick, who was living in Byron Bay. I didn’t even know they were in Australia. We were the only people there! Really nice day at Caves, shoulder to a little over head high, fun 😊
Dennis and Sue decided to stay and head west with us and Rick went back to Byron Bay. That gave me a surf partner and Karen and Donyale a friend on the beach. Only Dennis and I and Laurie Baily, the school teacher in Penong, were surfing through the week. With 10 to 12 surfers on the weekend. Too good, so many good waves at Caves.
On the day we left, we met three W.A. guys stuck in Penong with car problems. We were planning to have a last surf before we started driving west. So, we gave them a ride down to the break, had a surf and dropped them off in town on the way out. It was a blowy 3 or 4 feet. The three guys Tony Hardy, Ian Cairns and Phil Taylor were all surfing really well. I thought, what’s happening in W.A! It wasn’t till I got to W.A. that I learned that they were the top three surfers in W.A. that year.
I still have a tube that Ian Cairns got in 1972 in my head that sits there with all my own, like everybody that surfs has… tubes that you can’t forget! Car Park was 6 to 8 feet, had quite a few guys. George Simpson and Ian were surfing P. Break. I decided on P. Break. Paddling out I was looking into this perfect 8 to 10 foot empty barrel, thinking, hope I go ok this is looking heavy, then there was a dark spot in the foam ball at the back that turned into Ian busting through and carving a really good hack off the top as he exited the tube. Charge!
We arrived in the South West via Manjimup and Nannup during the Easter holidays in 1971.
Photos: 1971 Tom and family arriving in the South West with red camper truck.
Left: Moween Road heading to Margaret River 1971. “The road went for 30 miles and we saw two roos”.
Right: Track into Gallows 1971. We got that truck all the way to the beach had a surf and back without getting bogged. “The track went for 4-5 miles from the main road to the coast”.
Within a few hours of the Moween road photo I knew I would be staying in Margaret River, I liked the town, and knew the waves were good, but started to wonder about the reality of starting a surf shop there at that point.
I asked around town if anyone was making surfboards in the area. Someone said that there was carpenter, Geoff Culmsee who had just moved down from Perth and was making surfboards. The address he gave us was head north on Caves road, when you come out of the tree tunnel, you’ll be at the Moses Rocks turn off. Geoff’s place is the first drive on the left after Moses Rocks, as you go back into the tree tunnel.
We camped that night at the lower car park at the Margaret River point with no one there, woke up to the Easter Crowd and 6 to 8-10 foot beautiful conditions.
Photo: 1971 Tom surfing solid Margaret River point.
After the surf I met Tony Harbison, Kevin Merifield, and Howard “the ghost” Kent.
I also ran into Rob Ward, who I had become friends with in Calif. I had made a surfboard for him in 1968, when he was traveling through to Mexico. He was living in Perth and knew Tom Blaxell. Rob went back to Perth and got me a shaping work with Tom, before I got there. Which was good, because after not shaping in South Australia to say I was tight with money, would imply I had some.
My friends Dennis and Sue from Calif. met people who had come down from Perth that they knew, and they went back to Perth with them. Karen, Donyale and I decided to stay in the area for another week, now that I knew I had work in Perth. On the first drive from MR to Yallingup we stopped and visited Geoff Culmsee. He showed me where he was doing his shapes. I told him my plans and his comment was “I make a living from carpentry, not many surfers living down here”.
That afternoon we met with Dennis and his friends at Injidup car park. We had prearranged with them to have dinner there before they headed to Perth. The waves were around 4-6 foot, perfect! Dennis and I had a surf. I had a four hour session. Everybody was pissed off at me because they were all getting eaten by the mozzies for the last hour or so before I got out of the water. We went to another spot to eat. Took a week to live it down with Karen and Donyale!
Photo: 1971 Tom surfing Injidup car park during first week in SW.
Through the next week I met Glyn Lance, George Simpson and a few others.
On the second surf at Injidup I managed to sell my twin fin I wasn’t using to a guy after the surf. $75.00 in 71 made things seem real. It was a good week swell wise!
In Perth I parked my truck in front of the place Rob Ward was staying in Scarborough and lived there. I worked for Tom Blaxell for 6 months. In that time, I met Craig Brent-White, Steve Fordham R.I.P., Mark Forsyth and Jim King. Tony Hardy was also shaping for Blaxell.
Photo: 1971 Tom Hoye and Tony Hardy shapers for Blaxell Surfboards in Osborne Park. Tom Blaxell pic.
On the weekends, Rob and I along with everyone else, would head south. We left on Thursday night most weeks to get the extra day. Others were doing the same thing, most of them every weekend. Everybody was keen, good times, the amount of people coming down every weekend would get lost on the coast, not many crowded days and when it was it was there were only about 15 or 20 surfers.
In Oct. 1971 I bought materials for a few boards from Tom Blaxell, put them in the truck and headed south with the intention of starting a custom order surf shop somewhere around Yallingup.
We knew the area by then and decided that we would spend the first night at Bunker’s bay, out on the point. When we arrived, there was another car there. It was twilight, we wanted to eat and go to sleep. We thought we’d wait for the other person to leave.
We waited and it turned dark and the guy from the other car came over and said, are you guys planning to sleep here. We all had a laugh, because Hans Kopp was waiting for us to leave so he could camp there, it was the first night that he came down south with the plan to stay.
Hans Kopp and I are the same age. We both immigrated to Australia, for similar reasons in the same year from different countries. He spent time up north working the mines. Then moved himself to Perth and talked his way into a chef’s job at one of the Perth hotels with no chef’s experience, by saying he was a Swiss chef. He went to the first night of the job with notes all over his body so he could remember the recipes from the Swiss cookbooks he had been studying. His first night was a huge success. While in Perth he became a noted chef and discovered surfing and decided that to really learn it he had to move down south. I find it an amazing coincidence that Hans and I ended up on Bunkers Point that night with the same intention.
Photo: 1975 Yallingup surfers working on Peter Dyson’s property at Northcliffe. Peter Mac pic.
L-R Hans Kopp, Ian ‘Prive’ Morris & Peter ‘Mac’ McDonald
Thanks Tom, for your story and vintage surf images.
Coming soon Tom Hoye story #2. Yallingup surfboard factory and shop
Tom is still producing high quality handcrafted Precision Equip Surfboards in his Margaret River surf factory.
Precision Equip Surfboards Lot 4, 1 Burton Road Margaret River.
Phone: 08 97572585 Mobile: 0428224402 Email: hoyequip@gmail.com
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