In
1970/71 “Country Surf” / “West Country Surf” burst onto the scene as WA’s first
home grown and fully fledged surfing magazine.
But
it was to be a shooting star – briefly flaring brightly, then flickering out just
as quickly and vanishing from the WA surfing story.
“Country Surf”, edition 2 (left) with Ian Cairns on the cover at the 1971 State titles on an ‘Innovator’ “chisel back flyer” twin fin. “West Country Surf”, first & final edition (right) featuring Paul “Rooster” Woods, a glasser/finisher with Jacko Surfboards. He sadly died not long after this appeared. From memory, his car ran off the road on a late Friday night drive Down South – maybe after going to sleep behind the wheel…something which could have so easily happened to so many of us back then…
The
first edition of “Country Surf” magazine was published by Perth surfers Gavin
McCaughey and Tom Collins, in the second half of 1970.
It was
the era when monthly magazines such as “Surfing World” and “Tracks” were our
saltwater gospel. They had created an exciting new media market and sold in
huge and increasing numbers.
After
the ‘69 Australian titles put Margaret River and the west coast on the surfing
map we were all pretty gung-ho about showcasing the waves Down South, and our
local surfing talent, as matching it with anywhere and anybody on the blue
planet – a combination of desire, motivation and …looking back now a dose of naiveté!
The
issue cycle of surf magazines was usually monthly. In the ‘Foreword’ of ”Country
Surf” we confidently told readers:
“At
present due to the scarcity of financial backing and hassles working out the
growth pains of production and distribution, we will print every two months…”
…a
bold promise we were destined not to keep!
The
whole Country Surf/West Country Surf experience was to highlight a couple of
truths: we all had big dreams and soaring ambitions…but very shallow pockets!
And life was about to take us on different trajectories…
The founders
Tom Collins
had been conscripted and as a ‘nasho’ sent off to serve in the Vietnam War. He
returned home to WA with the photography bug and good camera equipment he’d
picked up overseas, and with ambitions to be a surf lensman. Tom had the guts
to take the plunge and give birth to “Country Surf”, with production of the
first edition.
Gavin McCaughey
was a good surfer on the Scarborough/Trigg coast and part of the crew making
the regular weekend runs Down South. A very self-confident guy, he also had the
chutzpa to get out and sell the advertising for the first edition, which was in
some ways the hardest job of all.
As a
young acoustic guitar-playing copper, Gavin later become known as ‘the singing
policeman’ and I think played a key part in setting up the ‘Constable Care’ kids’
safety education program, which is still going strong today.
Gavin McCaughey modelling for a “Country Surf” advertisement – check out the price for a custom made-to-measure wettie!
Gavin
also wrote articles in the first two editions of ‘Country Surf’ – like tackling
the hot issue of summer crowds at Trigg’s Point in the second edition.
“Most everyone will tell you that
surfing at the “Point” is just not worth the hassle,” wrote Gavin.
“Without a doubt, Trigg’s Point must
have more surfers per square foot than other location in Australia.”
Fast
forward to 2020 and the crowds back then now seem pretty tame. And Gavin did
also admit in this piece that week days at Trigg’s, in the early ‘70s, still
provided relatively uncrowded sessions with mostly only your mates in the
line-up.
The Trigg crowds cartoon strip by artist Ron Chandler shows the artistic influence back then of Captain Goodvibes in ‘Tracks’ and ‘MAD Magazine’ …plus the pressing need to generate other graphic content to cover a shortage of suitable photos in filling the pages.Trigg’s Point with locals such as Ron Marchant and Hank Scheffenmaker, plus Cottesloe hottie Max Hickson, chopping into some right peelers, featured over page with the same article
A creative takeover
Neither
Gavin nor Tom had any real background in media. But me and my former school mates
Peter Bevan and (the late) Chuck Morton-Stewart were all working at WA
Newspapers – P.B. as a Cadet Press Artist and Chuck and me as Cadet Reporters
on the “West Australian” and “Daily News”, respectively.
We
were full of bravado, ambition and growing confidence in our abilities to take
on the media world.
Or to
put it another way – we didn’t really understand how little we actually knew;
had nothing much to lose; and so weren’t afraid to have-a-go.
Not
sure how it all came to pass but I think Gavin and Tom spoke to P.B. about
getting involved to lift the magazine’s standards. Peter pulled Chuck and me in
and we started to flex our creative muscles.
The
first edition of “Country Surf” which we got involved with (Vol 1. No 2) saw us
tiptoeing around the two ‘owners’ Gavin and Tom. So, we weren’t able to impact
on the final product as much as we wanted.
Articles
by Tom Blaxell and me in the very word-heavy ’71 State titles spread over ten
pages refer to “Yallies”. Funny, I can’t now ever remember ever using that
term! Just: “Yalls”.
1971
was something of an historical watershed too with the State titles venue being
Margaret River Mainbreak. The earlier years had pretty much always seen the
event based at Yallingup.
And the
times they were a changing with board design too.
Tom
Blaxell described the “Open Animals Final” with George Simpson (second) and Rick
Lobe (fourth) the only riders on single fins. The other four finalists were all
on twin fins: Ian Cairns (first), Murray Smith (third), Phil Taylor (fifth) and
Norm Bateman (sixth). A big talking point on the beach had been pre-event
favourite Tony Hardy going out in the semis, hampered by a poisoned reef cut on
a knee.
“Ian (Cairns) was excelling on his
little chisel-back flyer…pulling off some amazing things – really late take
offs, straight down to the bottom, bang into a vertical climb, head dip into a
thick lip…He almost pulled off a 360,”
wrote Tom Blaxell.
Ian Cairns attempting a 360 degree turn on his Innovator twin fin, as he stormed to his first WA Open title following a 1968-69-70 trifecta of Junior championship wins. The pic needed re-touching by hand and looks a bit visually clumsy now – no Photoshop back then. But we’d never seen that manoeuvre seriously attempted in a comp before… and Kanga almost pulled it off! Ian was destined for a larger stage and leading role in world surfing…More Surfers’ Point Margies Mainbreak ’71 State titles shots, featuring Ian Cairns, City Beach rider Craig Bettenay and Cottesloe’s Ian Mitchell, with pics by Ric Chan and City Beach goofy Rob Farris.
New team. New titles.
New look.
By the
third (“September”) edition our little troika of P.B., Chuck Morton-Stewart and
me had pretty much staged a takeover of the whole shebang and sidelined Gavin
and Tom from the creative and production stuff.
With
the exulted title of “Editor”, my first big move was to change the
publication’s title.
The
wellspring of the “Country Surf” title back then was Australian surfers aspiring
to the ideal of real-earth soul … getting away from the city to live amongst
great uncrowded waves in a pristine environment, and live on brown rice,
macrobiotic vegetables and fruit, and a whole lotta’ love! Surf movies and magazines at the time
showcased our heroes like Nat Young living commune-style on the uncrowded NSW
north coast.
For
that second edition, I added “West” to the “Country Surf” title. The aim was to
highlight the emerging west coast version of getaway-from-the-city surfing life
and differentiate the magazine for readers who might pick up copies in the
eastern states.
While
I handled overall editing such as story order and page placement, and worked
with Peter on individual page and double-page spread picture selection and
layout, he was really the core driving force for the peak “West Country Surf”
edition.
Peter lined
up a better printer plus got a deal with one of the big national magazine distribution
houses – then the only way to get magazines into the main selling outlets –
news agency stores state wide and across the country.
We
were coming from training in a newspaper industry where the writing was the key.
The journalists made the big content decisions to showcase the stories,
supported by the images.
Surf
magazines though were really about the pictures, artwork and visual
presentation, with the words and text secondary for the readers. And Peter was
the leader in that area.
Another
former Hale school mate and surfing buddy, Ian Ferguson, was a cadet Press
Photographer at WA Newspapers, and a close mate of Peter’s.
‘Fergie’
was able to take his state-of-the-art company Nikon camera and bag of WAN
lenses away on weekend surf trips Down South. This included ‘the elephant gun’
– a giant (and very expensive) zoom lens which was perfect for shooting surfing
from the shore with a tripod-mount.
He could
also use the WAN darkrooms to develop his black-and-white film and make prints
– all on the company dime at no cost to us. Perfect!
Unfortunately,
we couldn’t afford to shoot with expensive colour film, or to bankroll full
four-colour printing. Peter was able to use the ‘duo tone’ process to tint some
of the feature shots to give some more visual punch to the monochrome images.
The best of those was a blue-tinted black and white shot captured by Ian Ferguson which is now a classic of power WA surfing from the era featuring Yallingup legend George Simpson in the “West Country Surf” centre spread – this was the double-page money shot for surf magazines, as readers could pull it out to stick on the wall…and this was an absolute ripper. Still awesome nearly half a century later.
WA legend George Simpson laying his full down-rail carver into a power bottom turn at pumping Injidup Carpark – a classic shot by Ian Ferguson. This great pic also featured in the ‘Surfing Down South’ hardcover coffee table book, published in 2014.
Cottesloe surfer Greg Wood, another cadet press snapper at WA Newspapers and later at the Sunday Times, also helped out with a bundle of shots taken in Perth.
Cottesloe back then was a great training ground for lots of hot young surfers. Riders like Phil Taylor and Al Fixter – captured in this spread by Greg Wood in “West Country Surf” – later graduated to become gutsy and talented performers in the bigger stuff Down South.
Local
legend Ric Chan was then fast becoming Perth’s best-known surf photographer and
helped us out a lot too.
I think Ric Chan paddled out into the Mainbreak impact zone in a small tinny to get closer action shots from the water at the 1971 State titles at Margaret River. For this “Country Surf” centrespread shot, Ric captured Cottesloe goofy Grant “Zibby” McLeod in the Junior Final.
Peter
co-opted fellow Cadet Press Artist at WA Newspapers, Ron Chandler – a non-surfer
but talented guy – to help with the huge amount of artwork production for the
magazines.
This work
relied on top level drawing, illustrating and hand-formatting artboard skills. Back
in those pre-computer dark ages, publishing was a laborious and labour
intensive process.
Typesetting
was by ‘hot metal’. There was a huge vat of molten lead down on the print
production floors of Newspaper House – it was steamy, toxic and occasionally a
bit dangerous too when air bubbles in the vat could cause mini eruptions of the
hot metal to spray out. Yikes!
Every
letter of every word was produced in hot lead type by a linotype machine and
assembled into columns of formatted text in metal racks. Ink and paper was
rolled across the metal type forms to produce a mint print copy. From this
‘bromides’ were made – this involved paper coated in gelatin. This positive
type of photo print of the columns of type and headings were stuck onto artwork
boards, along with the ads and photos. The printing plates were made from the
whole page form.
The
number of hot metal typefaces available was pretty limited, and mainly
restricted to old-fashioned ‘serif’ fonts, like ‘Times New Roman’ … later ubiquitous
as the clunky type in the early versions of Microsoft Word.
If you
wanted modern typefaces, there were only two options. Hand draw headings, or to
access the crisp and modern ‘sans serif’ typefaces emerging to revolutionise publishing
graphics – like ‘Helvetica’ from Scandinavia, or super-cool ‘Pump’ used in the
front-page banner title for “Tracks” magazine – source then state-of-the-art Letraset … which was sheets of stickers with
individual letters, numbers any symbols for each style of font.
Using
Letraset needed a very steady artist’s hand to apply the letters one-at-a-time
from the sheets directly onto each page of artwork, which was then pasted up on
heavier artboards. Each letter had to be applied perfectly straight on the line
with uniform spacing between each letter; and then have uniform spacing between
separate words. It was exacting work.
Virtually
all the headings in the September edition of “West Country Surf” were hand
drawn or using Letraset. Peter and Ron did an amazing job.
Ripping off the company
stocks!
Peter,
Chuck, Ron and I had a huge advantage to what had occurred previously for the
magazine’s first edition.
We used
the Press Art Department’s facilities and materials at Newspaper House, in St Georges
Terrace for free – because we could! We snaffled the Letraset sheets and other materials
from the already paid-for Art Department stockpiles. Cheeky!
We
didn’t ask permission. We just waited for the rest of the artists to go home
when the day’s edition of “The West Australian” was ‘put to bed’ (to use the
industry vernacular) and the giant presses in the basement were ready to roll.
We then got to work on our labour of love.
Our
presence didn’t raise any eyebrows. It was normal for journos and photographers
to be coming and going at all hours in Newspaper House. The security guys never
came late at night to check the art department at the Mounts Bay Road bottom
end of the dirty and slightly Dickensian ad sprawling multi-level old buildings.
Can’t
remember how many nights we took but I do know we worked until about two or
three o’clock in the morning; went down the Bernie’s Burgers on Mounts Bay Road
(pretty much the only place in WA which opened 24/7 back then) for a feed-up; then
home to grab a short kip and shower before fronting back up again at Newspaper
House for our real jobs …makes me
exhausted now just thinking about it!!
Stable of writers
They
now call it ‘content’ but back then it was just reporting…
Chuck
and I did most of the writing and pulled in some friends and work colleagues
for specialist columns.
Farm
and Rocky Point were the go-to spots when onshore winds blew out the Capes
west-facing shoreline.
Three
Bears and Lefthanders behind South Point were soon to be discovered but in this
feature piece, Chuck wrote: “Rocky Point
…is probably one of the most inaccessible of all or well-known surf spots in
the South-west and yet it is a place that nearly all surfers who visit our
south coast have been to.”
That
may seem hard to believe now but back then that section of coast was under
serious threat from sand miners eager to spread their operations further west from
the Capel area. In proto-greenie stuff, Chuck also wrote: “Rocky Point …could eventually be lost …if ilmenite and rutile miners
are allowed to mine where they have pegged along that coastal area. Rocky is
the centre of one of the areas they want.”
Fortunately,
that push was stopped by local opposition.
We
co-opted other mates and colleagues to help out providing copy too (for free!):
Kim
Wearne (a Scarborough body boarder) wrote music reviews, under the pseudonym of
‘Studs Terkel’ – taking the moniker from a famous, award-winning US author,
historian and radio broadcaster who recorded oral histories with famous blues
musicians in his Chicago hometown.
John
‘Scruff’ McGregor, one of the founders of the revered ’78 Records’, co-authored
a column on hi-fi sound gear with another Hale school mate Cliff Gibson. Then an
apprentice technician/engineer with Telecom (later Telstra), Cliff was also
part of our regular Scarborough crew’s weekend trips down south. He is now one
of the top communications systems consultants in Australia, and played a
critical role in the implementation of the NBN amongst his many career
achievements.
Fellow
WAN journo Diana Callander penned food columns. [She later married Geoff
Christian, the acclaimed ‘doyen’ of football writers. Perth ABC radio’s annual
Player of the Year award, and one of West Coast Eagles’ main coterie groups,
are named after the late footy reporting legend.]
One of Kim ‘Studs Terkel’ Wearne’s insightful music review columns.
Advertising tells
stories of the times
Peter
also lured in a wider pool of advertisers and created most of the design and
artwork for the ads – both surf industry and other sectors…here’s a selection
of some of them highlighting some elements of the times back then…
Tom Blaxell was a close mate of Peter Bevan at Hale School – when T.B. made his first boards in the garage of his family’s home on West Coast Highway at Scarborough. So P.B. made sure Tom was hooked in for the prime back page feature add space for “Country Surf”.Back page of the third September (and final) “West Country Surf” edition, featuring Peter Bevan carving at South Point; with inset pic of then Blaxell Surfboards’ hot shapers Tony Hardy and Tom Hoye who not long after both moved Down South to make boards under their own names.
Cordingley
were the top dog in the local industry back then and Jacko was also riding
high. They were both readily supportive of the local magazine.
Check out the price of boardcovers back in the day – these were first-generation, hand-sewn towelling – way before John Malloy set up Creatures of Leisure and became a leader in revolutionising transporting and travelling with surfboards – for the better. Les Wright was a stylish goofy footer and, from memory, part of the Cottesloe crew. He later moved east and I think became a maker of acclaimed bespoke timber furniture.
But it
is the non-surfing ads which really throw a spotlight now back onto those
times…
70’s surf cool …edition 2 of “Country Surf”, flares were all the go!! …note: great hand illustration by Ron Chandler.Denim was the new wave of coolIt was The Age of Aquarius – including on the airwaves…Going en masse to one or two night screenings of surf movies was a rite of passage for the local surf crew back in the 60s and 70s – rolling Jaffas down the aisles, lots of collective hootin’ & hollerin’, catch up with mates, see and be seen… Popular screening venues back then included the town hall in Waratah Avenue, Dalkeith and The Regal in Subiaco. Nickelodeon is the only one still showing movies today – now known as Luna Leederville. Perth’s live music scene was huge in the 1970s. Venues like Scarborough’s White Sands and the Shenton Park Hotel featured live bands most weeknights, huge Saturdays and for the legendary Sunday arvo sessions. AC DC’s Bon Scott and INXS were amongst the global talents to later emerge from the hothouse Perth scene. Well known Cottesloe surfer Victor Kailis and his entertainment agency were big players. Peter Bevan used to pick up freelance work designing and producing concert posters for Victor and so hooked them in to take some paid ad space in both editions of the magazine. Victor and his son George – later a hot nationally ranked junior – now run their hospitality empire: Kailis Fishmarket Café at Fremantle, Shorehouse at Swanbourne, and Island Café and Canteen at Trigg. The Kailis’ have sponsored surf comps for many years, including Trigg’s annual King of Da Point and longboard events.
Response and hindsight
We
were all pretty stoked with the results with the September edition of “West
Country Surf”. And got really good feedback from most of the beach crew.
The
production values and quality of the artwork and graphics were top-notch I
reckon and stand the test of time pretty well, especially given the lack of
technology tools available back then.
But
casting an eye across the writing – with 20/20 hindsight – the quality varies from
OK to more than a little embarrassing … particularly my own stuff. Surf poetry,
WTF!! As Editor. I reserved the right back then not to slash my over-written copy! It was a different time
but clearly we still had a lot more to learn about our chosen craft, back in
1971!
Great hand-tinted illustration here by Peter Bevan …but now a pretty embarrassing piece of surfer-writer angst by me!
In the
Editor’s page of the first and final “West Country Surf”, we wrote:
“…we
have now expanded to circulate a limited number of copies across the desert to
the Sydney scene.
“…To
make it possible to give you more time to read and look at, we need
subscriptions so that we can feed straight capital back into WCS for you.
“…
with your guaranteed subscripted-readership we can get more advertisers and so
add more pages of type and shots…
“So
we leave it up to you and hope you can help us to make something for you. Read
on and we’ll see you next edition around”
….another
big promise which would not be kept!
The
magazine gig had been an exciting rush but was also a lot bloody harder than we
first imagined. And for nil financial reward.
So,
the “West Country Surf” dream flickered, fizzled …and flamed out.
Truth
be told, we just didn’t have the passion or capacity to make the sacrifices
needed to live off small-time publishing in what was then still a niche market.
As
John Lennon wrote: “life is what happens
to you while you’re busy making other plans”.
We
were focussing our energies on driving Down South every weekend with our mates
and girlfriends … starting to think about travelling overseas to find new wave
adventures …or, not too far over the real-world horizon, heading towards stuff
like weddings, kids, mortgages etc etc.
But as
the 1970s unfolded, some of the smartest and bravest of our surfing mates from that
era did begin moving Down South to start to build new working and surfing lives;
and create families, homes and communities – in the heartland of the west
country surf.
A final ‘West Country Surf’ flashback…gusty power surfing at pumping Yallingup – especially when the right is working – is timeless and never fails to excite – like these capturing George Simpson. What a time it was when we were so freely able to so freely chase our passion for Surfing Down South.
In 1970/71 “Country Surf” / “West Country Surf” burst onto the scene as WA’s first home grown and fully fledged surfing magazine.
But it was to be a shooting star – briefly flaring brightly, then flickering out just as quickly and vanishing from the WA surfing story.
“West Country Surf”, first & final edition (right) featuring Paul “Rooster” Woods, a glasser/finisher with Jacko Surfboards. He sadly died not long after this appeared. From memory, his car ran off the road on a late Friday night drive Down South – maybe after going to sleep behind the wheel…something which could have so easily happened to so many of us back then…
The first edition of “Country Surf” magazine was published by Perth surfers Gavin McCaughey and Tom Collins, in the second half of 1970.
It was the era when monthly magazines such as “Surfing World” and “Tracks” were our saltwater gospel. They had created an exciting new media market and sold in huge and increasing numbers.
After the ‘69 Australian titles put Margaret River and the west coast on the surfing map we were all pretty gung-ho about showcasing the waves Down South, and our local surfing talent, as matching it with anywhere and anybody on the blue planet – a combination of desire, motivation and …looking back now a dose of naiveté!
The issue cycle of surf magazines was usually monthly. In the ‘Foreword’ of ”Country Surf” we confidently told readers:
“At present due to the scarcity of financial backing and hassles working out the growth pains of production and distribution, we will print every two months…”
…a bold promise we were destined not to keep!
The whole Country Surf/West Country Surf experience was to highlight a couple of truths: we all had big dreams and soaring ambitions…but very shallow pockets! And life was about to take us on different trajectories…
The founders
Tom Collins had been conscripted and as a ‘nasho’ sent off to serve in the Vietnam War. He returned home to WA with the photography bug and good camera equipment he’d picked up overseas, and with ambitions to be a surf lensman. Tom had the guts to take the plunge and give birth to “Country Surf”, with production of the first edition.
Gavin McCaughey was a good surfer on the Scarborough/Trigg coast and part of the crew making the regular weekend runs Down South. A very self-confident guy, he also had the chutzpa to get out and sell the advertising for the first edition, which was in some ways the hardest job of all.
As a young acoustic guitar-playing copper, Gavin later become known as ‘the singing policeman’ and I think played a key part in setting up the ‘Constable Care’ kids’ safety education program, which is still going strong today.
Gavin also wrote articles in the first two editions of ‘Country Surf’ – like tackling the hot issue of summer crowds at Trigg’s Point in the second edition.
“Most everyone will tell you that surfing at the “Point” is just not worth the hassle,” wrote Gavin.
“Without a doubt, Trigg’s Point must have more surfers per square foot than other location in Australia.”
Fast forward to 2020 and the crowds back then now seem pretty tame. And Gavin did also admit in this piece that week days at Trigg’s, in the early ‘70s, still provided relatively uncrowded sessions with mostly only your mates in the line-up.
A creative takeover
Neither Gavin nor Tom had any real background in media. But me and my former school mates Peter Bevan and (the late) Chuck Morton-Stewart were all working at WA Newspapers – P.B. as a Cadet Press Artist and Chuck and me as Cadet Reporters on the “West Australian” and “Daily News”, respectively.
We were full of bravado, ambition and growing confidence in our abilities to take on the media world.
Or to put it another way – we didn’t really understand how little we actually knew; had nothing much to lose; and so weren’t afraid to have-a-go.
Not sure how it all came to pass but I think Gavin and Tom spoke to P.B. about getting involved to lift the magazine’s standards. Peter pulled Chuck and me in and we started to flex our creative muscles.
The first edition of “Country Surf” which we got involved with (Vol 1. No 2) saw us tiptoeing around the two ‘owners’ Gavin and Tom. So, we weren’t able to impact on the final product as much as we wanted.
Articles by Tom Blaxell and me in the very word-heavy ’71 State titles spread over ten pages refer to “Yallies”. Funny, I can’t now ever remember ever using that term! Just: “Yalls”.
1971 was something of an historical watershed too with the State titles venue being Margaret River Mainbreak. The earlier years had pretty much always seen the event based at Yallingup.
And the times they were a changing with board design too.
Tom Blaxell described the “Open Animals Final” with George Simpson (second) and Rick Lobe (fourth) the only riders on single fins. The other four finalists were all on twin fins: Ian Cairns (first), Murray Smith (third), Phil Taylor (fifth) and Norm Bateman (sixth). A big talking point on the beach had been pre-event favourite Tony Hardy going out in the semis, hampered by a poisoned reef cut on a knee.
“Ian (Cairns) was excelling on his little chisel-back flyer…pulling off some amazing things – really late take offs, straight down to the bottom, bang into a vertical climb, head dip into a thick lip…He almost pulled off a 360,” wrote Tom Blaxell.
New team. New titles. New look.
By the third (“September”) edition our little troika of P.B., Chuck Morton-Stewart and me had pretty much staged a takeover of the whole shebang and sidelined Gavin and Tom from the creative and production stuff.
With the exulted title of “Editor”, my first big move was to change the publication’s title.
The wellspring of the “Country Surf” title back then was Australian surfers aspiring to the ideal of real-earth soul … getting away from the city to live amongst great uncrowded waves in a pristine environment, and live on brown rice, macrobiotic vegetables and fruit, and a whole lotta’ love! Surf movies and magazines at the time showcased our heroes like Nat Young living commune-style on the uncrowded NSW north coast.
For that second edition, I added “West” to the “Country Surf” title. The aim was to highlight the emerging west coast version of getaway-from-the-city surfing life and differentiate the magazine for readers who might pick up copies in the eastern states.
While I handled overall editing such as story order and page placement, and worked with Peter on individual page and double-page spread picture selection and layout, he was really the core driving force for the peak “West Country Surf” edition.
Peter lined up a better printer plus got a deal with one of the big national magazine distribution houses – then the only way to get magazines into the main selling outlets – news agency stores state wide and across the country.
We were coming from training in a newspaper industry where the writing was the key. The journalists made the big content decisions to showcase the stories, supported by the images.
Surf magazines though were really about the pictures, artwork and visual presentation, with the words and text secondary for the readers. And Peter was the leader in that area.
Another former Hale school mate and surfing buddy, Ian Ferguson, was a cadet Press Photographer at WA Newspapers, and a close mate of Peter’s.
‘Fergie’ was able to take his state-of-the-art company Nikon camera and bag of WAN lenses away on weekend surf trips Down South. This included ‘the elephant gun’ – a giant (and very expensive) zoom lens which was perfect for shooting surfing from the shore with a tripod-mount.
He could also use the WAN darkrooms to develop his black-and-white film and make prints – all on the company dime at no cost to us. Perfect!
Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford to shoot with expensive colour film, or to bankroll full four-colour printing. Peter was able to use the ‘duo tone’ process to tint some of the feature shots to give some more visual punch to the monochrome images.
The best of those was a blue-tinted black and white shot captured by Ian Ferguson which is now a classic of power WA surfing from the era featuring Yallingup legend George Simpson in the “West Country Surf” centre spread – this was the double-page money shot for surf magazines, as readers could pull it out to stick on the wall…and this was an absolute ripper. Still awesome nearly half a century later.
Cottesloe surfer Greg Wood, another cadet press snapper at WA Newspapers and later at the Sunday Times, also helped out with a bundle of shots taken in Perth.
Local legend Ric Chan was then fast becoming Perth’s best-known surf photographer and helped us out a lot too.
Peter co-opted fellow Cadet Press Artist at WA Newspapers, Ron Chandler – a non-surfer but talented guy – to help with the huge amount of artwork production for the magazines.
This work relied on top level drawing, illustrating and hand-formatting artboard skills. Back in those pre-computer dark ages, publishing was a laborious and labour intensive process.
Typesetting was by ‘hot metal’. There was a huge vat of molten lead down on the print production floors of Newspaper House – it was steamy, toxic and occasionally a bit dangerous too when air bubbles in the vat could cause mini eruptions of the hot metal to spray out. Yikes!
Every letter of every word was produced in hot lead type by a linotype machine and assembled into columns of formatted text in metal racks. Ink and paper was rolled across the metal type forms to produce a mint print copy. From this ‘bromides’ were made – this involved paper coated in gelatin. This positive type of photo print of the columns of type and headings were stuck onto artwork boards, along with the ads and photos. The printing plates were made from the whole page form.
The number of hot metal typefaces available was pretty limited, and mainly restricted to old-fashioned ‘serif’ fonts, like ‘Times New Roman’ … later ubiquitous as the clunky type in the early versions of Microsoft Word.
If you wanted modern typefaces, there were only two options. Hand draw headings, or to access the crisp and modern ‘sans serif’ typefaces emerging to revolutionise publishing graphics – like ‘Helvetica’ from Scandinavia, or super-cool ‘Pump’ used in the front-page banner title for “Tracks” magazine – source then state-of-the-art Letraset … which was sheets of stickers with individual letters, numbers any symbols for each style of font.
Using Letraset needed a very steady artist’s hand to apply the letters one-at-a-time from the sheets directly onto each page of artwork, which was then pasted up on heavier artboards. Each letter had to be applied perfectly straight on the line with uniform spacing between each letter; and then have uniform spacing between separate words. It was exacting work.
Virtually all the headings in the September edition of “West Country Surf” were hand drawn or using Letraset. Peter and Ron did an amazing job.
Ripping off the company stocks!
Peter, Chuck, Ron and I had a huge advantage to what had occurred previously for the magazine’s first edition.
We used the Press Art Department’s facilities and materials at Newspaper House, in St Georges Terrace for free – because we could! We snaffled the Letraset sheets and other materials from the already paid-for Art Department stockpiles. Cheeky!
We didn’t ask permission. We just waited for the rest of the artists to go home when the day’s edition of “The West Australian” was ‘put to bed’ (to use the industry vernacular) and the giant presses in the basement were ready to roll. We then got to work on our labour of love.
Our presence didn’t raise any eyebrows. It was normal for journos and photographers to be coming and going at all hours in Newspaper House. The security guys never came late at night to check the art department at the Mounts Bay Road bottom end of the dirty and slightly Dickensian ad sprawling multi-level old buildings.
Can’t remember how many nights we took but I do know we worked until about two or three o’clock in the morning; went down the Bernie’s Burgers on Mounts Bay Road (pretty much the only place in WA which opened 24/7 back then) for a feed-up; then home to grab a short kip and shower before fronting back up again at Newspaper House for our real jobs …makes me exhausted now just thinking about it!!
Stable of writers
They now call it ‘content’ but back then it was just reporting…
Chuck and I did most of the writing and pulled in some friends and work colleagues for specialist columns.
Farm and Rocky Point were the go-to spots when onshore winds blew out the Capes west-facing shoreline.
Three Bears and Lefthanders behind South Point were soon to be discovered but in this feature piece, Chuck wrote: “Rocky Point …is probably one of the most inaccessible of all or well-known surf spots in the South-west and yet it is a place that nearly all surfers who visit our south coast have been to.”
That may seem hard to believe now but back then that section of coast was under serious threat from sand miners eager to spread their operations further west from the Capel area. In proto-greenie stuff, Chuck also wrote: “Rocky Point …could eventually be lost …if ilmenite and rutile miners are allowed to mine where they have pegged along that coastal area. Rocky is the centre of one of the areas they want.”
Fortunately, that push was stopped by local opposition.
We co-opted other mates and colleagues to help out providing copy too (for free!):
Advertising tells stories of the times
Peter also lured in a wider pool of advertisers and created most of the design and artwork for the ads – both surf industry and other sectors…here’s a selection of some of them highlighting some elements of the times back then…
Cordingley were the top dog in the local industry back then and Jacko was also riding high. They were both readily supportive of the local magazine.
But it is the non-surfing ads which really throw a spotlight now back onto those times…
Well known Cottesloe surfer Victor Kailis and his entertainment agency were big players. Peter Bevan used to pick up freelance work designing and producing concert posters for Victor and so hooked them in to take some paid ad space in both editions of the magazine.
Victor and his son George – later a hot nationally ranked junior – now run their hospitality empire: Kailis Fishmarket Café at Fremantle, Shorehouse at Swanbourne, and Island Café and Canteen at Trigg. The Kailis’ have sponsored surf comps for many years, including Trigg’s annual King of Da Point and longboard events.
Response and hindsight
We were all pretty stoked with the results with the September edition of “West Country Surf”. And got really good feedback from most of the beach crew.
The production values and quality of the artwork and graphics were top-notch I reckon and stand the test of time pretty well, especially given the lack of technology tools available back then.
But casting an eye across the writing – with 20/20 hindsight – the quality varies from OK to more than a little embarrassing … particularly my own stuff. Surf poetry, WTF!! As Editor. I reserved the right back then not to slash my over-written copy! It was a different time but clearly we still had a lot more to learn about our chosen craft, back in 1971!
In the Editor’s page of the first and final “West Country Surf”, we wrote:
“…we have now expanded to circulate a limited number of copies across the desert to the Sydney scene.
“…To make it possible to give you more time to read and look at, we need subscriptions so that we can feed straight capital back into WCS for you.
“… with your guaranteed subscripted-readership we can get more advertisers and so add more pages of type and shots…
“So we leave it up to you and hope you can help us to make something for you. Read on and we’ll see you next edition around”
….another big promise which would not be kept!
The magazine gig had been an exciting rush but was also a lot bloody harder than we first imagined. And for nil financial reward.
So, the “West Country Surf” dream flickered, fizzled …and flamed out.
Truth be told, we just didn’t have the passion or capacity to make the sacrifices needed to live off small-time publishing in what was then still a niche market.
As John Lennon wrote: “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”.
We were focussing our energies on driving Down South every weekend with our mates and girlfriends … starting to think about travelling overseas to find new wave adventures …or, not too far over the real-world horizon, heading towards stuff like weddings, kids, mortgages etc etc.
But as the 1970s unfolded, some of the smartest and bravest of our surfing mates from that era did begin moving Down South to start to build new working and surfing lives; and create families, homes and communities – in the heartland of the west country surf.
ENDS
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