My generation of surfer was born in the late 1940s began school in the post war fifties when people, were very conservative, parents, teachers still talked about the terrors of the second world war and the deprivation of great depression.
At school children had diseases such as polio. The only Aboriginal children at school were the stolen generation from the north or east of Perth as the Noongar population had been pushed out to become fringe dwellers and not seen in mainstream society.
Post-World War two, European migrants particularly Italians, Greeks and British blended into a social structure that had not changed much in fifty years. Our grandparents were involved with the first world war and our parents the second.
We became teenagers in the nineteen sixties where cultural change affected everybody. New music, fashion, dance and surfing became a fashionable thing to do. Malibu Surfing was a free, unorganised individual sporting experience. It boomed in the early sixties right across Australia arriving from California but also having had deep roots in our surf lifesaving history.
In the sixties surfing was dominated by the east coast, Sydney surf culture and personalities, board building (in the Brookvale industrial area on the north shore) and of course the first World Championships in 1964. The progression of surfing in the West was interesting where my generation was involved, but still developing. In the early to mid-sixties, surfers in the West where generally a long way behind apart from a few such as Terry Jacks who made a point of spending time in Sydney.
For my part I always competed in surfing contests from when I was a young surfer at City Beach in 1963 through to 1970. I was young and involved with surfing competition therefore in a good position to observe the changing face in the West during that period of surfing history.
The change from a popular fad, an extension of surf club activity, when surfers surfed the wave in a single direction in the early part of the decade to the end of the decade when Australian surfers stopped obsessing with entitled eastern states surfers and began to catch up with the rest of Australia.
Surfing from a very conservative and isolated place is what this story is about. Some of the events and people that I came across along the journey and those who participated in that progression through the 1960s.
EARLY INFLUENCES AND MIDGETS MAKAHA VICTORY
In the Summer of 1962, I met Jamie Doig at City Beach. We were twelve or thirteen, the only ones there, sitting, talking, on top of the sand cut away created by the summer water current movement. We talked and surfed on his big red Barry Bennet pig board, wide in the rear with lift in the tail and a big D fin. Heavy was another description of his board. We both bodysurfed City Beach so catching and reading waves was not a problem. The knowledge allowing us to quickly adapt, standing on the board, riding the wave. It was nevertheless, an absolutely different experience from body surfing. Unique, exhilarating and indeed captivating.
Both Jamie and I had spent a few summers at the beach. I was aware of surfboard riding as a minority activity as the beach then was dominated by the clubbies (surf club) who rode waves through the crowd in boats, skis and paddle boards. You rarely saw, or in fact I never saw, until I met Jamie, a person that young with a surfboard, let alone a kid who could ride one, talked surfing and knew surf stories.
In those days there was a road coming in from south City Beach running from the coastal top road down past the groyne and on towards Floreat Beach. The Clubbies boat house at the groyne on the seaside, a tuck shop on the other side of that road with the whole Surf club / change rooms built into the hill. The tea rooms where at the south end of the beach and became the place where eventually teenagers and surfers would hang out, leaving boards under the tearooms. However, for Jamie and me, early on, it was at and around the boathouse.
The road ran all the way past the groyne to a carpark where Jamie’s mother would come and pick us up in her Morris Major. We would lump the board, one at each end and put it on top of the car.
Early City Beach with bottom road and boathouse near the bottom.
Back at Jamie’s house in Floreat we would be looking at early 60s American Surfer Magazines with articles about California and Hawaii. The picture of Paul Gebauer sliding down a Sunset Beach wall. The photo was taken from the water, it didn’t seem real but alerted us to the fact that there were other more adventurous aspects to surfing than our local surf break.
Paul Gebauer Sunset Beach 1961.
The most profound influence on Australian surfing and particular on us at the time was when Bernard “Midget’’ Farrelly won the Makaha Beach International in Hawaii (then the unofficial World Title) in 1962 making him a national sporting hero.
To have a national sporting hero who was a surfer was special, a hero for my generation. A sportsman who was acceptable to everybody who was not a runner, footballer or cricketer but a surfer like us. We had heard of the Makaha contest, the previous year’s winner in 1961 was Rabbit Kekai. I still remember listening to the radio when the announcement of Midgets win came through.
Midget FarrellyMakaha Hawaii 1962.
In 63/64 Jamie Doig and I were age 14 and members of the City Beach Board riders, participating in their competitions inspired by Midget of course, but we were also influenced by some of the older surfers who in 64 were pretty much the best surfers in Western Australia including Terry Jacks, Barry King, Dave Beamish, Zac Kochanowitch to name a few. Jamie and I were the youngest in the club, but more than held our own in the Junior ranks.
A lot of the City Beach surfers, as did I, either went to or had gone to Perth Modern School such as the Mellows, King, Maguire and Kochanowitch brothers. Boz Cummings, Carl Schumacher, Mervin Hart, Brian Boynes Barry King and so on. The surf culture at school had a real electric under current, incredible to observe. Walking along behind some older student who when approaching a corner would drop his knee (school suitcase in hand) and cross leg walk around the bend, not caring who was watching (I think Mick Lindsay originally invented this land-based move).
It was the era of the drop knee turn and the nose ride (with style) to progress as a young surfer you had to master these manoeuvres, they were defining moves you could either do them or you fell behind. Both Barry King and Terry Jacks were absolute masters of these moves.
Jamie rode a yellow Bill Wallace board bought from Big Wes Day at Scarborough. I started with a King Cole (Brian Cole) from Salvado Road in Subiaco. (I met Brian Cole in the mid-sixties, he passed away May 2021, he was a guy who loved surfing and was always engaging. Always interested in what my thoughts were about surfing.
The contrast of boards from the east and the local boards was significant.
My opinion was that the King Cole was a great board, very forgiving, light but they didn’t last long as the foam was not dense enough. Boards would snap easily. As a result, board makers in the west applied plenty of glass usually two layers a 6 and a 9-ounce making them unbreakable, but heavy. With the Sydney/Brookvale boards such as Keyo, Gordon Woods, McDonagh, Wallace, Dale, etc, they were more sophisticated but getting one customer designed from three thousand miles away for our surf was problematic.
As we became competitors at a junior level in the club, we picked up sponsorships with Cordingley Surfboards and we got to know Colin, Rex and Jenny Cordingley.
Each beach had half a dozen juniors whom Jamie and I got to know including Brian Hood, Rod Slater and Rick Syme from Trigg, Bob Williamson, Steve Farbris and Johnny Hooglan from Leighton, Ashley Jones, Don McDonald Mick Bibby, Craig Brent- White and Theo Mathews to name a few from Cottesloe. We didn’t necessarily form generational friendships but there was a bond amidst a fast moving, cultural changing in the 60s that surfing was a part of.
Jamie Doig came from a surfing family with his sister Jenny Shackley becoming State Champion in 1964 and his brother-in-law John Shackley a prominent figure in WA surfing throughout the early and mid-60s. It was John, from Scarborough who told us stories of Down South and Yallingup that scared the living daylights out of us. These stories for real or not, had a lasting impact.
At School the word was all about the first State Championship held at Yallingup 1964 and the announcement at assembly that Leaving Year students Barry King (previously from NSW) and Brian Boynes had come first and second in the Juniors at the recent Yallingup event.
Barry King, Zac Kochanowitsch and Brian Boynes with their Ampol Trophy’s in 1964.
ANECDOTAL REPORT FROM THE 1964 WORLD TITLES AT MANLY BEACH
The Manly World Titles were the biggest thing that happened at the time and the best first-hand report we heard was when we took our first trip to Yallingup.
In early summer 1964 after school had finished, Jamie and I undertook our first trip south with a friend Alex in his 1948 Ford Prefect which had a major oil leak from the sump. (Oil was captured in a Caltex half tin and at certain intervals poured back into the engine). This trip was to be a defining event of my formative years, how I viewed Surfers, Surfing, competition, travel and friends in the 60s.
We came over ‘’the hill’’ at Yallingup about 3pm in the afternoon, it had taken us all day to get that far from Floreat where I remember the look of horror on Jamie’s mothers face as she saw us depart.
Very hot early summer, still offshore when we arrived, and the sight of the surf genuinely took our breath away. I have since come to understand that it is not, just the geographical, geological layout of the coast at Yallingup that engenders that euphoric awareness but also an ethnographical anthropological presence in particular. The freshwater creek where it meets the sea, where for thousands of years Aboriginal people have fished, lived and told stories all adds to the breathlessness.
Enter Ken “Kiwi” White and Rodney “Box” Waldeck
Funnily enough there was a guy out surfing Yallingup that afternoon. We had hardly seen a sole since Busselton. His name was “Kiwi “White who with his friend “Box” Waldeck were travellers from South Australia staying and working around Yallingup.
The Caves house publican and the Yallingup Board club had given Box and Kiwi permission to stay in the Yallingup club shack, being the only other surfers around they invited us to reside for our stay. The impression on us was profound, both young men about twenty, travellers who had been to the 64 World and Australian Titles at Manly in Sydney filling us with stories of surf, competition, girls, character’s and what was current in the surfing world. They seem to have met or partied with everyone.
They talked about South Australian Surf Culture, Cactus, York’s Peninsular and Seaford. Of fishing in Port Lincoln, travel and the similarities of the two states. They worked different jobs fished for tuna and basically lived the life.
Box and Kiwi also became friendly with the wider surfing community, guys we knew who surfed down south such as Mick Lindsay, Geoff Berry and the Cottesloe young crew including Fred Lochowicz and Craig Brent-White.
Eventually after working in Perth, they went their separate ways “Kiwi” with Mick Lindsay to South Africa and onwards, “Box” back to SA to study Geology with Fred Lochowicz catching a lift.
Sadly, Kiwi passed away a few years ago and Box recently passed away.
YALLINGUP BOARD CLUB 1964/66
Club Photo Undefeated Champions 1964/66
In 1965 I started heading down south on weekends with a mixture of City Beach and Yallingup Club crew. Riding for Cordingley Surfboards and with the likes of Brian Boynes, Jeff Berry and Mark Waddell. I was soon poached to join the Junior ranks of the Yallingup Club who were the dominant competitive interclub force of 1964/66 years. Led by leading board maker Colin Cordingley, Bill Oddy and Terry James. The classic photo of Cords holding the interclub trophy taken at the Orloff studio in Fremantle and reflects the club’s competitive dominance (the original photo sits in the Yallingup Hotel today). Results were finalised after a four-club exchange (Dolphins, North End, City Beach and Yallingup) where each club competed with a selection of open, a couple of Juniors and a female participant. Karl and I surfed for the Juniors and Terry James of Yallingup Board Riders was the outstanding surfer of the day.
1966 Terry James surfing to victory at Scarborough
Most of the Yallingup Club crew like Terry James were either Cottesloe or Mosman Park (Cordingley) surfers so there was a strong connection and sometime rivalry between the Cottesloe and Yallingup Clubs.
Victor Kallis a formidable surfer and incredible leader/personality of the times led the Cottesloe Club. Generally, crew got on and to demonstrate this is a photo taken outside the Yallingup shack in 65 with a mixture of Cottesloe/City/Yallingup surfers after a surf and in good spirit.
In 1965 I received my first injury when surfing with Brian Boynes and Zac at Margaret River in the Spring. The surf had a bit of size and a bit of wind. With the wind offshore, the old boards used to spin into the air and come down spearing you if unlucky. Mine speared me into the ribs cracking those over the heart and tearing the heart tissue. The feeling of only being able to breath out was not a good memory. It was also the year I saw big Margaret River in perfect condition all the older crew including Murray Smith, Geoff Culmsey and Tony Harbison taking it on.
STATE TITLES AND HEADING TO SYDNEY 1966
The WA 66 titles were won by Murray Smith in the open and I came a close second to Carl Shumaker in the Juniors. Carl was also from the Yallingup Club. Ampol Petroleum was the main sponsor Australia wide for amateur surfing at the time. I still have my Ampol trophy (somewhere).
My days at school were done and in early 66, Brian Boynes and I began to prepare for a trip to Sydney, Brian had gone the year before with Mervyn Hart and surfed Cactus, Sydney and the Central coast of NSW. There was always a house full of Western Australian surfers in Sydney, guys such as that Jim Breadsell, Butch Williamson, Jim McFarlane, Greg Laurenson from Scarborough and others were there in Manly.
In 1966 to fund our trip Brian and I worked on the Muja Power Station doing the concrete pours, working for the Bunbury Council and on a local Farm at Eagle Bay, whilst living and surfing from the Yallingup shack. Murray Smith was the only other surfer at Yallingup and being twenty-one years old Murray worked in the bar pouring beer at Caves House.
We set off in late Autumn, surfing Cactus on the way over (just us and the sharks) we knew if we got stuck which usually meant car troubles, we could stay at Moana Beach near Adelaide and recoup with Fred “Fred legs” Lochowicz (Legs for short). Fred worked and had a house at Moana Beach Third Avenue. Inevitably cars broke down across a gravel Nullarbor which then went from near Norseman to Ceduna and that’s what happened we broke down in Ceduna.
People often ask me why we went to Adelaide because there isn’t any surf there.
This is true, Sydney was always our destination but because of people such as Fred who basically had an open house for all surfers, we were able to rest up for a while. Legs was much loved by all crew. He and Malcolm Loch from Moana helped Western Australians and South Australians of the time form a bond. Fred’s house in Moana Beach on the weekend would have thirty people staying so at night it was a carpet of bodies. Guys from different clubs and subgroups, it’s a bit hard to explain but it was quite something. Legs has a generosity of spirit which continues to this day.
Fred not only generous but Cool.
Surfing in South Australia (SA) was at a similar stage to the West but being close to Sydney the access to boards from the Brookvale Board factories meant they had better equipment, only the lack of surf held them back. They had an older generation of surfers and bigger wave surfers who’d be off to York’s Peninsular each weekend.
I surfed with all the younger surfers of my age group in SA, and we were all about the progress in surfing. SA young surfers were as well, able to get to the East Coast easier. Most had done trips to Queensland and Torquay; they saw these trips as a way to keep abreast of what was going on and compensate for their lack of surf. Whether basically because of our age and common goals it was interesting to observe the individual different approaches to their surfing, some with natural talent and those who pushed themselves hard and took it very seriously.
I did surf in a contest at Middleton Beach SA to select a team to surf against Victoria down at Portland. I think I made the team but can’t remember going down there.
SYDNEY SURFING IN WINTER 1966
Arriving in Manly we first stayed with Barry King up on the Manly headland then moved to the Queenscliff headland where we basically stayed the winter, surfing and working for the Water Board to start with. When we first arrived, places like the Queenscliff left and North Narrabeen still had great late Autumn banks, then the big southerly busting early winter storms smashed those banks and winter ones formed such as the North Steyne right.
Surfing in Sydney was at the fore front of change. Nose riding as a pure form and the drop knee turn were on their way out. Nat Young was about to become Australia’s second World champion using a more aggressive approach to rail turning, trim and cutting back the approach which paved the way for lighter and eventually shorter boards.
The beauty of the Manly to Queenscliff area was that on any given day especially during the week you could see someone like Ted Spencer slicing his way through the Manly shore break, Glen Richie riding backside at Queenscliff, Midget Farrelly or Robbie Lane at Fairy Bower, John Fleck when the swell came up at North Steyne. Like most good coastlines everything changed daily.
The average Sydney surfer was limited by their commitment to one local break which is a point of difference between them and us as when the surf wasn’t good out front, we would go somewhere else. Right, left, big or small we surfed everywhere.
We had a guy from Cronulla staying near us and a couple of times when the swell was up taking us over Cronulla way surfing the Point. He introduced us to Bobby Brown when we were checking the surf at Wanda Beach.
WORKING IN THE DESERT AND SURFING OUR WAY BACK SOUTH THEN WEST
We found work, through Julian Mazetti from Whale Beach, looking for oil in a Seismic crew in Western Queensland (Desert Country). In early Spring we travelled up through Burke in NSW and Quilpie in western Queensland. From memory our camp was a couple of hundred miles west of Quilpie vastly different but beautiful remote grazing country, then desert. It even rained whilst we were out there with all the inland rivers filling up.
There were a few Sydney surfers on site that we were friendly with, the young foreman was also from the West, so it was very friendly. The explorers, Canadian company Ray Geophysics, fed us like kings but we worked hard in the hot sun. Apart from getting lost and nearly dying of thirst, they were good times.
We used to come from the desert into Quilpie every couple of weeks for a bit of R+R. When in Quilpie a telegram arrived from Al Boag telling us of the tragic Car/Train collision at Victor Harbour killing five young South Australian surfers Chris Toms, Greg Rodda, John Martin, Michael Laver and John Reardon.
It is difficult to explain how devastated we were, but felt it was time to pack our bags and make our way back to the Gold Coast and surf our way back to Moana in South Australia then home to WA.
From the Gold Coast we travelled up to Double Island Point, to Noosa then Caloundra where the VW Kombi blew up. A Western Australia woman whose husband owned the service station helped us purchase (we all chipped in, but Brian became the eventual owner) a 1951 Black Ford Customline. We surfed around Kings Beach whilst all this was going on with the only other surfer there mid-week was Bob McTavish in his Chevy.
Vance Cox on the Ford after a trip to York’s Peninsular South Australia.
We surfed all the beaches heading south from Byron to Lennox, avoiding greater Sydney then stopping at Sandon Point then Ulladulla and Mollymook before travelling overland to Torquay and back via the great Ocean Road.
After Surfing at Sandon Point South of Sydney and being a Saturday, we tidied up in our recently washed American Levi’s, (you could buy them in Kings Cross for five pounds, in the day) headed off to the local Town Hall dance. The thing was, there was these two girls with whom no one was dancing, not knowing the lay of the land and with a wink and a nod we made our approach dancing away for the next hour or so. The girls also surfed and lived near Sandon Point, they invited us to stay and informed us that the reason locals did not invite them to dance was because they are scared of the overprotective elder brother which started to make us feel a bit uncomfortable.
As we moved out of the hall with the girls and into the street, the brother’s crew approaching the older of the two girls gave them an almighty spray full of Woolongongisms that only they would understand. Needless to say, we were allowed to pass and survived another Saturday night out.
We stopped at Lorne Victoria as we travelled and were lucky to see Wayne Lynch as a 14/15-year-old surfing out front going right towards the point in the shore break. At that age, in a small wave and with a fairly large board he was still burying his rail in a committed way.
TUNA-RAMA SURFING CONTEST PORT LINCOLN
Back in Adelaide SA surfing had, had the guts ripped out of it by the death of its surfing youth. It had a massive media coverage.
We caught up with what had happened, the bizarre set of circumstance leading to the tragedy, how it affected individuals, everyone had a close and intimate story to tell.
Craig Brent-White’s story was that he and five South Australian surfers went to Victoria for the October Long Weekend. They came back early because the surf was no good. Then on the Monday holiday, they headed to Middleton Beach for a surf. Craig went in a separate car and joined them later that morning. He returned to Moana and received a visit from the Police advising of him of the accident and requesting assistance with the identifications. Two of the deceased were flat mates of Craig’s. Craig, Gary Ellis, Greg Habib and Michelle & Al Boag went with the Police to the morgue. Only Craig and Al were old enough to participate in the identification.
Brian and I worked at the Port Stanvac Refinery ‘’shut down” on the night shift. We did a trip to York’s Peninsula when the work was done.
The Tuna- Rama Festival at Port Lincoln was a pressure release for the whole South Australian surfing community after the tragedy earlier in the year. Organisers put on an interclub surfing contest, paid petrol and food money to attend. The WA crew that surfed in the competition were in the Sand n Sea Club. Each club had a wagon or bus in the parade with Brian driving the Black Custom line six boards atop.
From Port Lincoln we travelled to Cactus together with Peter “Moose “Baker and on to Yallingup to finalise that trip and 1966.
DISCLAIMER
The times dates and surfing events are for the most part correct with the stories around those events subject to 50 and 60 year old memories. So, nothing within these writings is meant to offend anyone who is included or in fact offend anyone not included. I have made a point of not including a lot of people because there are so many.
For the main it is a collection of my thoughts of a period of time and would not want any part of it included in other documents.
It is not intended that that anything written about, be used to initiate further conversation about matters discussed
Acknowledgements – Photos
City Beach bottom road with boat shed Brian Cole
Midget Farrelly Ron Church
Paul Gebauer John Severson
Barry King, Zac, Brian Boynes Ernie Potter
Yallingup Board Club 1965 A Orloff Studio Fremantle
Terry James Colin Cordingley
Group Photo Yallingup Sonny James
Fred Legs 3 Avenue SA. Al Boag
Vance Cox sitting on the Ford SA. Al Boag
Coming next week 1962-70 Surfing A long Way from Anywhere by Peter Bothwell. Part 2. 1967-70
INTRODUCTION
My generation of surfer was born in the late 1940s began school in the post war fifties when people, were very conservative, parents, teachers still talked about the terrors of the second world war and the deprivation of great depression.
At school children had diseases such as polio. The only Aboriginal children at school were the stolen generation from the north or east of Perth as the Noongar population had been pushed out to become fringe dwellers and not seen in mainstream society.
Post-World War two, European migrants particularly Italians, Greeks and British blended into a social structure that had not changed much in fifty years. Our grandparents were involved with the first world war and our parents the second.
We became teenagers in the nineteen sixties where cultural change affected everybody. New music, fashion, dance and surfing became a fashionable thing to do. Malibu Surfing was a free, unorganised individual sporting experience. It boomed in the early sixties right across Australia arriving from California but also having had deep roots in our surf lifesaving history.
In the sixties surfing was dominated by the east coast, Sydney surf culture and personalities, board building (in the Brookvale industrial area on the north shore) and of course the first World Championships in 1964. The progression of surfing in the West was interesting where my generation was involved, but still developing. In the early to mid-sixties, surfers in the West where generally a long way behind apart from a few such as Terry Jacks who made a point of spending time in Sydney.
For my part I always competed in surfing contests from when I was a young surfer at City Beach in 1963 through to 1970. I was young and involved with surfing competition therefore in a good position to observe the changing face in the West during that period of surfing history.
The change from a popular fad, an extension of surf club activity, when surfers surfed the wave in a single direction in the early part of the decade to the end of the decade when Australian surfers stopped obsessing with entitled eastern states surfers and began to catch up with the rest of Australia.
Surfing from a very conservative and isolated place is what this story is about. Some of the events and people that I came across along the journey and those who participated in that progression through the 1960s.
EARLY INFLUENCES AND MIDGETS MAKAHA VICTORY
In the Summer of 1962, I met Jamie Doig at City Beach. We were twelve or thirteen, the only ones there, sitting, talking, on top of the sand cut away created by the summer water current movement. We talked and surfed on his big red Barry Bennet pig board, wide in the rear with lift in the tail and a big D fin. Heavy was another description of his board. We both bodysurfed City Beach so catching and reading waves was not a problem. The knowledge allowing us to quickly adapt, standing on the board, riding the wave. It was nevertheless, an absolutely different experience from body surfing. Unique, exhilarating and indeed captivating.
Both Jamie and I had spent a few summers at the beach. I was aware of surfboard riding as a minority activity as the beach then was dominated by the clubbies (surf club) who rode waves through the crowd in boats, skis and paddle boards. You rarely saw, or in fact I never saw, until I met Jamie, a person that young with a surfboard, let alone a kid who could ride one, talked surfing and knew surf stories.
In those days there was a road coming in from south City Beach running from the coastal top road down past the groyne and on towards Floreat Beach. The Clubbies boat house at the groyne on the seaside, a tuck shop on the other side of that road with the whole Surf club / change rooms built into the hill. The tea rooms where at the south end of the beach and became the place where eventually teenagers and surfers would hang out, leaving boards under the tearooms. However, for Jamie and me, early on, it was at and around the boathouse.
The road ran all the way past the groyne to a carpark where Jamie’s mother would come and pick us up in her Morris Major. We would lump the board, one at each end and put it on top of the car.
Back at Jamie’s house in Floreat we would be looking at early 60s American Surfer Magazines with articles about California and Hawaii. The picture of Paul Gebauer sliding down a Sunset Beach wall. The photo was taken from the water, it didn’t seem real but alerted us to the fact that there were other more adventurous aspects to surfing than our local surf break.
The most profound influence on Australian surfing and particular on us at the time was when Bernard “Midget’’ Farrelly won the Makaha Beach International in Hawaii (then the unofficial World Title) in 1962 making him a national sporting hero.
To have a national sporting hero who was a surfer was special, a hero for my generation. A sportsman who was acceptable to everybody who was not a runner, footballer or cricketer but a surfer like us. We had heard of the Makaha contest, the previous year’s winner in 1961 was Rabbit Kekai. I still remember listening to the radio when the announcement of Midgets win came through.
In 63/64 Jamie Doig and I were age 14 and members of the City Beach Board riders, participating in their competitions inspired by Midget of course, but we were also influenced by some of the older surfers who in 64 were pretty much the best surfers in Western Australia including Terry Jacks, Barry King, Dave Beamish, Zac Kochanowitch to name a few. Jamie and I were the youngest in the club, but more than held our own in the Junior ranks.
A lot of the City Beach surfers, as did I, either went to or had gone to Perth Modern School such as the Mellows, King, Maguire and Kochanowitch brothers. Boz Cummings, Carl Schumacher, Mervin Hart, Brian Boynes Barry King and so on. The surf culture at school had a real electric under current, incredible to observe. Walking along behind some older student who when approaching a corner would drop his knee (school suitcase in hand) and cross leg walk around the bend, not caring who was watching (I think Mick Lindsay originally invented this land-based move).
It was the era of the drop knee turn and the nose ride (with style) to progress as a young surfer you had to master these manoeuvres, they were defining moves you could either do them or you fell behind. Both Barry King and Terry Jacks were absolute masters of these moves.
Jamie rode a yellow Bill Wallace board bought from Big Wes Day at Scarborough. I started with a King Cole (Brian Cole) from Salvado Road in Subiaco. (I met Brian Cole in the mid-sixties, he passed away May 2021, he was a guy who loved surfing and was always engaging. Always interested in what my thoughts were about surfing.
The contrast of boards from the east and the local boards was significant.
My opinion was that the King Cole was a great board, very forgiving, light but they didn’t last long as the foam was not dense enough. Boards would snap easily. As a result, board makers in the west applied plenty of glass usually two layers a 6 and a 9-ounce making them unbreakable, but heavy. With the Sydney/Brookvale boards such as Keyo, Gordon Woods, McDonagh, Wallace, Dale, etc, they were more sophisticated but getting one customer designed from three thousand miles away for our surf was problematic.
As we became competitors at a junior level in the club, we picked up sponsorships with Cordingley Surfboards and we got to know Colin, Rex and Jenny Cordingley.
Each beach had half a dozen juniors whom Jamie and I got to know including Brian Hood, Rod Slater and Rick Syme from Trigg, Bob Williamson, Steve Farbris and Johnny Hooglan from Leighton, Ashley Jones, Don McDonald Mick Bibby, Craig Brent- White and Theo Mathews to name a few from Cottesloe. We didn’t necessarily form generational friendships but there was a bond amidst a fast moving, cultural changing in the 60s that surfing was a part of.
Jamie Doig came from a surfing family with his sister Jenny Shackley becoming State Champion in 1964 and his brother-in-law John Shackley a prominent figure in WA surfing throughout the early and mid-60s. It was John, from Scarborough who told us stories of Down South and Yallingup that scared the living daylights out of us. These stories for real or not, had a lasting impact.
At School the word was all about the first State Championship held at Yallingup 1964 and the announcement at assembly that Leaving Year students Barry King (previously from NSW) and Brian Boynes had come first and second in the Juniors at the recent Yallingup event.
ANECDOTAL REPORT FROM THE 1964 WORLD TITLES AT MANLY BEACH
The Manly World Titles were the biggest thing that happened at the time and the best first-hand report we heard was when we took our first trip to Yallingup.
In early summer 1964 after school had finished, Jamie and I undertook our first trip south with a friend Alex in his 1948 Ford Prefect which had a major oil leak from the sump. (Oil was captured in a Caltex half tin and at certain intervals poured back into the engine). This trip was to be a defining event of my formative years, how I viewed Surfers, Surfing, competition, travel and friends in the 60s.
We came over ‘’the hill’’ at Yallingup about 3pm in the afternoon, it had taken us all day to get that far from Floreat where I remember the look of horror on Jamie’s mothers face as she saw us depart.
Very hot early summer, still offshore when we arrived, and the sight of the surf genuinely took our breath away. I have since come to understand that it is not, just the geographical, geological layout of the coast at Yallingup that engenders that euphoric awareness but also an ethnographical anthropological presence in particular. The freshwater creek where it meets the sea, where for thousands of years Aboriginal people have fished, lived and told stories all adds to the breathlessness.
Enter Ken “Kiwi” White and Rodney “Box” Waldeck
Funnily enough there was a guy out surfing Yallingup that afternoon. We had hardly seen a sole since Busselton. His name was “Kiwi “White who with his friend “Box” Waldeck were travellers from South Australia staying and working around Yallingup.
The Caves house publican and the Yallingup Board club had given Box and Kiwi permission to stay in the Yallingup club shack, being the only other surfers around they invited us to reside for our stay. The impression on us was profound, both young men about twenty, travellers who had been to the 64 World and Australian Titles at Manly in Sydney filling us with stories of surf, competition, girls, character’s and what was current in the surfing world. They seem to have met or partied with everyone.
They talked about South Australian Surf Culture, Cactus, York’s Peninsular and Seaford. Of fishing in Port Lincoln, travel and the similarities of the two states. They worked different jobs fished for tuna and basically lived the life.
Box and Kiwi also became friendly with the wider surfing community, guys we knew who surfed down south such as Mick Lindsay, Geoff Berry and the Cottesloe young crew including Fred Lochowicz and Craig Brent-White.
Eventually after working in Perth, they went their separate ways “Kiwi” with Mick Lindsay to South Africa and onwards, “Box” back to SA to study Geology with Fred Lochowicz catching a lift.
Sadly, Kiwi passed away a few years ago and Box recently passed away.
YALLINGUP BOARD CLUB 1964/66
In 1965 I started heading down south on weekends with a mixture of City Beach and Yallingup Club crew. Riding for Cordingley Surfboards and with the likes of Brian Boynes, Jeff Berry and Mark Waddell. I was soon poached to join the Junior ranks of the Yallingup Club who were the dominant competitive interclub force of 1964/66 years. Led by leading board maker Colin Cordingley, Bill Oddy and Terry James. The classic photo of Cords holding the interclub trophy taken at the Orloff studio in Fremantle and reflects the club’s competitive dominance (the original photo sits in the Yallingup Hotel today). Results were finalised after a four-club exchange (Dolphins, North End, City Beach and Yallingup) where each club competed with a selection of open, a couple of Juniors and a female participant. Karl and I surfed for the Juniors and Terry James of Yallingup Board Riders was the outstanding surfer of the day.
Most of the Yallingup Club crew like Terry James were either Cottesloe or Mosman Park (Cordingley) surfers so there was a strong connection and sometime rivalry between the Cottesloe and Yallingup Clubs.
Victor Kallis a formidable surfer and incredible leader/personality of the times led the Cottesloe Club. Generally, crew got on and to demonstrate this is a photo taken outside the Yallingup shack in 65 with a mixture of Cottesloe/City/Yallingup surfers after a surf and in good spirit.
In 1965 I received my first injury when surfing with Brian Boynes and Zac at Margaret River in the Spring. The surf had a bit of size and a bit of wind. With the wind offshore, the old boards used to spin into the air and come down spearing you if unlucky. Mine speared me into the ribs cracking those over the heart and tearing the heart tissue. The feeling of only being able to breath out was not a good memory. It was also the year I saw big Margaret River in perfect condition all the older crew including Murray Smith, Geoff Culmsey and Tony Harbison taking it on.
STATE TITLES AND HEADING TO SYDNEY 1966
The WA 66 titles were won by Murray Smith in the open and I came a close second to Carl Shumaker in the Juniors. Carl was also from the Yallingup Club. Ampol Petroleum was the main sponsor Australia wide for amateur surfing at the time. I still have my Ampol trophy (somewhere).
My days at school were done and in early 66, Brian Boynes and I began to prepare for a trip to Sydney, Brian had gone the year before with Mervyn Hart and surfed Cactus, Sydney and the Central coast of NSW. There was always a house full of Western Australian surfers in Sydney, guys such as that Jim Breadsell, Butch Williamson, Jim McFarlane, Greg Laurenson from Scarborough and others were there in Manly.
In 1966 to fund our trip Brian and I worked on the Muja Power Station doing the concrete pours, working for the Bunbury Council and on a local Farm at Eagle Bay, whilst living and surfing from the Yallingup shack. Murray Smith was the only other surfer at Yallingup and being twenty-one years old Murray worked in the bar pouring beer at Caves House.
We set off in late Autumn, surfing Cactus on the way over (just us and the sharks) we knew if we got stuck which usually meant car troubles, we could stay at Moana Beach near Adelaide and recoup with Fred “Fred legs” Lochowicz (Legs for short). Fred worked and had a house at Moana Beach Third Avenue. Inevitably cars broke down across a gravel Nullarbor which then went from near Norseman to Ceduna and that’s what happened we broke down in Ceduna.
People often ask me why we went to Adelaide because there isn’t any surf there.
This is true, Sydney was always our destination but because of people such as Fred who basically had an open house for all surfers, we were able to rest up for a while. Legs was much loved by all crew. He and Malcolm Loch from Moana helped Western Australians and South Australians of the time form a bond. Fred’s house in Moana Beach on the weekend would have thirty people staying so at night it was a carpet of bodies. Guys from different clubs and subgroups, it’s a bit hard to explain but it was quite something. Legs has a generosity of spirit which continues to this day.
Surfing in South Australia (SA) was at a similar stage to the West but being close to Sydney the access to boards from the Brookvale Board factories meant they had better equipment, only the lack of surf held them back. They had an older generation of surfers and bigger wave surfers who’d be off to York’s Peninsular each weekend.
I surfed with all the younger surfers of my age group in SA, and we were all about the progress in surfing. SA young surfers were as well, able to get to the East Coast easier. Most had done trips to Queensland and Torquay; they saw these trips as a way to keep abreast of what was going on and compensate for their lack of surf. Whether basically because of our age and common goals it was interesting to observe the individual different approaches to their surfing, some with natural talent and those who pushed themselves hard and took it very seriously.
I did surf in a contest at Middleton Beach SA to select a team to surf against Victoria down at Portland. I think I made the team but can’t remember going down there.
SYDNEY SURFING IN WINTER 1966
Arriving in Manly we first stayed with Barry King up on the Manly headland then moved to the Queenscliff headland where we basically stayed the winter, surfing and working for the Water Board to start with. When we first arrived, places like the Queenscliff left and North Narrabeen still had great late Autumn banks, then the big southerly busting early winter storms smashed those banks and winter ones formed such as the North Steyne right.
Surfing in Sydney was at the fore front of change. Nose riding as a pure form and the drop knee turn were on their way out. Nat Young was about to become Australia’s second World champion using a more aggressive approach to rail turning, trim and cutting back the approach which paved the way for lighter and eventually shorter boards.
The beauty of the Manly to Queenscliff area was that on any given day especially during the week you could see someone like Ted Spencer slicing his way through the Manly shore break, Glen Richie riding backside at Queenscliff, Midget Farrelly or Robbie Lane at Fairy Bower, John Fleck when the swell came up at North Steyne. Like most good coastlines everything changed daily.
The average Sydney surfer was limited by their commitment to one local break which is a point of difference between them and us as when the surf wasn’t good out front, we would go somewhere else. Right, left, big or small we surfed everywhere.
We had a guy from Cronulla staying near us and a couple of times when the swell was up taking us over Cronulla way surfing the Point. He introduced us to Bobby Brown when we were checking the surf at Wanda Beach.
WORKING IN THE DESERT AND SURFING OUR WAY BACK SOUTH THEN WEST
We found work, through Julian Mazetti from Whale Beach, looking for oil in a Seismic crew in Western Queensland (Desert Country). In early Spring we travelled up through Burke in NSW and Quilpie in western Queensland. From memory our camp was a couple of hundred miles west of Quilpie vastly different but beautiful remote grazing country, then desert. It even rained whilst we were out there with all the inland rivers filling up.
There were a few Sydney surfers on site that we were friendly with, the young foreman was also from the West, so it was very friendly. The explorers, Canadian company Ray Geophysics, fed us like kings but we worked hard in the hot sun. Apart from getting lost and nearly dying of thirst, they were good times.
We used to come from the desert into Quilpie every couple of weeks for a bit of R+R. When in Quilpie a telegram arrived from Al Boag telling us of the tragic Car/Train collision at Victor Harbour killing five young South Australian surfers Chris Toms, Greg Rodda, John Martin, Michael Laver and John Reardon.
It is difficult to explain how devastated we were, but felt it was time to pack our bags and make our way back to the Gold Coast and surf our way back to Moana in South Australia then home to WA.
From the Gold Coast we travelled up to Double Island Point, to Noosa then Caloundra where the VW Kombi blew up. A Western Australia woman whose husband owned the service station helped us purchase (we all chipped in, but Brian became the eventual owner) a 1951 Black Ford Customline. We surfed around Kings Beach whilst all this was going on with the only other surfer there mid-week was Bob McTavish in his Chevy.
We surfed all the beaches heading south from Byron to Lennox, avoiding greater Sydney then stopping at Sandon Point then Ulladulla and Mollymook before travelling overland to Torquay and back via the great Ocean Road.
After Surfing at Sandon Point South of Sydney and being a Saturday, we tidied up in our recently washed American Levi’s, (you could buy them in Kings Cross for five pounds, in the day) headed off to the local Town Hall dance. The thing was, there was these two girls with whom no one was dancing, not knowing the lay of the land and with a wink and a nod we made our approach dancing away for the next hour or so. The girls also surfed and lived near Sandon Point, they invited us to stay and informed us that the reason locals did not invite them to dance was because they are scared of the overprotective elder brother which started to make us feel a bit uncomfortable.
As we moved out of the hall with the girls and into the street, the brother’s crew approaching the older of the two girls gave them an almighty spray full of Woolongongisms that only they would understand. Needless to say, we were allowed to pass and survived another Saturday night out.
We stopped at Lorne Victoria as we travelled and were lucky to see Wayne Lynch as a 14/15-year-old surfing out front going right towards the point in the shore break. At that age, in a small wave and with a fairly large board he was still burying his rail in a committed way.
TUNA-RAMA SURFING CONTEST PORT LINCOLN
Back in Adelaide SA surfing had, had the guts ripped out of it by the death of its surfing youth. It had a massive media coverage.
We caught up with what had happened, the bizarre set of circumstance leading to the tragedy, how it affected individuals, everyone had a close and intimate story to tell.
Craig Brent-White’s story was that he and five South Australian surfers went to Victoria for the October Long Weekend. They came back early because the surf was no good. Then on the Monday holiday, they headed to Middleton Beach for a surf. Craig went in a separate car and joined them later that morning. He returned to Moana and received a visit from the Police advising of him of the accident and requesting assistance with the identifications. Two of the deceased were flat mates of Craig’s. Craig, Gary Ellis, Greg Habib and Michelle & Al Boag went with the Police to the morgue. Only Craig and Al were old enough to participate in the identification.
Brian and I worked at the Port Stanvac Refinery ‘’shut down” on the night shift. We did a trip to York’s Peninsula when the work was done.
The Tuna- Rama Festival at Port Lincoln was a pressure release for the whole South Australian surfing community after the tragedy earlier in the year. Organisers put on an interclub surfing contest, paid petrol and food money to attend. The WA crew that surfed in the competition were in the Sand n Sea Club. Each club had a wagon or bus in the parade with Brian driving the Black Custom line six boards atop.
From Port Lincoln we travelled to Cactus together with Peter “Moose “Baker and on to Yallingup to finalise that trip and 1966.
DISCLAIMER
Acknowledgements – Photos
City Beach bottom road with boat shed Brian Cole
Midget Farrelly Ron Church
Paul Gebauer John Severson
Barry King, Zac, Brian Boynes Ernie Potter
Yallingup Board Club 1965 A Orloff Studio Fremantle
Terry James Colin Cordingley
Group Photo Yallingup Sonny James
Fred Legs 3 Avenue SA. Al Boag
Vance Cox sitting on the Ford SA. Al Boag
Coming next week 1962-70 Surfing A long Way from Anywhere by Peter Bothwell. Part 2. 1967-70
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