Scarborough surfer Rod Slater and budding WA artist/sculpture/surfer Mal Leckie travelled to Phillip Island Vic in 1971 in Rod’s FC Holden seeking waves and adventure.
These are Rod and Mal’s memories of that surf trip.
Rod Slater
Sometime in 1971 I bought an FC Holden from Scarborough real estate agent Rory O’Rourke (a friend from North Beach Rugby Club) with the intention of driving to Victoria to meet up with a female friend whom had just shifted over there. The plan was to meet up and travel down to Phillip Island to surf. Somewhere in the planning stage local City Beach/Scarborough/Down South surfer, Mal Leckie decided to come along for the drive, and the waves. We eventually set off and started the long journey in the old Holden across the Nullarbor. To supply the essential music for the journey we had a transistor radio hanging from the quarter window, must have worked okay. Sometime in the first few days, as the sun began to set on the Nullarbor, the FC just stopped and refused to go any further. Mal and I resigned ourselves to waking in the morning and having to hitch the rest of the way. In the morning we gave the ‘old girl’ one try to see if a miracle may occur and it did, it started and never missed a beat from then on.
The trip continued to Cactus where we enjoyed nice waves and a really pleasant stay. We continued the journey to Adelaide. As we drove through Adelaide at night and started the journey down out of the Adelaide hills we were rear ended by a big truck. The driver was apologetic and swore to pay for the damages – never saw nor heard from him again! Luckily the old girl was still mobile. We continued on to Melbourne and then down to the ‘Island’ for some R&R. After our time there, we returned to Perth and I delivered the FC Holden to the City of Stirling tip, removed the plates and left her there.
Towards the end 2021 (50 odd years later) I heard from Mal via Jim King and the Surfing Down South link.
Mal is an artist living near Coolangatta and he said “I’m still keen to send you this old sketch I did of your FC at Cactus 1971. It’s been lying about the studio for ever and has a couple of small paint splatters, but you might get a buzz from it. I think I mentioned it to you once before!”
And in the post arrived this amazing painting of the old FC, with boards on top. There is so much I don’t clearly remember of that trip but this beautiful image certainly stirs up emotions of past surfing trips, memorable waves and surf breaks, comradery only surfers possibly know and that amazing and unique time of life.
Regards
Rod Slater
Unframed painting of Rod’s FC Holden at Cactus by Mal Leckie.Framed painting of Rod’s FC at Cactus by Mal Leckie.
Rod now lives and works in Bunbury WA.
2022 Rod Slater & Jim King catch up Yallingup. Bruce King pic
Mal Leckie
Jim. Glad to hear that you caught up with Rod. The little oil sketch I sent Rod has been lying about in my studios for decades. I thought it would bring more pleasure at Rod’s than in a pile at my place. To anyone else it was pretty meaningless. It was an eventful road trip to say the least. I was 18. The car had an oil pump issue and it could only go 40mph (70k/h). We had a string from the carby to control the throttle…cruise control 😊
Here’s some quick notes I wrote on our Phillip Island Trip 1971.
I met Rod Slater in the Cordingley shop in York St Subiaco where he worked making boards. I was 19 and boards were evolving at a frantic pace, which was great for the surfboard industry as grommets like me were buying a new one every 2 months. I was in there so often I was part of the furniture. Rod was planning a trip across to Phillip Island for the summer as a lot of WA guys did to escape the small wave season at home. Rod was having trouble getting a co-pilot and I think I put my hand up for the job. Rod was a bit older than me and one of the cool guys so I doubt that he invited me.
Rod had a well cared for FC Holden sedan and we set off in that. (I had an FC Holden panel van and was very familiar with them from working in the mechanic’s shed at my uncle’s car yard.). I was confident that if anything went wrong with the car we could handle it.
About Southern Cross something went wrong and we were using too much oil. We struggled on to Coolgardie and replaced the main bearing seal behind the harmonic balancer I think. Then off we went. By Norseman we found that the new seal wasn’t making a difference but Rod wanted to keep going, so we bought a heap of engine oil and headed east. We found that if we didn’t go faster than 40mph (70kph) the engine didn’t use up the oil. And so our slow Nullarbor crossing began.
We often drove well into the night to try and make up ground. We slept on two spring sided canvas stretchers that we put up beside the road. There was still about 250 miles (400k) of badly potholed highway at that stage. Some potholes were huge and full of bull dust so you couldn’t see them. Some had ruined tyres stacked 3 high in them to warn others. Abandoned and smashed cars littered the side of highway. Rod had a medium sized transistor radio with a long pull-out aerial that got amazing reception if we strapped the radio to the quarter window with the aerial outside. Don Maclean’s song American Pie was the big hit of the moment and every radio station in the land was playing it 100 times a day. I still can’t listen to it. The trip dragged on and we ran short on conversation. After Penong, where we stopped in the night for a wind check and then kept going,
Rod decided we should hold a flatulence contest. The rules were that the windows were to stay closed and the first bloke to speak in complaint was the loser. The contest ran for two days until Rod finally gave in and wound down his window in Port Augusta where we had shouted ourselves a night at the movies watching “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”. After that the drive to the island went pretty well except that one night a semi-trailer crashed into the back of the FC while we were going along at 40mph. The truckie had fallen asleep. I was driving and Rod was snoozing. The crash knocked us into a fish-tail, on a wet road, and woke Rod up. As I was wrestling with the steering wheel, correcting and trying to keep us upright, Rod asked is everything ok and went back to sleep. The back of the car was shortened by about a foot and the boot lid didn’t close anymore. I think we roped it down for the rest of the trip. We went into Melbourne next morning and stopped at the Klemm-Bell surfboard factory where Rod knew the crew and we had our first shower since Perth. Then on to Phillip Island.
All up it took us seven days to get to the island.
Take care.
Mal Leckie.
Mal is now a renowned Australian Landscape artist and lives and works in Queensland.
2015 Gold Coast Qsld. Mal & Louise Leckie. Leckie family pic.
Thanks Rod and Mal for sharing your surf trip memories.
Scarborough surfer Rod Slater and budding WA artist/sculpture/surfer Mal Leckie travelled to Phillip Island Vic in 1971 in Rod’s FC Holden seeking waves and adventure.
These are Rod and Mal’s memories of that surf trip.
Rod Slater
Sometime in 1971 I bought an FC Holden from Scarborough real estate agent Rory O’Rourke (a friend from North Beach Rugby Club) with the intention of driving to Victoria to meet up with a female friend whom had just shifted over there. The plan was to meet up and travel down to Phillip Island to surf. Somewhere in the planning stage local City Beach/Scarborough/Down South surfer, Mal Leckie decided to come along for the drive, and the waves. We eventually set off and started the long journey in the old Holden across the Nullarbor. To supply the essential music for the journey we had a transistor radio hanging from the quarter window, must have worked okay. Sometime in the first few days, as the sun began to set on the Nullarbor, the FC just stopped and refused to go any further. Mal and I resigned ourselves to waking in the morning and having to hitch the rest of the way. In the morning we gave the ‘old girl’ one try to see if a miracle may occur and it did, it started and never missed a beat from then on.
The trip continued to Cactus where we enjoyed nice waves and a really pleasant stay. We continued the journey to Adelaide. As we drove through Adelaide at night and started the journey down out of the Adelaide hills we were rear ended by a big truck. The driver was apologetic and swore to pay for the damages – never saw nor heard from him again! Luckily the old girl was still mobile. We continued on to Melbourne and then down to the ‘Island’ for some R&R. After our time there, we returned to Perth and I delivered the FC Holden to the City of Stirling tip, removed the plates and left her there.
Towards the end 2021 (50 odd years later) I heard from Mal via Jim King and the Surfing Down South link.
Mal is an artist living near Coolangatta and he said “I’m still keen to send you this old sketch I did of your FC at Cactus 1971. It’s been lying about the studio for ever and has a couple of small paint splatters, but you might get a buzz from it. I think I mentioned it to you once before!”
And in the post arrived this amazing painting of the old FC, with boards on top. There is so much I don’t clearly remember of that trip but this beautiful image certainly stirs up emotions of past surfing trips, memorable waves and surf breaks, comradery only surfers possibly know and that amazing and unique time of life.
Regards
Rod Slater
Rod now lives and works in Bunbury WA.
Mal Leckie
Jim. Glad to hear that you caught up with Rod. The little oil sketch I sent Rod has been lying about in my studios for decades. I thought it would bring more pleasure at Rod’s than in a pile at my place. To anyone else it was pretty meaningless. It was an eventful road trip to say the least. I was 18. The car had an oil pump issue and it could only go 40mph (70k/h). We had a string from the carby to control the throttle…cruise control 😊
Here’s some quick notes I wrote on our Phillip Island Trip 1971.
I met Rod Slater in the Cordingley shop in York St Subiaco where he worked making boards. I was 19 and boards were evolving at a frantic pace, which was great for the surfboard industry as grommets like me were buying a new one every 2 months. I was in there so often I was part of the furniture. Rod was planning a trip across to Phillip Island for the summer as a lot of WA guys did to escape the small wave season at home. Rod was having trouble getting a co-pilot and I think I put my hand up for the job. Rod was a bit older than me and one of the cool guys so I doubt that he invited me.
Rod had a well cared for FC Holden sedan and we set off in that. (I had an FC Holden panel van and was very familiar with them from working in the mechanic’s shed at my uncle’s car yard.). I was confident that if anything went wrong with the car we could handle it.
About Southern Cross something went wrong and we were using too much oil. We struggled on to Coolgardie and replaced the main bearing seal behind the harmonic balancer I think. Then off we went. By Norseman we found that the new seal wasn’t making a difference but Rod wanted to keep going, so we bought a heap of engine oil and headed east. We found that if we didn’t go faster than 40mph (70kph) the engine didn’t use up the oil. And so our slow Nullarbor crossing began.
We often drove well into the night to try and make up ground. We slept on two spring sided canvas stretchers that we put up beside the road. There was still about 250 miles (400k) of badly potholed highway at that stage. Some potholes were huge and full of bull dust so you couldn’t see them. Some had ruined tyres stacked 3 high in them to warn others. Abandoned and smashed cars littered the side of highway. Rod had a medium sized transistor radio with a long pull-out aerial that got amazing reception if we strapped the radio to the quarter window with the aerial outside. Don Maclean’s song American Pie was the big hit of the moment and every radio station in the land was playing it 100 times a day. I still can’t listen to it. The trip dragged on and we ran short on conversation. After Penong, where we stopped in the night for a wind check and then kept going,
Rod decided we should hold a flatulence contest. The rules were that the windows were to stay closed and the first bloke to speak in complaint was the loser. The contest ran for two days until Rod finally gave in and wound down his window in Port Augusta where we had shouted ourselves a night at the movies watching “The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean”. After that the drive to the island went pretty well except that one night a semi-trailer crashed into the back of the FC while we were going along at 40mph. The truckie had fallen asleep. I was driving and Rod was snoozing. The crash knocked us into a fish-tail, on a wet road, and woke Rod up. As I was wrestling with the steering wheel, correcting and trying to keep us upright, Rod asked is everything ok and went back to sleep. The back of the car was shortened by about a foot and the boot lid didn’t close anymore. I think we roped it down for the rest of the trip. We went into Melbourne next morning and stopped at the Klemm-Bell surfboard factory where Rod knew the crew and we had our first shower since Perth. Then on to Phillip Island.
All up it took us seven days to get to the island.
Take care.![👍]()
Mal Leckie.
Mal is now a renowned Australian Landscape artist and lives and works in Queensland.
Thanks Rod and Mal for sharing your surf trip memories.
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