After more than half a century at the forefront of Noosa beach and business, new retirees Ian and Mary-Jo Young reflect on the halcyon days. By PHIL JARRATT
It’s the classic Noosa love story, with maybe a dash of surfer/clubbie rivalry and just a hint of Baywatch.
More than half a century since it began, surf life saving veteran and businessman Ian Young says: “The truth is that Mary-Jo saw me on the beach in front of the surf club in my budgie smugglers and my red and yellow cap and couldn’t resist.”
He roars with an infectious laugh that Noosa Surf Club stalwarts will know well from their life member, life governor and chairman of the supporters club for the past 20 years.
Youngie is a bloke who gets things done, and one of the best things he got done early in the piece was to win the heart of Mary-Jo.
This month they called a halt to their commercial activities after more than 40 years of hard work running successful businesses selling everything from cakes to carpets, making time to serve the community as they went.
Mary-Jo, originally from Santa Barbara, California, arrived in Noosa in 1971 with her then-partner, surfboard designer and glasser Peter Moschogianis, on the first leg of a world trip with other Santa Barbara surfers.
Although they mixed with the leading lights of the surfing world at that time, including Bob McTavish and Kevin Platt, Mary-Jo says she was most definitely not a “surf chick”. “Maybe a bit of a hippy,” she allows, “but I’d been a hairdresser, often made up with my hair styled – so definitely not part of the scene.”
She gave birth to their first child at the old Cooroy hospital, but then they moved on to Europe, basing themselves in Biarritz with the French surfing community.
Finally they returned to California, sold up and emigrated to Noosa, where a second child was born at Cooroy. But the relationship with Peter didn’t last, and Mary-Jo found herself a single mum in a frontier town.
She recalls: “Coming from Santa Barbara, I thought Noosa was a bit primitive, but oh so beautiful. I wanted to make it my home, and then I met Ian.”
Ah, the fateful day at Main Beach.
A diesel fitter from Brisbane, Ian Young had spent time in Noosa but in 1972 he decided to follow his sister and her family here and make it his home.
He had soon met surf club president Keith King, got his bronze, started doing patrols and in short time was dazzling and dating the pretty gal with the cute bob and the funny accent, while plying his trade at Daddow’s Motors for six years before starting a 16-year stint in charge of machinery maintenance for Noosa Shire Council.
Mary-Jo recalls: “I already had two kids and then Ian and I had another one, but I remember in those early days being able to live in Noosa on $50 a week, covering food, rent, electricity, everything. You couldn’t go out because there was really nowhere to go.
“We bought our first house on Belmore Terrace at Sunshine Beach for $65,000 when it was still a dirt road and kangaroos used to bound down the road in the morning to swim at the beach.”
Ian’s job at council brought him in touch with the movers and shakers of town in the days when council chambers was still located at Pomona, and he recalls some riotous Friday nights with councillors and staff at the Pomona pub, but the real social hub for the family became the Noosa Heads surf club, where the kids went through Nippers, Mary-Jo was the first aid officer for a time and Ian rose through the ranks, becoming increasingly involved at local, regional, state and national level.
In a remarkable surf life saving career, Ian has been granted life membership of the Noosa club, the Queensland association and the Australian national council, and in 2015 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to life saving and the Noosa community. Part of that service was to take an innovative approach to the design of rescue boats, using his years of workshop experience to develop a prototype aluminium hull jet boat powered by a diesel engine, giving them greater range and speed than their fiberglass predecessors. Since the first one went into service in Noosa in 1989, they have become the standard for surf clubs all over Australia.
Ian is also proud of his role in installing the first rescue beacon at Alexandra Bay, the furthest beach from the Noosa club. “We just put a radio in an old metal meter box,” he modestly explained at the time.
With the kids getting older and the town getting busier, in 1984 Mary-Jo and her friend Julie Dawson decided the time was ripe to open a business, so although they knew nothing about running a shop or making a cake, they bought a cake shop called Piece of Cake in Noosa Junction.
Says Mary-Jo: “We really knew nothing about business but we were very successful right away, and then when they opened up the Junction shopping centre [Noosa Fair] we couldn’t bake enough per day to supply the market. We were supplying all the restaurants as well as over the counter sales, so we opened another shop in town I called Noosa Tarts.
The name was a bit embarrassing when we went to trade functions, and the staff got a little embarrassed from time to time, but it was fun. And no, we didn’t wear fishnet stockings.”
Later, Mary-Jo went into a solo business, taking over Florentine’s gift store at the then-Sheraton on Hastings Street. It too was a runaway success for 12 years.
She recalls: “This was in the time when Hastings Street was still owner-run boutiques, not multinationals. We were all selling interesting stuff you couldn’t buy elsewhere, but that was set to change.”
Ian, meanwhile, had worked for the man since leaving school, but by the 1990s he too was feeling the urge to give the wheels of commerce a spin.
He quit the council and looked for a business to buy. In 1994 he found it in the small local franchise of Solomon’s Carpets. He built it up and it was soon thriving.
He says: “One of the best parts about the business for me was that I would be in about five different houses every day, meeting really great people. And I was never been bitten by a dog in 30 years!”
After closing Florentine’s, Mary-Jo joined Ian at Solomon’s, but at the end of February they brought down the curtain on that chapter of life with the sale of the business, and are looking forward to a quieter retirement.
But Ian is adamant his days in surf life saving are far from over.
He says wistfully: “The supporters club has become an incredible success. Over the past two Christmas periods we’ve been right near the top for beer sales for Queensland! It’s funny when you look back at what it once was.
“Saturday nights in the old club were family nights, we’d be there with all our kids and the women would make the meals. It was very different, but you have to move with the times.
“Now it’s a business but it’s still a club. And it’s still our club.”
