By Phil Jarratt
The rain held off just long enough last Monday morning for a group of long-time locals and surfers to remember two great Noosa characters – Bill and Betty Wallace – at the dedication of a beachfront park in their honour.
Bill and Betty Park (in memory of Bill and Betty Wallace) looks out at Noosa West Beach from a shady grove not far from where Betty sold her sensational burgers from a food bus and where Bill launched his ancient surf ski into Woods Bay. It’s also pretty close to their first home in Noosa, on Hastings Street, half a century ago.
After a long struggle to get appropriate recognition for his parents, Peter Wallace was gracious in acknowledging the efforts of Deputy Mayor Frank Wilkie, Noosa Heritage’s Jane Harding and the council in general for backing the project, with support from Noosa World Surfing Reserve and Tourism Noosa, and partner Su Daddow, daughter Natalie and Frank Wilkie for finding the perfect spot.
Family friend Shane Brow Raison read bashful Pete’s eloquent words: “It’s been a long road but one that was worth the wait. This park will be a great spot to enjoy and share some wonderful memories of the Noosa we used to know in days gone by, when it was much quieter and more relaxed, when you could come down and have a surf, buy a burger and a cold drink from Betty’s Burgers for about $2.50, and then surf all afternoon. Rest in peace, Bill and Betty Wallace, thanks for the memories.”
When the Wallace family moved to Noosa in 1973, Bill was already one of the biggest names in Australian surfing and surf life saving. A teenage paddleboard champion in the 1940s, at the end of the war he became the prototype surfer/shaper for generations to come, adapting the designs for a hollow plywood paddleboard he found in an American magazine.
When the US lifeguard team introduced the shorter, lighter, balsawood Malibu surfboard during the international surf carnival held in conjunction with Melbourne’s Olympic Games in 1956, Bill was one of several leading board-builders who went full-time into production, firstly in Sydney’s eastern beaches and later in a former market garden at Brookvale, near Manly, which became the hub of Australia’s surfboard industry. By the early 1960s, surfing was the biggest craze in the country, and the Brookvale Six were rolling in money.
As surfboards got shorter in the 1970s and a new generation of manufacturers made competition more intense, Bill opted to go back to his roots with a small cottage facility on a beach far away from the big smoke.
He and Betty chose Noosa, where he continued to produce boards for another 30 years, in his later years specialising in beautiful wooden replicas of pioneer designs.
Meanwhile, Betty Wallace decided to give the wheels of industry a spin after helping out at a café on Hastings Street.
She went into business in an arcade across the street, specialising in $1 burgers that beachgoers couldn’t resist. A redevelopment eventually forced her out of that spot and down to the Woods in a converted bus, but by then Betty’s Burgers were so famous her customers would have found her anywhere.
Eventually she hung up the hot plate, but not before agreeing to lend her famous name to a Noosa hamburger start-up that is now an Australia-wide corporation.
Betty didn’t care. “Not my style,” she’d tell her friends. Sometimes gruff on the outside, Betty had a heart of gold, and she made a burger comeback in 2015 to help raise money for a children’s charity. She also decided to donate her body to Queensland University of Technology, where it has been used by doctors from around Australia in the development of high-tech robotic surgery.
Bill Wallace died in 2017, just a matter of months after the release of a Foxtel documentary called Men Of Wood And Foam, celebrating the achievements of Bill and the other members of the Brookvale Six. Betty followed 18 months later.
Amongst the family and friends who gathered to remember Bill and Betty last Monday were surfers Michael Court, Stu Mcleary and Tony Dragan, businessman Len Daddow, Betty’s food cart rival and friend Hey Bill Watson, and Cr Frank Wilkie and Heritage Librarian Jane Harding representing council.
Peter Wallace said after the dedication: “Mum and dad never asked for anything like this – Mum just asked that we plant a tree for her – but they loved this beach and I know they’d be delighted.”
