Over a vast number of Noosa Surf Festivals, one of my favourite things to do was talk story with the aging pioneers of our sport and culture.
Now that I find I’m one of the ancients, those opportunities don’t come around so frequently, which is why I grabbed it with both hands when surf artist Owen Cavanagh invited me to host a chat show at his Studio 53 vintage board exhibition in aid of the Noosa World Surfing Reserve at Coolum last weekend, featuring three legendary surfing characters in Hayden Kenny, Gary Birdsall and Richard Harvey.
In front of a good-sized crowd who’d spent the afternoon oohing and aahing over the pick of the crop of the best surfboard collections on the Coast, we settled the old fellas into their rocking chairs, with a beer nearby, ready for some probing questions. But first I had a little surprise for Hayden, Australia’s first ironman in 1966, patriarch of a dynasty of surf lifesaving stars and creator of one of the iconic surfboard brands of the early era.
Back in May our first world pro surfing champion, Peter Townend, in Queensland on a flying visit, handed me a monogrammed spray jacket celebrating Hayden’s 2017 induction into the Surfboard Builders Hall of Fame in California. PT asked me to pass it on to Hayden next time I saw him. As it turned out, I had yet to catch up with Hayden a few months later when, packing my bag for an autumnal jaunt around the northern hemisphere, I came across the spray jacket – light, waterproof and perfect for the changeable weather we might encounter. Into the bag it went, and over August and September it kept me warm and dry during a hurricane on the Cabo coast, while fishing the choppy waters of Nantucket Sound, during the squalls of the Bay of Biscay and while braving the sleet to walk the city walls of York.
Yep, it had been around the block, but it was only slightly worse for wear, and Hayden, soon to turn 88 years young, was delighted to don his jacket of honour, only six years late.
Gary Birdsall, no stranger to Noosa surfers, was one of my surf heroes growing up on the Illawarra Coast, and only partly because he had featured on the cover of Bombora, the 1962 Atlantics LP that was never far from my turntable, shown in a Bob Weeks photo sliding down a Cronulla Point monster.
Gary was a crack goofy-footer who had podium finishes at Bells and in the NSW titles behind the likes of Bobby Brown and Nat Young, but later he became better known as a surfboard artisan and artist and, as he confirmed at Studio 53 the other night, was the first in the world to airbrush art onto a surfboard. In recent years his limited edition prints depicting surfing’s glory days can be found in surf shops and man caves around the country. So good to hear him in such fine form.
The grommet of the trio, Richard Harvey is only a couple of years older than me, but this renaissance man of surfing has packed a hell of a lot into his 75 years. Recently retired from a long and illustrious career on the Gold Coast shaping fine surfboards and passing the skills onto others with his famous surfboard workshops, Richard first hit the radar as a junior from Sydney’s northern beaches in the mid-60s and cracked the big time as a senior with a third at the Nationals behind Nat Young and Peter Drouyn at Margaret River in 1969.
By this time Dick was a rising star as a shaper, with a stint at Ron Wade’s in Mona Vale before moving to Shane Surfboards and taking over Shane’s Queensland operation in 1970. He was more interested in pursuing this as a career than competing, but when the Nationals were announced at Margaret River for 1973, he decided to give the title one more crack at a favoured break, driving across the Nullabor with Coolie kids Michael Peterson and Peter Townend, both of whom he subsequently demolished in the final. Being Australian champion got him a start in a couple of Hawaiian events, which he used as springboard to years of surf travel adventure to rival the late Peter Troy. (I remember him in Bali in 1975 going AWOL from Uluwatu to secretly surf a break he’d discovered just along the cliffs called Padang-Padang.)
What a buzz to share all these highlights of great surfing lives with an enthusiastic crowd to end a great day of surf nostalgia. I hear Owen is planning to make it an annual event, which I’m sure will be a popular move.
FOOTNOTE:
More about this next week, but make a note now – Noosa World Surfing Reserve Community Surf Awards and Car Park party with Raw Audio at Boiling Pot Brewery, Saturday 18 November 3-10pm. Tickets $30 (groms free), check it out at the Noosa World Surfing Reserve FB page.
