By Phil Jarratt
It was the first morning of the biggest surf festival we’d produced. Well, to be fair, we’d only produced the first one the previous year, but it had been so successful that our major sponsor, Breaka Flavoured Milk, decided to throw everything at it in 1999, enabling us to invite surfing’s greatest legends from around the world and conduct a re-enactment of the first world championships in 1964, featuring the five living finalists, and to stage the first ever world tandem surfing championships.
Hey, it was going to be huge! But right now, on that first morning, I was stressed to the max. I’d been up half the night trying to hire a truck, when we found that the bus we’d chartered to deliver the international tandem competitors from Brisbane Airport couldn’t fit 12-foot tandem boards in its luggage hold.
That problem solved, the skies had opened up before dawn and torrential rain had closed roads all over Eumundi, preventing our photographer, Michael Simmons, from getting to the beach.
But by mid-morning the skies were starting to clear, our tents on the beach had survived the deluge and it looked like all would be well for our official opening ceremony and paddle out that afternoon, to be officiated by the highly-respected Hawaiian surfing elder Richard “Buffalo” Keaulana.
Then my phone rang. It was Buffalo’s travelling companion and minder, who also happened to be the chairman of the Bank of Hawaii.
He said: “Buffalo can’t go ahead with a ho’okupu (the traditional Hawaiian blessing) without the presence of a representative of the traditional owners of the land.”
He was right, of course, and it was an oversight never to be repeated, but in those days we weren’t so aware of welcome to country, and all that it signified.
Nevertheless, I rang off and frantically began trying to track down a Gubbi Gubbi representative.
Eventually I located Evie Feisel but she was interstate and couldn’t make it to Noosa in time. I had nowhere else to turn.
But then I had an inspiration.
I phoned Bill Wallace and, apologising for the late notice, I told him that Buffalo had requested that “an elder of the Noosa surfing tribe” conduct the opening ceremony with him. As he always did, Bill accepted with grace and good humour.
I phoned Buffalo’s minder back and said: “There are no traditional owners available but Bill Wallace, who is the elder of the Noosa surfing tribe, is happy to accompany Buffalo.”
“Just give me a minute,” he said. I could hear them talking in the background, inside the Hawaiian-style apartment at Jim Tatton’s brand new South Pacific Resort.
“Are you there, Phil? Yes, Buffalo says he would be honoured to be joined by tribal elder Mr William Wallace. We will arrive half an hour before the ceremony. See you then.”
Now that he’s gone, this remains one of my favourite memories of Bill, standing alongside the regal Buffalo, bedecked in Hawaiian leis, together carrying the koa mixing bowl to the shoreline at First Point in the beautiful golden afternoon light, to mix the waters brought from surf breaks from around the world for this, Noosa’s first truly international surfing event.
The memory is also tinged with regret and embarrassment at my neglect of appropriate protocol as an event organiser, but the nobility etched into the faces of these two wonderful men as they carried out the simple ceremony overpowers that.
And Billy Wallace was our tribal elder. At the first Noosa Festival of Surfing in 1998 he was our poster child and we honoured him at a great dinner at Bistro C, attended by many of the friends he had made in over half a century as one of Australia’s leading surfers and boardbuilders.
And in subsequent years he became a figurehead not just for the Noosa Festival but for our rich surfing history and culture.
As I observed him getting older and less mobile – although he was still terrorising motorists on his mobility scooter on Noosa Hill close to the end – Bill became the catalyst for an idea I had to document the history of the pioneer days of surfboard building in Australia through the eyes of the pioneers themselves before it was too late. Bill was a ready participant, and he had a million stories to share over a home brew, but he also smoothed the way for me, making phone calls to some of the pioneers I hadn’t seen in 30 years.
A wartime apprentice in a munitions factory, a champion “toothpick” paddler and beach inspector at Bronte during the bikini ban years, a master craftsman of surfboards in ply, balsa and foam, and one of the leaders of the surfboard industry during its golden era, Billy Wallace crammed a lot into his 91 years.
The surfing world will remember his many accomplishments, but what I will remember most is his gentlemanly manner, his ready smile and his wicked sense of humour, still firing a few weeks back when Bob McTavish, Tom Wegener and I said our farewells at his bedside.
Just as we did that day, I hope Bill is already sharing a glass of bubbles and a laugh with the other Men of Wood and Foam who have passed in recent months – Midget Farrelly and Joe Larkin.
Bill, you were the full package. The surfer’s surfer, the shaper’s shaper. Rest in peace, old mate.
