By PHIL JARRATT
LAST Sunday’s Deus surf swap meet at the Bondi Pavilion brought out a big crowd, despite the fact that it was a cold and windswept spring day at Australia’s most famous beach.
A few early morning squalls came through and wiped us out of the courtyard, where we were selling books and magazines alongside Matt Cuddihy’s stunning photographic art prints.
Fortunately, we were able to regroup out of the wind and rain, and when the sun popped out, the bar opened and the band played – the excellent Sons Of The East – we forgot about the morning’s soaking and spent the day signing and selling to happy punters.
The Deus Ex Machina group does this kind of thing rather well, and Bondi Beach on a Sunday afternoon proved to be a perfect venue, with more than 100 interesting surfboards from different eras up for grabs.
Noosa was well-represented, apart from your humble correspondent and the aforementioned Cuddles, with Thomas Bexon sharing shaping duties in the shipping container turned shaping bay, with guru Bob McTavish, and Harrison Roach on microphone duty all day.
These things are always great opportunities for tribal reunions, and Bondi was no exception, with the early-days Bali crew out in force this time. Film-maker Jack McCoy calls all of us who came after the screening of Morning of the Earth “the second wave”, and second-wavers present included Big Jack himself, along with fellow film-makers Dick Hoole and David “Mexican” Sumpter (all 1973) and myself and Newcastle’s Uluwatu style-master Peter McCabe (1974).
I hadn’t seen the colourful Novocastrian for more than 25 years, having missed him in Bali earlier in the year by a matter of hours, so we had plenty of yarns to swap. Peter celebrated turning 60 by returning to the fabulous lefts of Grajagan, Java, with his old partner in crime, Gerry Lopez.
Back in the 1970s and early ’80s, there was a star-studded pack in the water for every great session at Uluwatu, Padang and G-Land, but no-one surfed those stellar spots with more down-the-line speed and pure class than Gerry and Pete.
On their long-awaited return bout this winter past, there were some memorable sessions, although Pete confessed that once Matt Hoy and some other Newcastle mates turned up, there were more Bintangs drained than barrels claimed.
I guess we’ll be the judge of that. A film crew captured the best sessions for a forthcoming Lopez biopic, coming out this summer.
The mystery of history
Here’s a confession for you. I consider myself something of a historian, having written a dozen or so books involving massive historical research around Australia and several different countries. Believe me, I’ve done my time spooling micro-fiche through the projector and sneezing in dusty newspaper collections.
However, to my eternal shame I had never heard of Cooroy-Noosa Genealogical and Historical Research Group, Inc., until being invited along as guest speaker at their monthly meeting at Cooroy Library.
My subject, Noosa’s surfing history, was probably not normally on their agenda, but when president Bev Warner called the large audience to order, they proved to be attentive and eager to share their experiences at the beach from long ago. The group’s senior member, a lovely lady called Edna Smith, had even brought a pair of her husband’s old woollen trunks from the 1940s to show me. Now I wouldn’t necessarily have picked Edna for a surf chick back in the day, but she had plenty of tales to tell me about the wild crew at the Noosa Heads Surf Club way back when.
I find history endlessly fascinating, and sometimes forget that not everyone shares my obsession with the smallest fragments of new information, which to me are like pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle. So it was a pleasure to spend time with a community group whose membership is so devoted to recording and archiving our past.
Not goodbye, but see you later
Last weekend in Sydney I spent some time with two old mates who have been told to put their affairs in order. It’s the age we are, but visiting people who are on the way out can be a painful and debilitating experience.
In this case it was neither. Both men were resigned to their situations, and if positive is too strong a word, at least accepting of their fates. Neither is young, but they might have expected another 10 or 15 years of productive life. It’s not to be, and I can only admire their courage and spirit.
I was reminded of that great old surf warrior, Barry “Magoo” McGuigan, who in the final stages of cancer at the age of 85, was too ill for two days to take my farewell phone call. When we spoke on the third morning, two days before he died, he was effusive in his apologies for not being available. When I started to choke up on saying goodbye, he said, “Oh, don’t you worry about that, mate. You look after yourself, and I’ll see you later.”
I hope so, Magoo. A classy exit for a classy guy.
