My Teenage Years
As you could imagine, home life for me was not something I can easily explain. So many events that were happening around me with an obvious sadness I felt was a stigma over what happened to Peter. I was, however never made feel ignominious. Quite the opposite. The one thing I do recall, is that no one ever raised the subject of what happened in that tunnel. It was like it never happened and I was left to ponder over this for years.
I guess as a young boy you never really know what causes things to happen, you just experience them. Given time to think, I can only guess what may have been and saying that I have put my account together.
Bob sold the dairy farm following the trouble with the Kapala court case. My mother told me he went through his own reflection and had lost motivation. He just wanted out of the farm. I would think it was more to help raise money to pay the debts following the court decision. It was at this time my best friend Tony moved to Brisbane. I was devastated. From what I heard Bob and Max had an argument and Max decided to quit at the shipyard and leave. Max was like a father to me.
Figure 2201. (Top left) Paul, David, Tony, Brett (in front) Keryn
The first time I visited Tony was while he and his family were living with his grandparents in Chermside about ten kilometres north of Fortitude Valley. I remember my mother arranging for my airfare from Lismore to Brisbane. Brisbane airport has a memorial celebrating the first trans-pacific flight by Charles Kingsford Smith and preserving the actual aeroplane he flew, the “Southern Cross”. Kingsford Smith used the “Southern Cross” for the first trans-Pacific flight from California to Australia. Brisbane Airport is the custodian of this important relic for the Commonwealth of Australia.
Figure 2205. Charles Kingsford Smith. The first Trans-Pacific flight California to Brisbane
It was the very first time I had flown in an aeroplane and not only that, I was also all on my own. It was so exiting. The plane was only small carrying about ten passengers and the thrill when taking off was so memorable. The fear when landing was too when you are so close to the ground. It is something in a small plane, that you seem to feel every bump, every acceleration, and every sound. Max and Tony met me at Brisbane Airport. It was great to see each other again after so long. It had been almost a year.
Figure 2206. Map of north side of Brisbane (Google Earth)
When we arrived at Tony’s Pop and grandmother’s place, it was like we had never been apart. I felt like I was at home. Those two weeks were an eye opener on what city life was for an ‘almost’ teenager in comparison to living in a small country town. The first thing we did was catch the bus to Chermside shopping centre. The complex was huge. Tony had this one friend we met there on this day that in very short time proved to be someone who was always challenging either his mates or anyone he could get attention from. It was as though he was on a mission to cause the most havoc. I was following behind Tony and him as we walked through and all over the department store. Up and down the escalators into each department with each their own special category of items for sale, when suddenly, this new friend decides to shoplift some shirt or something. He shoved it under his shirt and made a B-Line for the doors. Tony and I were both left there as accomplices without having a say in it. We followed him out to the car park of the shopping centre and ran across to the fence, where he stopped and looked around to see if anyone else was chasing us. When we caught up to him, we all broke down into fits of laughter at what had just happened. I was either in shock or thrilled at what had just happened. I have never been able to work that out. But it was something I had never thought it would be. A feeling of sensation of what it is too be bad. Ten years old and we were shoplifters. Following that I was always I bit cautious of what was going to happen next. That leads us to another day when we decided to take the bus into the Valley to the swimming pool. It was again, the biggest swimming pool I had ever seen. When we got off the bus, looking across the road was this huge tower with young people lining up to jump off. It was an Olympic swimming pool, with a separate diving pool and a ten-meter tower platform. There was the three-meter diving board to the side and the five-meter platform halfway with the ten-meter on top. I had never seen a pool this big before.
Figure 2207. Olympic Diving Platform (printerest.com)
I couldn’t wait to get in and jump off. We paid the entry fee and started on the diving board, then up to five meters which was all very well. The only problem was avoiding someone jumping off the top onto you, so you had to jump to the side. When I eventually made it up to the top, I thought better of it, and pulled out. It was just too high for me. It was the first time I had been confronted with my fear of heights. I guess that led me to challenging that fear from then on. Even with that, it did not trouble the time and once again, what a fun day. It was later as a teenager when I forced myself to jump off other high cliffs such as Dalwood falls at Alstonville and the quarry at Riley’s Hill, near Woodburn in an attempt to overcome that fear. I have never quite succeeded and have resolved it to be one of my limitations. Without a safety line, or a handrail, I am scarred at heights.
Travelling around Brisbane on the busses on our own as ‘almost’ teenagers, another day, we went around to visit Tony’s mate at his place. His parents were out and given that, it is amazing what thoughts go through some people’s minds at that age. He was certainly a genuine character. If that is all I could say. He picked up the telephone, and decided to dial 000, the emergency number in Australia. He then plays out an act of a distressed person having a heart attack and demands an ambulance come around to take him to hospital. I say this was another shock, because both Tony and I had no idea he was going to do that and had no say in it whatsoever. When he hung up, I said: “What are you doing that for?”. He looked at me, smiled and said: “Come with me”. He walked over to the front window and opened the curtain onto the road being a cul-de-sac. Within about two or three minutes an ambulance races up the street with their lights flashing and pulls up at the house two or three doors over from the house we were in. He started laughing again, and this time, I just looked at him and said nothing. Tony was not impressed either but what do you do. Brush it off and get on with the day. We soon left and went back to Tony’s grandparents’ place.
Over the next few years, I stayed with Tony’s family every school holidays. That was great. Max and Del bought a house in Zillmere and bought Tony a motor bike. Their house in Midyim Street was next to a vacant land paddock. It was a huge area with a planted pine forest at the north end and had a dirt racetrack at the south end. It has since been developed into a large subdivision estate in Zillmere. Whenever I visited it was the place to be. Tony was a very good rider. It was the first time I ever had ridden, and I was not so confident. I loved it whenever he would double me around and really hammer it. Other guys would show up on their bikes sometimes.
Figure 2208. Tony's backyard (Google Earth)
Over the years Tony upgraded from a bike to bike. He started with a 50cc minibike and then upgraded to a Honda XR75. This was truly a special bike in there day. One year, Tony had made a couple of good friends in Spring and Dallas. Spring was a lean, tough, and sinewy type of character, thin, not so tall and had a pommy accent. Every sentence end with “ah”. “Let go to the pool, ah”, let’s go and get a coke, ah”. Every sentence without fail. (“ah”). Dallas was tall, strong looking but a very sleepy type of young man. He was slow with his speech and very friendly. It was like he agreed with everything anyone said. Tony took him under his wing and looked after him at the racetrack. Dallas convinced his mother to buy him a second hand XR75 and he loved to join in riding around the track but was never that keen. One day he was needing money for some reason, and he said to me: “Do you want to buy my bike?”. Jokingly I said: “How much?” He said: “Fifty bucks.” I said: “Are you serious”? ” Yes”, he said: “I really need the fifty dollars.” My mother had just arrived to spend a couple of days with Dell and pick me up to take me home. I raced off to Tony’s place and asked mum could I buy the bike. She wasn’t very happy, but given my enthusiasm, said yes. Tony, Mum, and I drove around to Dallas’s place to make the deal. When we walked into the back yard, his mother came out to meet us. Dallas turned to her and said, “I’m selling my bike.” She said, “What I bought that for you.” She then said: “How much? Dallas said: “Fifty dollars”. His mother nearly fell over and said: “No you’re not selling it for fifty dollars, its mine and you’re grounded”. He then went into this tantrum and his mother took a forcible approach and threatened to call the police. It was at that time, my mother, Tony, and I thought we had better leave and that was that. I missed out on my Honda XR75 motor bike. I heard the next day, that Dallas jumped out of his bedroom window and ran off. I came home to Evans Head before I ever really found out what happened after that.
Figure 2209. Honda XR75 (1971)
Tony went on to buy a Suzuki 125 dirt bike and eventually got so good he went racing on the weekends. By this time, I had been drawn to the surf and stopped visiting after a few years. We always had a great friendship and I know it was at a time when we both needed to draw on each other’s strength to get through Peter’s death.
Figure 2210. Suzuki 125cc racing dirt bike (1975)
Looking back to when through my early teenage years, there were also many other changes in my day-to-day life. First my father took a real interest in me for the first time. I recall he took me down to Evans Head beach when I was nine. With him my strength and confidence, and with me on his back we swam way out to beyond the breaking waves. The swell was to me, quite big and so I should have been scarred. It wasn’t. Dad was my rock. I had the time of my life catching wave after wave body surfing with me on his back. I had never known my dad to be such great fun.
Dad had bought an eighteen-foot-long fiberglass speed boat with a 100-horsepower mercury outboard. I remember racing along the Evans River one day with four or five of us kids in the boat. Dad drilled a hole in the nose of a fiberglass surfboard and tied a rope to it and then to the speedboat, with a small length of rope as a tail to hold on to. We all took turns in laying on the board, holding on to the tail and being towed along. When it was my turn, I decided to get up on my knees. I could see dad driving the boat, looking back, and lifting his hands up over and over signalling me to stand up. I got one leg up, then the other and for the first time here I am surfing on my feet behind the speedboat. I was ten years old. It was magic. After that dad wanted me to come fishing with him every day over the school break at Christmas. I remember being dragged out of bed at either two o’clock in the morning to go fishing wide out to sea, or four o’clock to go closer to shore. This was every morning for the next four weeks straight. It was a fun time and I really got to know my dad as a person. For the first time in my life, he was a mate to me, and it made me feel great. On one of those days, fishing wide off Evans Head, I hooked three of the biggest fish I had ever caught. The problem I had with going out wide to sea was getting sea sickness. Not on the way out when the boat was moving; it was when it stopped and at anchor that everything caught up. That roll of the boat and the slap of water against the hull would cause me to feel ill. I would vomit over the side a few times and surprisingly feel much better. My father would say: “Don’t worry about that, it burleys the fish”. That also made me feel better. It certainly worked on this day, albeit in fifty fathoms of water. I hooked and landed my first fish. It was a thirteen-pound snapper. The second fish I hooked took about fifteen minutes to land. It was a huge eighteen-pound Nobby snapper. What a sight that was when my father gaffed the fish and lifted it on board the boat. It was the next hook up I can safely say, was the test on me. I hooked on to this thrashing weight at a depth of over a hundred and fifty meters that nearly got the better of me. I thought it was a big shark. In those days, we used handlines and not rods to go deep water fishing. You throw the line in the first time and let it unwind off the large hand reel. When you either catch a fish or get a large bit, you merely pull the line hand over hand and let it sit naturally on the floor of the boat. When you unhook the fish, or re bait the hook, you then throw the line back over the side and let it feed off its natural lay without tangling. So much quicker than winding in a rod with a reel. And you could fit heavy sixty-pound fishing line on the hand reel with one, two or three ten_0, or twelve_O hooks. With that breaking strain you can pull on the line as hard as you can. You could hardly snap sixty-pound line. On this day with the two biggest fish in the boat already, I hooked this gigantic fish. I was struggling to hold on and my hands were aching. I turned to my father and said, “You better pull this one in, it’s cutting my hands.” He took one look at me and laughed, “Your fish, your problem”. I then knuckled down and held on for dear life. Splashing salt water onto my hands for relief. It was possibly the excitement, but if you were to ask me to guess, I would say it took me an hour to get that fish up. When it was getting close, my father looked over the side and said: It’s a huge snapper.” As soon as he said that the mighty fish spat the hook and broke free of the line. I was devastated. After all that, it got off. What I wanted to know was how big it was. When I asked, dad said: “It must have been at least a twenty-five pounder”.
Figure 2211. Two Snapper, 18lb and 13lb
Fishing every morning at such an ungodly hour did start to wear on me after four weeks and I had developed a keen interest in going surfing. On the last week of that Christmas, I said to my father: “I have had enough of getting out of bed so early. Theres only two weeks left on my holidays, and I want to go surfing”. I guess he seemed a little disappointed, but he understood and let me off. It was then I was free to go surfing and continue to challenge the waves in my quest to learn how to surf.
My father had many ideas about other business enterprises. Because he had the fibreglass factory, he decided to build paddle boats. He built a mould and fabricated these paddle boats that were driven by hand handles inside the two-seat craft that drove a paddle wheel on both sides to push the boat along. It could be manned by two people each turning a paddle on either side or one person in the middle turning both handles. He built a string of about ten of these boats and stored them on the sand bar north of the old fishing coop.
Figure 2213. Keryn and Valerie in one of Dad’s paddle boats
Over Christmas these paddle boats were hired out and he collected about twenty cents per hour for tourists to paddle around the river. Over time he collected the money and kept it in his wardrobe at home. He had three or four Tupperware containers filled with ten and twenty cent coins. One day I was rumbling around in my parent’s room I discovered these coins. I started taking a few coins at a time and running off down to the local café to play pool and the pinball machines. It was at this time one of my young friends said: “Let’s go down to the reserve café and buy a packet of cigarettes”. I had the money and happily went along subsidising this misadventure. The bravest of us went up to the café window. If you know what businesses are like in a small country town, they are mostly owned by the parents of children at school. We all knew each other and because they would have to work in the shop serving on weekends, they had no problems with serving us. We would buy the cigarettes and run off into the bush beside the river and puff away on the whole packet thinking we were all grown up. All parents smoked in those days, and so it was the thing to do. After about a year, I gradually used up about half of the coins in my father’s wardrobe and was reluctant to take any more as he would soon find out.
I decided to stop taking money which did not go that well with my friends. At the same time, we were all in nippers every Sunday at the local surf lifesaving club. Every year, the club organises a day for the nippers to all compete to clean up the rubbish on the beach. We would be divided into teams and the challenge was to collect as many large hessian sacks of rubbish as possible for each team. The winning team would be rewarded with fifty cents for each nipper. This day, I was in Steve’s team. He was the older brother of Nicky. We set out with all good intentions collecting rubbish but were a little slow on the up take in comparison with the other teams. Slowly the hessian bags were filled, and each team placed them in front of the surf club in their allotted position. We only had three bags full, and the other teams all had three, four or even five bags full. When no one was looking, our fearless leader Steve, decided to steal one bag each from two the other teams. That gave us five and left the winning team with four. When time was up all the officials came over and awarded our team with the win and the money.
With that I decided to make up with my mates and went down to the reserve café and bought a packet of cigarettes with my fifty cents. It seems a mischievous thing to do but it was a long time ago, and we were young and silly in those days.
Following that, I am not sure, but my father released two things. I was smoking at ten years old, and he had a heap of coins missing from his wardrobe. He pulled me aside and said nothing about that, but then opened his cheque book, and wrote out a cheque for a thousand dollars in my name. He said: “If you don’t smoke until you are twenty-five, you can cash this cheque”. He forward dated it until my birthday on the 19th of January 1985. That was it. I wanted the money and so lived up to that by stopping smoking and didn’t start again for years.
My sister was four years older than me, and all her friends were either teenage surfers or their girlfriends. My cousin Robert was a surfer. My sister had a boyfriend who was a surfer. Rock and roll music was everything, and was listened to everywhere. The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Black Sabath and the Who. Woodstock, and even Jesus Christ Superstar. Country or Jazz didn’t rate a mention. Bruce Lee was at the top with his kung fu career and of course his mysterious death. Hippies were heading to Nimbin in their droves for the Aquarius festival and of course black magic and the dreaded spirit world were all the rage. One weekend, my sister asked me whether I wanted to go to one of her friends place to have a seance. Karen was hot and beautiful, but being my sister’s friend, too old for me. She treated me like a younger brother. Just like most of Keryn’s friends. Anyway, we meet this one Friday night at Karen’s place and set up the “Ouija” board. Also known as a spirit board, or witch board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words "yes", "no", at either end. It was some time ago, but I still recall who was there. It was the host, Karen, my sister Keryn and her boyfriend Glen, Rhonda, Dave, and myself. A candle was lit, and the lights were turned down. A glass cup was placed in the centre of the board, and we each placed our little finger on the cup. Karen began to speak; “If there is a spirit in the room would you please enter the glass.” This was repeated over and over. “If there is a spirit in the room, would you please give us a sign.” “If there is a spirit in the room, would you please move to the ‘Yes’.” Nothing happened. The glass stayed still. It was at this time the boys called it fake and got up and left. Karen said if they didn’t believe, nothing would happen. All that were left were the three girls and me. We tried it again. “If there is a spirit in the room, would you please enter the glass.” Suddenly, the glass started to move. I was taken by surprise. It moved quite smoothly to the ‘Yes’. Karen went on with asking some simple yes and no questions and the glass moved back and forth accordingly. I was studying each person’s fingers on the glass, and no one was firmly touching it. My finger was lifting up and down off the glass, like shaking, and so was the other girls. The glass was moving smoothly. I was astounded. It was then that Karen asked who the spirit was. The glass moved to the letter P, then E, then T, then E and lastly R and stopped. Is that you Peter? asked my sister. The glass moved to ‘Yes’. This was freaky. I must say over the course of the next few minutes of questions, I was almost in shock. The last question asked by my sister was: “Are you coming back to us?”. The glass moved to the ‘Yes’. When? the glass moved to the 2. Is that in two years? the glass moved to the ‘Yes’. Will you be a boy or a girl? the glass did not move. It was at this time the glass stopped moving all together. We kept trying to raise the spirit again with no success. I was left dumbfounded. I was nine years old. Peter died when I was eight. Both Keryn and I agreed not to tell mum about this. Catheryn, my little sister was born a year later, exactly two years after Peter died.
Figure 2214. Catheryn, Keryn and me
I had another friend that lived very close to me about three houses along Cashmore Street walking toward River Street at Evand Head. The owner of the house was a fisherman by the name of Snow. He owned a boat that parked down at the old fisherman coop. We used to jump off it to go swimming in the river. His partner was a lovely woman that had four children in her previous marriage. I did wonder how an older man in Snow, could have ever won her heart, but he did. Her two oldest were Peter and Gary. Her two youngest were two younger girls I cannot now remember their names. They were, however, always so interested to talk to me whenever we met when I walked past their house, I think they both had a crush on me. Peter was my age, and we found a strength between us whenever we were together. This one day we were out and about riding our bikes and we were thinking to start building a fort in the bush. I was always building forts in the bush. It was something I think we got interested in from watching shows on television like Danial Boon. I watched this show every day for years when I was young. This day we were checking out the vacant strip of land just south of the Catholic church hill. The road descends to a corner and turns to the east. The vacant land was a strip of cleared bush that acts to provide a fire break from the bush to the west and the houses to the east. We were with another friend Robert, all on our push bikes walking in the vacant paddock to meet up with the road. Peter decided he need to relive himself and put his bike down to walk into the bush and do what he had to do. Both Robert and I were leaning on our bikes waiting, when suddenly, Peter comes rushing out of the bush, yelling: “Snake, snake, I’ve been bitten”. Robert was well accustomed to venturing into the bush and in his natural calm sense, said: “Peter, Peter calm down. We need to know what type of snake it was.” Peter replied, “I don’t know”. Robert said while raising his hands: “Was it this long, or this long”. Robert gesturing with his hands a snake, that was somewhere between one meter, and then fully stretched, indicating a two-meter-long snake. Peter looked at Robert and raised his hand and said, “It was this long”. Peter indicated with his fingers a snake that was two hundred millimetre’s long. Both Robert and I sighed in relief at that very moment. Robert went on to say “Peter, if you have been bitten by a snake, you would go all dizzy and pass out.” Peter listening intently. Suddenly, he became dizzy, passed out and fell flat over.” Alarm bells than rang out in both Robert and I. Peters been bitten by a snake. We woke him up and got our bikes out of the vacant block, onto the road and doubled him around to the doctor’s surgery as quick as we could. Dr Ryan found a couple of tiny puncture wounds on Peters ankle but could not administer antivenom because the snake was not identified. Peter was rushed to Coraki hospital and spent the next two days in observation. When he got back to school, he was a hero in front of all his classmates. He pulled me aside and said:” They told me at the hospital the marks on my ankle were not from a snake bite.” I said nothing. He was the man in the moment. And that was that.
It was surfing that became the number one priority in my life. It was all I could think about. Evans Head was a small seaside fishing village and prawn trawling was the main industry in the area with many long-established family’s relying on the trawler fleet for an income. It was all so right for me to hang out down at the local surf shed and borrow who’s ever board I could while I learnt to surf. I remember it took about a week to master standing up and pointing the board to the right making my way across the face of a small right hander. It was three weeks when I caught this one wave running left. I mustered up all my energy and turned the board the opposite way and road my very first left hander all the way int the shore break. I was hooked. It wasn’t long before I knew whose board was the best to borrow. Dave had the best board. My sister’s boyfriend Glen had a good board but not as good. One day I borrowed Ross’s board. He was Dave’s brother and I found this was the best board of all. He was very possessive though being his favourite board, so I was always cautious to ask for it after that. That was all good, because Dave was so encouraging to hand me his board at any time and even encouraged me to take it out whenever I wanted to. My mother soon realised my passion and bought me my first surfboard. It was a Maron surfboard. My mother drove me up to the Maron surfboard shop at Tweed Heads to pick it out and I at last had my very own life. I had a new bunk mate. My surfboard on top and me underneath on my double bunk bed in my room. As with all new boards rubbing the first coat of wax in is the most important task while your aspirations of the first day in the water run wild in the imagination. This is the start to a beautiful friendship, you might think, but not so as it turned out. You just wouldn’t believe what rotten luck is. Here I am up at sparrow’s fart on the first Saturday morning, off down to the surf shed on my bike with my brand-new surfboard. Wow, I was all hope with enthusiasm. Got to the surf and it was hopeless. Wrong tide, small swell, but at least the wind was offshore. By this time, I had made great inroads in my ability, and I was so keen to test out my new board. As usual by 7am, all the keen surfers had turned up to check the conditions. Dave was in his brown Volkswagen station wagon; Guy with his white combi and Joe with his holden station wagon. The regulars every morning. Every other surfer in the town as well over the morning would eventually show. It was this morning though, that Dave was also keen for a surf. He called for a Snapper Rock check over to South Evans Head at Chinaman’s Beach. I was standing there over my push bike, looking all sombre. Mostly for show, I’m sure, when Dave turns to me and said: “You want to jump in with us, where off to Chinaman’s.” I was over the moon, so I quickly grabbed my board and stood on the door sill to reach and placed my board on top two others. Of course, Dave stepped in to re-set the occy straps to secure the three boards on one side, with two on the other. I can’t recall exactly who, but five of us jump in the car and we’re off. Of course, the first stop had to be the local bakery in the main street for a pie and chocolate milk. This bakery made the best pies I’ve ever tasted still to this day. In fact, Dave’s brother Ross ended up doing his apprenticeship at this very bakery later in life. While sitting outside the bakery eating breakfast, I looked up and noticed the front occy strap had slipped off my Maron sitting on top of the other two boards. It was a five feet long round tail with a single fin and the other boards were all well over six feet. I pointed this out to Dave, and he checked it and said, the back strap will hold them on. We’re only going over to China’s.” Well, I guess I just took that as a given the way it sounded, so we’re off again heading over to South Evans. Across the bridge and around the corner toward the Fishing coop and bang, woosh, crash, my brand-new surfboard went flying off the top of the car and tumble rolled down the bitumen road. Dave stops the car; we all jump out and run back to find my surfboard smashed. The nose was dinged, the tail was cracked, at least three or four long rail dings on both sides. It was a mess. I didn’t even get a chance to ride it once before it was a right-off. Dave looks at me and said,” It is not that bad. You can still ride it.”
Figure 2215. Dave on his father’s fishing charter boat “Seven Seas”
I did ride that dinged surfboard for about another month or so. It started taking on water and the foam was turning brown. I asked my father could he fix it. He took the board up to the shipyard to repair it. Or at least what he thought was a repair. He used chop strand matting, with no preparation and just fibreglass over the dings. Minimal sanding, with each ding semi smooth and raised up off the surface and of course a different colour. When if finally got it back It looked a real mess. I hated this board. It was fortunate that during that time my cousin Robert lent me his board. At least I could go around to our grandmother’s place in Booyong Street and borrow it whenever I wanted. It was so much longer than my board. Six foot ten inches with a flat wide deck and a pin tail. I loved it. I improved so much with on this board. I was hard to turn, but once heading in the right direction you could run up to the nose to and back again which helped with my balance. I could easily hang five toes over the nose of the board, and sometimes nearly hang ten.
My memories are so real from those days; There were a lot of surfers at Evans Head and the waves were great at my age as a beginner. It is something you must be in to, to understand because it’s the memory of that big day that sits there forever. The flat days only fade from one into the other and so it took a huge effort to be for ever on call, waiting for the swell. It only had to be favourable winds, especially at sunrise in the morning, and I was always out there in the surf. This led to me finding a place amongst by friends and many mentors that held me safe with everyone. It’s difficult to not believe it had everything to do with being a keen surfer. I could go on for ever with story after story of the life that was for me but as it is, each story you have always results in how may waves you caught. How you surfed them and whether anyone was a witness. For me that was something I recall drove my will and my confidence. Evan when I was out the back at sun-up, maybe one or two other keen friends paddling out with me. I was always believing someone was on the beach or up on the road watching. That drove a need for me to improve and whether they were there or not really didn’t matter. I just believed they were.
One such time was the 1974 flood at Lismore and Woodburn. The biggest flood recorded since 1954 on the Richmond River. I think it was bigger at Woodburn than fifty four.
Figure 2216. Woodburn in the 1974 flood of the Richmond River
Figure 2217. Shipyard at Swan Bay during the 1974 flood
Evans Head was cut off from Ballina for ten days. There was no bus going to school. The surf was big, and the river pumped out water and logs. It was one morning, and I will note for the record only, I’ll call “big Wednesday”. I ventured of down to the surf and was hit by the most special of sights. The flood had made its mark with water rushing out of the river and removed all the sand from the bar and even sucked the sand out from beside the north wall. It left this one sand bank perfectly positioned right out in front of the surf club. A cracking left-hand peak that reformed from the huge twelve-foot waves closing out across the bay out the back. When it reformed it threw an amazing perfect eight-foot barrel running left form level with the end of north wall all the way to the beach. It was a good thing I had my cousin’s six-foot, ten-inch surfboard to use. The gutter that formed off the north wall was over hundred meters wide and so it was such an easy paddle out. It looked just like pictures of pipeline. When I saw it, I was there on my own. No one out. I raced up to my friend Tony’s place, and would you know it, his mother had grounded him and wouldn’t let him go surfing. I was beside myself. I raced back down to the surf and found mt friend Nicky checking the surf out. Then Bricky turned up and we three were out there. All the crew, Murray Cuss, Nicky’s brother Steve and every keen surfer eventually packed the surf out. Wow, I remember catching the best waves I had ever ridden. We surfed all day and when the tide was high, this pumping huge right hander started to form on the twelve footers out the back. Right at that time, a man showed up who no one really recognised. He paddled out past the inside peak where we were all surfing and kept going until he was out past the breakers. Next thing he caught this huge set and absolutely smashed it running off down the beach on this right hander. He must have surfed that wave two hundred meters, all the way to Airforce beach. He paddled back out repeatedly and had the waves all to himself. No one even imaging you could ride those close-out sets. It turns out he had been staying at the Illawong hotel. Just dropped into Evans Head by chance and got caught by the flood. It was Peter Druin from the Gold Coast. He was the 1973 world surfing champion. I was gob smacked. At thirteen years old he was my idle from Surfer magazine and Tracks. When he came in from his surf, we all acted so cool. No one was game to go up to him and say anything.
Following that we had five wonderful days of perfect left handers running off from the middle peak into the beach. The only obstacle was having to dodge the floating logs as they washed out from the river and got pushed up onto the shore. I recall there were quite a few dings suffered amongst the surfers with boards hitting logs as you tucked into a screaming left hander. It was then, the flood subsided, the waves dropped to nothing, and it was back on the bus and off to school in Ballina.
From that I knew I needed a new board. Not quite as long as Roberts but a much need improvement on my five-foot Merin. After twelve months my mother bought me a new one for Christmas. That she did every year from then on for the next three years. Almost every surfer in Evans Head had a Hendo. Ian (Hendo) Henderson made surfboards in Lismore. He would always turn up on a Friday afternoon at the surf shed at Evans Head to deliver his weeks orders. This went on for years and anyone getting a new board to be there to pick it up. He had this special spray design on the underside with a picture, usually of sea life stencilled over the colour. The deck was always clear to take the wax and there were no pin lines to separate the colour from the deck. It was a pattern repeated over and over and the price was good. Cheaper than buying from the shops. You always knew when you spotted a Hendo. It was my turn after twelve months. I was now in First year high school, or year seven as it is now. I ordered a six feet long diamond tail, with hammer head sharks as the stencil design. I wanted it to be dark blue, always my favourite colour, but everyone had a blue or a red board. Hendo decided to spray my board yellow. I don’t know why, but it was a dark golden yellow colour. When I picked it up on the Friday afternoon, I fell in love with it. It was everything on its own and more. The one thing I did finally work out is the eyes of the hammerhead were sprayed on the body. A hammerheads eyes are on the ends of the hammer itself. Not a worry, and I didn’t notice for the whole year. I loved that board, and it was such an improvement from my dinged up Meron. My surfing went from strength to strength. My next board was a McPherson, from Angourie. Blue underside with a clear deck and black pin stripes. A swallow tail and six feet six inches long. Very professional looking compared to the Hendo, but another single fin and it wasn’t as good. I guess you can’t get it right every time. From then on, I road Free Flights surfboards from Ballina and I guess that went on for the next twenty years. I don’t surf now but the passion lives on with every video and picture I can study on the internet drawing my attention at any time. You know what it’s like to walk past a surf shop in the mall. Are you really interested in what’s for sale in the shop or are you just checking out the television hanging off the roof with a special wave pumping through. A surfer only knows.
Back in those days and earlier it was common for the older men including our fathers to own a hunting rifle. Usually, a shot gun to go duck shooting. My dad had his speed boat, and he had his trusty browning five cartridge shotgun to go hunting wild ducks when he was younger. He also had a vintage double barrel shot gun he used in competition when he was young. My friend Roberts father used to come out fishing with dad on the speed boat and on Marina one from time to time. Roberts father, also Robert or Bob, was a keen duck shooter. This one morning, dad had organised to go with Bob and Norm on a duck hunting trip. Norm was the father of another two friends of mine tony and Wayne. This day, it was Robert and me, Norm, Bob, and my father all heading out to launch the speedboat in the Richmond River at Woodburn at about three o’clock in the morning. We travelled upriver past the shipyard and turned into Bungawalbin creek. It was still dark, just breaking light for the day. Norm had a favourite lagoon he knew about, and we stopped to sneak up quietly to not scare any wild ducks there. There were none, and Norm was so sure they would fly in, he decided to man the humpy, and the four of us continued deeper into the wilds, of the Bungawalbin creek catchment. Bob knew of a lagoon he wanted to check. W parked the boat and made out way through the bush for about three hundred meters. It was just coming on light. There was no sunlight, but there was mist in the air. It was approaching winter and at that time very cold, I thought. The excitement of the hunt over sees another side to a person when conditions are like that, and this was no different. Sneaking up on this lagoon, as quite as we could be. Finally pushed thorough the last layers of scrub to open to this magical lagoon, with mist laying shallow but above the water. It was then we spotted at least five wild ducks in the middle of the lagoon. Bob raised his shotgun, aimed, and fired. One, two, three, four shots in a row. He hit at least three ducks. The problem was the shotgun pellets only wounded them and they were flapping around in the middle of the lagoon. I had no idea how we were going to recover them. Suddenly, Robert, Bob’s son, started stripping down to his underwear, in freezing cold conditions, as if in precise que of knowing what to do. He then jumped into this weed ridden lack at dawn, with the mist hovering overhead and swam out to the middle to pick up the ducks. As he approached, the wounded ducks realised he was coming and started flapping to escape. Bob raised his shotgun, from the shore, took aim at the ducks, about ten or fifteen meters in front of his son. He fired and took out the flapping duck. Robert kept swimming and picked up the three dead ducks and made his way back to shore. I remember him having a few carefully chosen words with his father over what that was. Bob listened but remained his unapologetic self. He was like that. He was a hunter and that’s what hunting is about.
Another time about a year later my father had arranged to go hunting wild boar in the bush around New Italy, a few kilometers south of Swan Bay. I had never been before and was always interested in doing something new. We woke up early this one morning and drove out to New Italy. We were in my father’s Ford utility, and it had been arranged to meet up with two other men in another Ute. One of them owned three very fit hunting dogs. We had brought our family pet labrador Nelson, along for the experience. He was still very young at about a year of so old. When he saw the other dogs, he was so excited. We drove for a few kilometers along the dirt road when the car in front pulled over to the side of the road. We stopped and got out to see the dog owner rushing to let his dogs out of the cage in the back of the Ute. He then grabbed his riffle, jumped the barbed wire fence and was off running after the dogs which by now were about a kilometer across the open paddock. We spoke to the driver, who said they had spotted a wild boar roaming along the tree lie about two kilometers’ away. I looked and could not see anything. We all then jumped the fence and rushed across the paddock following the hunt. I was running as fast as I could to catch up to the action. When I got there, there was a most eye-opening battle taking place. This huge boar was thrashing about in a shallow drain with the three pig dogs each taking turns to latch on. Two either side grabbed an ear each and the third at the rear latching on to the tail. With the boar thrashing, and throwing them off one by one, they just kept coming back latching on until the pig was exhausted. The three dogs had the boar pinned in the ditch. The owner pointed his riffle point blank at the pig’s head and fired. The battle was over. The pig lay there sprawled out in the ditch dead. I had to ask, “How do we get the pig back to the vehicles. The owner of the dogs laughed and said: “We don’t want the pig, we just want these big tusks, pointing at pig’s head. Two ivory tusks each about eighty millimetres long. The pig would have weighed over one hundred and fifty kilograms. The owner took his machete and hacked the pig’s head skilfully to remove the tusks and it was over. We left the carcass in the ditch and started walking back across the paddock. The three pig dogs were so amped up after the kill. They were very agitated, especially when we had Nelson there. He was running around like he had taken part in the hunt and having a great time. At that moment, at about a quarter of the way back to the vehicles, the owner inadvertently swung his machete in a reflex action. Not meaning it to be a signal. The three dogs took the action very differently and saw it as a command to attack. The set upon Nelson as they would a wild pig and our family pet got the shock of his life. The three dogs set on after him and when they caught him, he tripped over and went tumbling along the grass. He then jumped up and took off like a rocket. I had never seen him, or any other dog run so fast. Within about fifteen seconds, he was a good half a kilometre away in the opposite direction to the cars. My father saw what it was and at that moment yelled out his name as loud as possible. Nelson was so far away; I did not think he would hear. He did eventually hear after several calls and stopped. Looked back and waited. With the three hunting dogs subdued by their owner, we managed to slowly coax Nelson back to the Ute. From that moment on he sat in the back shaking and never got out again until we got home.
On another note, my father loved a party. Any excuse to celebrate and he would take over and make sure everyone who showed up enjoyed themselves. No expense spared at times. It was something he once bought a pallet of Great Western Champayne. Six magnums sized bottles to a box. Thirty boxes to the pallet. He bought it in such bulk, he paid less per litre than it cost to buy beer at the bottle shop. At that time, he bought a one and a half litre magnum of champagne for two dollars fifty. A standard bottle of beer was a dollar fifty and a magnum was twice as much in volume. For the next two years my father hosted a Champayne breakfast on Sunday mornings for anyone and everyone who showed up. He bought my mother an omelette pan and had her cook prawn omelettes for everyone who came around. This went on for over two years. Great Western Champayne and prawn omelette breakfasts every Sunday. I used to love when the surf was pumping on the weekend and go home to a breakfast of prawn omelettes and champagne. I would even invite my friends sometimes. Whether their parents approved or not I never did find out.
I remember meeting a man my father invited to one of these Sunday breakfasts. He owned a cargo vessel named “Ata”, that had arrived at Woodburn and had travelled all the way from Tonga. His name was Mr Peter Warner. A very noble businessman and had all the qualities to match. He spoke very well. He dressed impeccably. He showed an interest in who he spoke to, and you felt very comfortable around him.
Figure 2226. Cargo vessel “Ata”
Figure 2227. Peter Warner & Bill York
With all these qualities his love was for the ocean as a sailor, and he employed a crew of all Tongan sailors. As it turned out, Peter had earlier made a huge impact on the Tongan royal family, especially the king. It was earlier in the sixties I believe that Peter was sailing his cargo vessel from Island to Island in Tonga and one day, just happened to notice smoke rising into the air on this island showing on the map to be uninhabited. Curiosity got the better of him and he sent a landing party in to check on what the smoke was. They happened to discover several men, very rough in appearance who had been stranded on the island for three years. When they took these men back to the main island of Tonga, one of them turned out to be the King’s lost son. That in turn, assured Peter the trust and confidence of the King which led to many opportunities including owning his own residence on the main Island near where the king lived, trading within the Tongan Island group, and hiring his crew from Tonga.
The “Ata” arrived at Woodburn fully loaded with Coconuts for the Australian market. From all reports, protocol on importing coconuts required certain approvals which were not obtained. The authorities at the time made him to dump the entire load. It was a good thing the “Ata” was not here for trade. The vessel was here to be slipped at the Swan Bay shipyard to undergo an extension. This involved cutting the ship in half and adding ten feet to the middle section increasing the length from 80 to 90 feet.
Figure 2228. CV “Ata” in slipway after lengthening
One fond memory I have of this was when the Tongan crew staged a formal dinner ceremony at the Macpherson farmhouse at Swan Bay and prepared all the food in a underground oven, known as a hangi. This was something to see. They provided all this along with ceremonial dancing as if we were on a tropical island. I remember one Tongan carving out this spear from timber and gave it to me as a gift. It not only a spear but could be also used as a paddle. I was thrilled.
When the Extension was complete the “Ata” was launched, and my father and Peter partnered up to sail with her Tongan crew to Middleton reef to go fishing. As luck would have it, it was very bad weather for some days and the “Ata” had to anchor in the natural harbour of the reef on the northeastern end. It was about two or three days waiting for the weather to clear, when one of the Tongan crew came up to dad and pointed out a light that kept flashing from a shipwrecked Japanese long liner, about four miles across the reef. Curious to find out what this was, they launched a dory and steamed across to the shipwreck. To what I would think was a huge surprise, they found four people, two men and two women that were frantically waiving and yelling out.
Figure 2231. Shipwrecked survivors met by Tongan crew on shipwrecked Japanese long-liner
They happened to have been sailing on their sailing yacht from New Zealand to Brisbane when they struck and were washed up onto the reef. They made their way to the Long-liner and spent the next six weeks stranded until “Ata came along to rescue them. This led to the fishing trip being cancelled and the “Ata” returned to Australia to a huge media welcome. The Women’s Weekly ran a centre fold story of the entire ordeal as did all the papers at the time. It was world news.
Interestingly my father told the story that when Peter and he were discussing steaming in over the bar at Ballina on the Richmond River bar with the survivors on board to meet and knew they would be meeting with the media, they decided to raise a flag with both the initials of Peter and Bills last name typed onto the flag. They flipped a coin to see whos’ initial went first and Peter won the toss. So, it was set that the initials “W” for Warner and “Y” for York were printed onto the flag. This turns out to be my father’s full initials given his first name is William.
At one stage I went into a withdrawal from spending time with my friends. It did not last long but it was when most of the other boys were maturing quickly. Growing taller, growing facial hair, under arm hair and hair on their legs. It was as if time had stopped for me and no one else. Of course, I had not considered anyone else that may have had a slow start, and soon realised it was all in my mind only, and you must pick yourself up and get over it. The strange thing was, I took up an interest in going fishing in the river on my own and surprisingly found I enjoyed my own company when there was no one else around. I had been told a few things about the different seasons when fish are either biting or not. The beginning of the year when the parrots turned up, the bream in the river started to bit. It was the big southerly storms in October that used to send in the sea mullet into the surf in droves and you could cast a jag hook and reef the rod to hook a fish anywhere without it having to swallow a hook. It was the wintertime the black fish would be massing under the jetty at the fishing coop. My mother had bought me a long fishing rod with a timber side cast reel. I love it because I could cast out far into the river with ease. I used to go down to the river onto the sand flats in between the bridge and the old fishing coop and chase whiting. For some reason, this little fish had a very strong fight. I always thought I had a bigger fish on than it ended up being whenever I landed one. This one day I had caught a whiting on my line and while winding it in, a seagull decided to swoop down a catch the same fish. It grabbed the whiting and started to fly off with my line still hooked on. Another seagull than came swooping in to take the fish of the first seagull and hit my line and tangled itself up. The first seagull then was pulled out of flight and struggled and tangled itself up in my line as well. They both hit the sand and started flapping and by this time had forgotten all about the fish on the hook. I had to place my rod down on the sand, walk over to these birds who by now were both exhausted but still fighting to get untangled. I did not know what to do. I could not think of how to first grab the two birds, and then try to untangle them from my line. It was at that moment; an older man came walking down from the shore and he had a cigarette in his mouth. Without saying a word to me, crouched down and grabbed my line, pulled it over and used his cigarette to cut my line away. That allowed him to keep cutting the line with his cigarette until the two birds were untangled. They both then went flying off. I can only remember the one thing I thought at that very moment. What about my fishing line. I soon realised that was the right thing to do as I had no answer on how to free the birds. All I lost was a sinker, a swivel, a hook and about two meters of fishing line. I walked home and realised; I had not thought to cut my line. It was the last thing I would have done. Strange how you become so possessive of the things you own. As it was, the two birds owe their freedom to this older man who knew what to do. It is strange when you have no answers when caught in a test such as this.
Evans Head was once an important strategic air base for the Australian Airforce during World War two. Following the war, an area south of Evans Head, being coastal scrub land was used as a practise bombing range for the Airforce. For years, the residents of the town would endure bombing practise days which at first rattled the shop windows in the town centre. After some time, and complaints they shifted the range from six miles south to twelve miles south of the town. This solved the problem and for someone of my age, the days when the Canberra bombers and F-111 jets would show up were exiting. Whenever they would fly over you just wait a few seconds and kaboom, the bombs dropped would explode. It was very exciting.
One morning, news had spread that a F-111 jet had crashed at sea. The local fishing fleet was summoned to undertake a search and rescue mission and after some time, the Seven Seas, owned by Lester Cribb discovered the ejection seat on the surface of the ocean. I was told when they lifted the seat onto the boat, the grim remains of a pilot’s helmet with part of his scalp was still attached to set. The search was continued until eventually called off and the second pilot was never found. Two officers of the Australian Airforce were killed.
Another controversial event happened a year or more earlier when I was still in primary school. Two men were standing on trestles painting a single storey building. The building was located about a kilometre away from the airport hangar, at the aerodrome. On this day sitting in school, we all heard this almighty explosion. Knowing the regular sound of bombs at the practise range, this was something different. Many of the shop windows in the town were blown out. Apparently, a pilot on a practise run thought the aerodrome was the bombing range and mistakenly dropped a one-thousand-pound bomb. When it hit the ground, It exploded between the airport hangar and outskirts of the town. It was about three hundred meters away from the two men painting the building. A fragment of shrapnel shot through the wall of the building about a meter away from one of the men on the trestle. A very close call and lucky escape for them but they surely got an awful fright. That afternoon the whole town went to inspect the bomb site, and anyone there early was able to dig the shrapnel out of the ground as a souvenir. By the time I arrived, there was nothing left but a great big hole the explosion had created.
A year later a phantom jet ran into problems at sea off the coast of Evans head. The pilots had a call to make whether to eject and let the multimillion-dollar plane crash at sea or to jettison the fuel tanks and make an emergency landing at Evans head air strip. Of course, the second option was the preference and once landed the town was surprisingly the host to a spectacular event of the Airforce coming to town to repair the jet and make it ready for taking off. This took some days to happen. They had to bring with them a full complement of tyres to replace as the surface of the de commissioned air strip was deemed to be too rough and had damaged the tyres on landing. It was the talk of the town, and when the jet was ready to take off, it was like the whole town turned out to watch. It was an impressive aero plane. When it was time, the jet made its way to the north end of the strip. Two or three hundred spectators stood at the side and watched this magnificent jet take off. I remember the noise was deafening as it went past at full throttle and with its just nose off the ground. One minute it was there, the next it was gone and, away in the distance, some twenty kilometres south, and then it disappeared. At that moment, everyone started walking back to their cars. Chatting away as if the excitement of the day had ended. The next minute, the jet had decided to fly full circle at sea and show the town the Airforce’s appreciation with a fly past. No one saw it coming. Everyone was walking in the opposite direction chatting away to each other about the whole event. This jet then flew in from the north at about one hundred meters off the tarmac. Almost the entire two hundred people walking along the grass, including myself, got such a fright we hit the deck on all fours to get out of the way. The noise from this jet at five hundred miles per hour was gobsmacking.
When I was fourteen my sister and her boyfriend Glen, had made a child. I was to become an uncle. She did not let anyone know for months until there were no more excuses with her gain in weight. It was a strange coin incidence that she had fallen pregnant and within three months of that, my mother fell pregnant with her fifth child. The excitement my mother was experiences tended to block out the fact that Keryn was pregnant to. It was such a change to my home life; you just could not imagine. My father was over the moon with being a father again, and yet furious with Keryn when he found out she was having a baby too. She was too young he thought. I stayed well out of it. The arguments over whether to keep the baby was at the centre of the fight. My father got his way for a while and convinced my sister to adopt the baby. That settled everything while mum continued with her pregnancy. The day finally arrived and Keryn went into labour, and it was all agreed, she would sign the papers immediately without seeing her child. That just didn’t happen. With Dad and Mum at the hospital by my sister’s side, the nurse just happened to bring in the newborn to show them. That was it; Dad melted, Mum cried, and my sister won the day with my father convincing him to renege on the adoption. I now have a wonderful baby nephew named Adryan York. He has been and still is more like my little brother. Catheryn my little sister was two years old by this time. Adryan was brand new and a perfect brother for her and Mum was fully pregnant with her next child. Things were right back on track, and everything was going great for a while. But it was not to last. Three months later my baby brother Clayton, three months younger than Adryan, was still born. His umbilical cord had wrapped around his neck, and he died at birth. My home life was back into a horror story. My mother mourning for next months. My father had nothing he could do or say and so decided to take mum away to Tonga for a couple of months to get some rest. My little sister was just starting to walk. My little nephew was in nappies with his mum, Keryn taking care of him. And the next-door neighbour, Pearl instructed to move in and look after us while mum recovered. It was hell. At least I had the surf as my distraction and with an air of melancholy surrounding me, I focused on just that. The surf.
A small relief from the sorrow came while mum and dad were in Tonga. Pearl had taken charge and issuing instructions to do this and that and whatever. Keryn had her hands full raising Adryan, and helping Pearl with Catheryn, but between her and I, we put up an almighty resistance to our newfound keeper. I recall our labrador Sami had a litter of puppies to a well-known identity in Evans Head, a great big black labrador named Shep. Shep was owned by Keryn’s friend Karen, but you would never know it. He was the friend of everyone and had the run of the town. He made his rounds every day checking up on every household and of course keeping all the dogs barking away behind their fences as he made his way through and was always down at the surf sheds with hanging out with the surfers. Sami had eight puppies. One died, at birth but others all flourished. We sold them all to good families and kept one we named Nelson. He was about three months old in February of 22975 two months after Cyclone Tracey had devastated Darwin. He had the run of the house and to Pearl’s dismay, became the subject of a hilarious skit, you just couldn’t believe. Pearl was busy cooking dinner in the kitchen and had ordered both Keryn and I to sit down at the kitchen table to be served our meal. I realised she was cooking tomato and I piped up and said, “I hate cooked tomato. I’m not eating that.” Pearl turned to me in a rage and said:” Do you know that in Darwin right now, the people have no food and they have had to eat their dogs.” Just as she said that Nelson happened to run past my feet. I reached down, picked him up and placed him on my plate on his side. He was happily wiggling around struggling to get up on his feet. Then I picked up my knife and fork had pretended to start to eat him. Keryn and I were in raptures laughing. Well, Pearl then exploded. She went ballistic and started screaming, this and that and this; I did not quite catch the words she was saying. She stormed on out of the kitchen, and we didn’t see her for quite some time. I would have to say, her and I did not ever see each other the same way again. And of course, I never had to eat cooked tomato again either.
It is strange the things you get up too as a young teenager and even stranger what others might expect of you. It was at Christmas when the town’s population exploded from around two thousand people throughout the year to nearly twenty thousand tourists all converging for the holiday break. This happened every year and the reserve caravan and tent park would be completely full. On this one day my cousin Robert, and one of his best mates Brad came around to my place. Brad was the son of John and Mavis. They lived at Swan Bay renting the house just up the road from the shipyard. John was a foreman for my father at York Brothers. This day Robert and Brad called me outside and said: “come with us down to the reserve. We need you for something”. It was about five o’clock in the afternoon and about two hundred meters before we got to the men’s and women’s shower block in the park, Robert said, “This is what we want you to do. When we get to the women’s, shower block, I want you to go running in through the door yelling out, mummy, mummy, where are you?” We will then come running in saying: “What are you doing, you can’t go into the women’s showers.” That way we will be able to perve on all the women showering. I was not impressed. I said: “No, I am too old for this. No one will believe me.” Robert kept saying, “You will be right we will look after you.” We got to the front entrance of the showers, and I was reluctant. The two of them kept urging me on, but I was just not up to it. It was like I was letting them down, but I was not at all interested in doing that and I backed down and walked away. Robert and Brad were disappointed, and we had come all that way from my place for nothing. But I just flatly refused and went home.
Robert worked on the Tongan vessel Ata when it was being extended at the shipyard and was offered passage to travel back with the ship to Tonga. He spent two years in Tonga and was one of only very few surfers on the Island. He used to tell me how good the waves were. The only problem, the surf was so far out past the coral reef. It was a struggle to get out to the reef to go surfing and when you did there was no one to surf with. He always had the best-looking girlfriends.
Figure 2265. Robert York and his girlfriend Geraldine
The fishing industry at Evans Head was the dominant industry from an early time back in the 1950’s. Many of my friends had parents that owned fishing boats. Good friends of mine Noddy and Phillip were the children of one of these fishing families. Their father Cleve owned a trawler and worked the school and king prawns out of Evans Head as did many fishing boats. In November 1975, Cleve was in a horror car crash in his Nissan 240Z along the Evans Head to Broadwater Road and was killed. From the reports he was travelling at extremely high speed along the straight coming from Broadwater and failed to make the first bend. It was a huge shock to everyone especially his sons Noddy and Phillip. I remember riding my bike out to where the crash happened. The investigation had been carried out and the road cleared and reopened, however the marks on the road and the white paint from the investigation mapped out the trajectory of the car. From the first skid marks, the carnage of what happened could by seen with the gauges in the bitumen and the remanence of debris scatted for about two hundred metres to the next bend where the car left the road and came to a halt some twenty or thirty meters into the bush. From that it was determined that Cleve almost made the corner and when losing control must have rolled repeatedly until coming to a stop in the bush. It was rumoured that the speed he was traveling was in the order of one hundred and twenty miles per hour. In equivalent terms that is almost two hundred kilometres per hour. Speed was something every young person was riven by. The faster the car, the more attention you drew.
It was at this time that Cleve had a brother Keith, or Bully to his friends. Keith also had a trawler but worked his boat in North Queensland however every now and then he would bring his boat back to Evans Head for slipping and survey and to catch up with his brothers’ family. I first got to know both Keith and his son Gary on one of these visits. Knowing Noddy and all his family was how I got to meet up with them. Gary was around twelve years old. He told me he wanted to surf. One day we were down at the surf club and another friend, my team captain Steve, who lived next door to Keith’s sister had a board for sail. It was a seven-foot single fin pin tail Sol surfboard with a clear deck and orange underside. Gary offered to buy it and so we were both set to go surfing together. At the time the movie Jaws was playing at the Lismore Star Court theatre and Keith offered to take Gary and I to the movies. The movie was scarry and a real awakening for a surfer. I thought about this for months afterwards and even had dreams about sharks. It did not phase either of us though and with Gary so keen to learn and go surfing we met up over that Christmas going surfing. He improved so quickly but as we all know, it takes some time.
Figure 2266. Surfing at Evans Head (surf-forecast.com)
One day we were over at the fishing coop and Gary told me he owned a 100-cc motor bike that was stowed on the fishing boat. We decided to take it for a spin, with him doubling me to check out Snapper Rock on the south beach at Evans Head. We arrived at the China man’s beach carpark, and he said: “let’s ride to the tick gate fence”, which overlooked Snapper. We managed to navigate through the sandy track all the way until about twenty meters short of the fence, when Gary lost control in the sand and we both went flying off. We picked up the bike and checked it out and there was no damage. The surf wasn’t any good so we road back to the boat. When we got back, I checked my pockets and I had lost my wallet. I told Garyn and he said: “Lets ride back over our track and see if we can find. I had a feeling it may have come out of my pocket when we had the spill, and sure enough when got all the way back to the fence, my wallet was sitting in clear view on the grass exactly where we fell.
Gary went on from there to surf the outer coral reefs off North Queensland while working on his father’s fishing trawler He got so good; he entered the World professional circuit making a name for himself winning Pro Tour events all around the globe, but his legacy was made in Hawaii. His second place behind the immortal Mark Richards at the 1986 Billabong Pro held at thirty foot Waimea Bay. (Wikipedia)
Some years later, I caught up with Gary at the Queensland Titles at Duranbah. I had won a place to surf in the open B grade. We arranged to meet in Surfers Paradise at a nightclub with a few of his mates that weekend and caught up over a beer.
When I was fourteen, Adryan was Christened at a ceremony in Woodburn at the Anglican church. The day was significantly special as everyone was there. One photo my father took has Mum, Catheryn, Keryn, Adryan, Glen, Robert, Geraldene, Dave, Lyn and myself at the back. I often look at this photo and remind myself of how each of these people have played such an important role in my life.
Figure 2267. Adryan Yorks christening (from left, Catheryn & Fae York, Geraldene, Lyn, Adryan, Keryn, me, Robert, Glen and Dave)
It was at this time that a Karate dojo opened in Ballina. My sisters’ friends were all keen to learn karate and Bruce Lee was on everyone’s mind at the time. I thought to follow in his footsteps would be so cool. I remember my sister’s boyfriend Glen, telling me he was driving to Ballina to start training. He and Ross were going together, and I pleaded with mum to let me go too. Miraculously she agreed and we were off to join the new Karate school. Gary was the instructor’s name. He was a brown belt in the karate style known as Shotokan. Other than the friends from Ballina, I had made at school, this was the first time I got to know anyone else from Ballina. John Doke was always up front of each class and taking it all so very seriously. Mark Magney was another that was showing real potential. I knew John’s sister, Anne very well from school and she was in my year and even some of my classes. I knew Mark’s brother Chris from my year at school as well who was always a close friend. Ross found his place too and really took up on the sport and our instructor Gary was just so cool and talented. After one or two lessons, it was clear that Glen wasn’t so interested but Ross and I were. For the next two years Ross drove his Toyota Celica to Ballina twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday and I happily tagged along. It was fantastic to start with. Ross went from strength to strength, and I did my best. In no time we were fronting up for gradings. First a black tip on a white belt. Then a second black tip. Then yellow belt. When I passed this level, I had my mother use yellow die to change it from white. Then green belt. By this time Ross was training at home and had shot out in front to get his purple belt, second purple and then finally after a couple of years his brown belt. I wasn’t so good at it but very keen and managed to pass grading from yellow to green and to my first purple before other interests, such as girls eventually took precedent, and my focus and priorities changed.
After that start with my Karate training, it was not long before the word got around and everyone at school starts thinking you’re looking for a fight. Well, I guess at fourteen everyone needs to prove themselves and I was not thinking this so much but for the first time in a long-time I was enjoying life and getting myself together. As it was, I was not very tall, not so solid in weight and not specifically sporting minding. But I did love surfing, I was good at that. I loved football. We played Rugby League at Ballina High school, and it was all based weight in my first year. The divisions went from six stone seven pounds, seven stone, seven pounds, nine-sevens, and open division. I was on the border line at about six stone six pounds and qualified for the six-sevens and so I was able to play in the scrum as either second row or lock. As it was our first year, we did not play against other schools, just in house football. I remember how much fun it was to be so close to the action all the time. It was in the days of eight tackles per set, three points for a try, two points to convert and a field goal was one point. The scrum was the centre of a battle, given the ball had to be placed in the centre and the two hookers would fight it out to scrape the ball back. It was from this I learnt to break away quickly and either help with distributing the ball or get ready to tackle if we lost the scrum. The next year the New South Wales schools changed their position on weight divisions and introduced age-based competition. Under thirteens, fourteens, fifteens and opens. Starting my second year at high school, I played football in B grade and was still able to hold my position in the scrum as second row. It was at this time, an English teacher at Ballina High, Stan was the A grade coach for the under thirteens. He had a great team and was planning to work on them to get ready for the under fourteens year being the Bill Buckley Shield competition played in all schools throughout the state. I was a year younger than my friends at school and had to play in the under thirteens. They were mostly first year students and a year below me. Stan had a team of very good sportsman when it came to football. He had every position covered, however the one position left open was full back. I was a second rower. I did not think he would choose me. For one thing I could not run. You had to be able to run fast in this position to join in to the back line. Stan came to me and said, I don’t need you to run. I need you to cover for the kick and the break aways. All I want you to do is position yourself, and tackle if ever the opposition broke through. That sounded alright to me, so I agreed and joined the A grade team. We had to train Mondays and Fridays after school which wasn’t so great, but I did get to travel on the bus on Wednesdays to play teams all over the North Coast. As well as that, I got to go to Karney Cup twice a year.
The next year our team played in the under fourteens Bill Buckley Shield for Ballina High School and we made it all the way through the competition on the North Coast. We were one game away from heading off to the big leagues in Sydney to play against the major city schools such as Paramatta and Marist Brothers. The most memorable game we ever played as a team was our second last match before playing the city teams. Given we had won every game against our local area teams, it was billed to be played against the best team in the area north being Tweed Heads high school. It just so happened that Murwillumbah High edged them out in their last game to qualify, just as we had done in our area. At the same time, the New Zealand Rugby League team, the Kiwis had flown to the Gold Coast in preparation for their international match between themselves and Australia. As part of the preparation there was a warmup match organised between a combined North Coast team and the Kiwis. There were two teachers from Ballina high chosen to play in that game. Our sports teacher Mike as five eight, and our woodworking teacher Greg as winger. Our match was a Bill Buckley Sheild qualifying game, Ballina High verses Murwillumbah high and was the opening game before the international preliminary match. It was held at the Tweed Heads Seagulls Rugby League club stadium in front of a very large crowd there to watch the main game. We ran on to the field and absolutely whooped the opposition team. Something like forty-four points to nothing. Following that, once we all got changed and seated, the NSW North Coast team ran out and to every one’s surprise beat the international New Zealand team. A week later, the New Zealand team ran on to the field in Sydney and beat Australia in their international match. What a turn of events. It was so much fun.
It was now time to play the winner of the Mid North Coast competition and that happened to be Grafton High. That one game, if I must say, was the worst. For the first time in two years, nothing went right. To rub salt into the wound, the team we played weren’t that good. We were just awful. Our hooker broke his arm in a scrum mid-way through the first half and had to be replaced. After two tries were scored by the other side the front rowers on our team had a big argument which didn’t help. Everyone was playing badly, and we lost six points to twelve. We returned to Ballina High School losers for the first time I could remember.
To top this off there was rivalry developing amongst the boys on the bus from Evans Head to Ballina. We travelled every day to school and back which took up about an hour of time each way. All the guys on the bus were either through puberty or going through it. I was a late bloomer and was very conscious of that fact. Shaving was not something in my life at the time, however that didn’t faze me. I was cool enough and I was a surfer, and I believed everyone saw me that way. I didn’t give in to anyone but at the same time tried with all my heart to stay out of trouble. That being most of the time, however I guess there are some days that are the exception to the rule. My friend Tony was also as cool as anyone could be and there were my other friends Ashleigh, Geof, Tony’s brother Wayne and David H. There was brothers Paul and Graham, Richard, Murray, Nick, and Trevor, passionately nicknamed “Shark Bait”. He was given that nickname when there were no leg ropes attaching the board to a surfer’s leg. Given the percentage of the time Trevor spent swimming in to get his board as opposed to paddling and riding waves, he was thought to be the distraction for all of us if a shark should ever show up. The boys sat on the lower level of the double decker bus with the girls separated on the top level. We, the surfer crew had the three bench seats at the rear of the lower level. One running across the back, with five seats, the other two perpendicular running lengthways on either side with three seats each. We rushed to get on every day and get to our regular seats. This wasn’t such a problem where you sat however proved to be a strategic flaw for me on this one day. I liked the seat closest to the front on the left side where I could use the rail as an arm rest and sit up higher than the double seat in front. That way I could get out of the bus first, and it was where I felt most comfortable. This day, Dave H just happened to get that seat and I had to settle for the opposite end with Andrew sitting in the middle between us. Andrew was a year younger than me with his brother Ashleigh a year older. They were a well-represented family in Evans Head with his father having ten children with his first wife, then marrying his second wife who happened to have six children making a family of sixteen. Andrew just happened to be the youngest. His Father was a boxer in his early life and from all reports a very tough fighter. His sons all followed in his footsteps and learnt to box and for the most all had made good in the ring and won many trophies. By being the youngest, Andrew had not had the opportunity to prove himself. It was this stigma that had him for ever challenging any kid at school. Everyone knew of the brothers and their accomplishments and as such Andrew got away with everything. It wouldn’t matter who it was he would always take them on and want to fight. Just so happened that no one ever did. It got to the point that he earnt himself the nick name “Mouth”. He was not at all happy with that and as you would expect did not help. This day he was up to his usual antics, walking up the centre isle of the bus picking on all the nerds toward the front and as usual, when they backed down, he would walk back toward to us and would have go at someone. Well, I had had enough and said something, like:” Sit down and shut up”. That was something different. I never said anything, ever. Here I was three months into karate training and stepping up sticking my head out of the cave. I don’t know why but I had had enough of no one really knowing just how good Andrew was. As usual, what followed was what happened every time. Andrew fronts up to you, looks you straight in the eye, lifts his finger up pointing to his chin and said: “Hit me, go on, I dare you.” He did this all the time. It was his way of forcing the point to get everyone to back down. I was sitting on the left side of the seat. He was standing in the centre isle with his empty seat in front of him, beside me. David H was sitting to the left of me at the end, where I usually sat. I then wound up the biggest round house punch I could muster and swung it at Andrew. He would have seen it coming, like about a day before it got to him. All he had to do while standing, was to move his head back out of the way, which in turn caused me to miss and my follow through wrapped so far past him, it hit David H fair in the eye. Well, all the boys jumped up to grab on and hold us both apart and someone yelled: “It’s on. Down to the surf sheds this arvo.” Everyone then started yelling out: “yeh, down to the surf sheds this arvo.” What can you do? The bus arrived back from school into Evans Head. It was a Friday afternoon. All I could do was to go home, drop my bag off, and head on down to the surf sheds. As you could well imagine, “face” was surely on the line. If I didn’t show, my reputation would have been destroyed.
By four o’clock that afternoon everyone had gathered at the west end of the clubhouse. Both me and Andrew matched as it were by fate, as the main event, and should I say, the only event. All the boys were urging us on. It then started. I remember shaping up as if I was in training, to block the first punch with a perfect Age-uke or Rising block, and then I was going to follow up with a Kizami-zuki or front snap punch and jab. Not so. Never even a look in with anything stylish. As soon as the fight started, or more like the scuffle broke out, it was all arms and legs wrestling each other to the ground. We were rolling around like sloths mating in the jungle. We were both however, from memory, oh so very serious. There was scratching and eye gouging and anything and everything to get on top of each other. It went on for an eternity. I was told later the fight lasted 29 minutes. When it finally came to an end we were locked in arms, legs and sweat and utterly exhausted. It came down to two of the other boys eventually grabbing us both and dragging us apart. It was declared a draw. Oh, I can never forget what that was. I spent the entire weekend tending to my wounds getting over it. I had a black eye and abrasions and skin off all over. My hair was fully matted, with bindi eye burs. I had to cut much of my hair off to get the burs out. From all accounts, Andrew wasn’t much better off. By the time we got to school the following Monday morning, the word was out. Mouth was seen by others as not so good a boxer after all. It was a football mate of mine, Max who was the first to step up. He had taken shit from Andrew the whole year and Rosie kept talking him out of fighting. By the time lunch time arrived it was on. Andrew in a second fight after ours on the previous Friday at Evans. It was then I was called up from class summoned to the principal’s office. Apparently, Deputy Principal Rankin was not satisfied that Max could have caused so much damage to Andrew’s face in that short a time. The scratches and whatever else was unexplainable. Rankin then demanded Andrew come clean. Thinking it was nothing to do with school, he eventually admitted to the fight over the weekend at Evans Head. He was then forced to give up my name and that led to the three of us Max, Andrew, and myself all waiting outside of Rankin’s office. I was called in first. Rankin said, “Were you in a fight with Andrew over the weekend.” Standing there with a black eye, and abrasions all over me, I could only say: “Yes sir.” Straight away out came the bamboo cane. “Hold your hand out straight,” said Rankin. “Wack”. I got ‘one of the best’ straight across my fingers. That was me, back to class and it was over. For Max and Andrew, well you may want to ask them. I think they got more than one, possibly ‘four of the best’, each since it was on school premises. I’m not sure.
If you have ever understood schoolyard politics. It’s the fight that sorts everybody out. Once a fight breaks out, everyone places themselves somewhere in the pecking order. Exactly what happened here. And you know what, because of this effort, we all got on so much better after that. I became best friends with Andrew throughout our school years and we met up on many occasions in Sydney later in life. He joined the Navy and was stationed at HMAS Kuttabul near Kings Cross when I was studying and living in Bondi. Following that, from all reports Andrew went on one year to win his weight division in boxing against the entire Australian armed forces. Would you ever read about it. Wonderful times.
Another favourite story of mine was one weekend when I was fifteen. It was cyclone season with one looming off the Queensland Coast. Back and forth to Ballina with karate training twice a week, Ross was always letting me know what they were getting up to on the weekend. Some of his mates, all much older than me were planning a trip to Kirra and the swell was expected to be huge. I was so desperate to go with them. I talked it over with my sister to help convince Mum to let me go. She was not at all happy about it and put up every obstacle possible to stop me going. Where will you stay? Who will you be with? Are you going to drink? What if you have a surfing accident like you did last Christmas. Do you remember when you came home with blood all through your hair when your board hit you. I had to take you down to the ambulance to get you stitched up.
Figure 2268. Surfboard accident and seven stitches
What if something like that happens when you on this trip? It took some convincing to explain that Ross would be in charge and each of the other guys had promised to look after me and not let me get into any trouble. With my sisters help we asked Ross to come around and convince mum everything will be just fine. She was fond of Ross, and he and I had been training together all this time. She eventually gave in, and I was clear to go. It was something surfers dream about. A road trip, and in this case, it was to the famous Kirra Beach on the Gold Coast. Kirra was always in Tracks and Surfer Magazine and every surfer knew about it. Apart from these magazines and a few travelling surf movies throughout the year we had nothing but our imagination to think about it and going on a road trip like this to me, before girls took centre stage, was like losing my virginity. Al many of thoughts were racing through my mind. I was going to get so tubed. The pictures were enough to project ahead. I felt confident. I was surfing well. My mates at school were all into surfing too and we challenged each other all the time about how big and gnarly the surf was. Whether you got the best waves. Whether you chickened out, or whatever. As it would prove to be, the surf at Ballina was well ahead in quality to Evans at that time however I would never let them believe it. Every time they bragged about the surf on Monday at school, I returned fire and bragged about the pumping waves at the Heads. It was that, up until now I had never been really tested. It was time. Kirra was on this weekend, and I was on my way to challenge it. We left for Coolangatta that Friday afternoon after school. Ross and his mates arrived at my house to load up my board and reassure my mother I’d be fine once again, and we were on the way. It was Ross, Robert, Joe, and me. We were staying at the Coolangatta hotel up on the second floor. At only fifteen, I would never pass for eighteen, so I was grounded in the room while the other guys went off for a night in the pub. The music was blaring, the swell was up. You could hear it break in the night air when you went out onto the veranda during a break in the music. The next morning was going to be huge and something special. My imagination was running ramped. Early to bed, Ross was the first back from the room but after that I couldn’t say when the others got home. It didn’t matter we were all so young and full of energy. The next morning, we were up at dawn. One of the guys leaning out over the railing on the veranda of the pub. He could see the swell was pumping and got us all up out of bed and on the way. We had to run around and pick the boards up from a mate’s house somewhere in Tweed Heads where we left them at overnight. You couldn’t leave them tied to the roof racks in the middle of Coolangatta. By the time we got back to Kirra Point, it was so crowded. There would have been fifty surfers out. A slight loss of enthusiasm, but wow, we were here and, on our way, out into the surf. That was back in the seventies, when ten guys were a full-on crowd for me, so you can image what this must have been. We all know a hundred and fifty surfers in the water today anywhere near Kirra or Snapper is just another day. That said, we all paddled out and did what we could to position for a wave. I had a terrible time paddling and paddling and paddling when every wave that came through, some guy would be taking off inside of me. This happened time and time again. I didn’t catch one wave. It wasn’t fair. I must say I wasn’t prepared for that humiliation, but all said done, I was there giving it a go. Just too many surfers. The other guys I was with didn’t do much better but did manage to catch a few waves. They all commented at the end of the surf how difficult it was. Logger got one of the best waves on the day. He was photographed and I think even made the tracks magazine in the next issue. Something unheard of from where I came from at our small surfside village of Evans Head. I did find out a lot about myself from that experience and if you ask me, it helped with everything in the surf from then on to make sure I charge and get my fill. And so, it was.
High school was a drag. I was doing alright with my grades but nothing special. I was looking forward to leaving following my intermediate certificate and had planned to start work at the shipyard as a boat builder. I didn’t really think much about it. The surf through those years had my total attention. I must have just assumed I would follow in my father’s footsteps and build boats. After all, the shipyard had been so dominantly apart of my entire life. I’ve thought about this and must say at that age you don’t really see life as serious. At least anything other than surfing in my case. It didn’t hardly cross my mind that the shipyard was in voluntary receivership following that court decision. Dad was never home to talk about it. At least when he got home at seven o’clock, he had been at the pub for his usually half a dozen beers after work. Mum would have his tea on the table. By seven thirty he was setting himself up in front of the TV to watch the latest movie. By eight o’clock he was snoring his head off asleep. He was then back up at two am to head off back to the shipyard. Mum was also, all so busy raising us kids, we never discussed anything about the family’s finances other than one thing. It was something that had a real effect on me at school. Given money was tight, Mum cut my lunch allowance out. I had to take sandwiches to school and a piece of fruit. I was devastated. When I think about it, it’s embarrassing. I was one of those kids at school that always had lunch money. A close friend, Mick, was another who’s mum gave him lunch money. In first year at high school, I was given an allowance of eight cents every day. The following year it was a dollar. The next year a dollar twenty. It was enough to buy a salad roll, a sausage roll and a carton of chocolate milk at the morning early lunch break. Then to follow up a second time at lunch with the same order. And had money left over. A lot of the kids at school had to bring their lunch or go without. I never thought much of it at the time but then my world was about to change. Following the decision of the court case over Kapala, my mother had to cut costs and the first thing to stop, was my allowance. It was when I was in my third year and for the first time ever, I had to take my lunch to school. This had never happened before even when I was in primary school, but I said nothing. I guess no one at school would have noticed. That is, other than me. By the end of that year with the sale of my father’s patent and the subsequent work the company secured to build the separation plant, things changed. I remember going to the shipyard one weekend and my father and Ken were there building the yards first aluminium fishing boat.
Figure 2269. Fishing Boat FV “Last Tango” under construction
It was dad’s dream to go fishing and this was the boat for it. It came about following the success with the Dillingham’s plant project at Chinaman’s Beach by working our way out of the voluntary receivership. All the debts were paid off and we were back in business as a family building boats. Only this time we were moving from steel into aluminium construction.
Figure 2270. Fishing Boat FV “Last Tango” on sea-trials
Toward the end of that third year there was another event that happened. It was on the school bus on the way home from school. Living at Evans Head meant it was a good forty kilometres to school. On this day our normal bus driver was on leave and the replacement was the driver who normally drives a second bus first to Woodburn to pick up students then on to Ballina. Our route was directly from Evans Head to Broadwater and then to Ballina. On this day boys being boys were particularly rowdy on the highway from Ballina to Broadwater. The relief bus driver had given several warnings in the morning on the way to school. By the time we were driving through Broadwater, he had had enough. I am not sure what the snap point was, but he pulled the bus over to the side of the road. Stood up and walked down to the back and kicked us all off the bus. He then sat back down and drove off. I had seen one or two students kicked off before but this time, there was thirteen of us. All with our school bags and stranded ten kilometres short of our hometown. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. Most of the guys just laughed but then we had to find our way home. We walked to the edge of town on the way to Evans head and waited. Three students managed to get a lift in one car. That was all that could fit. We waited and waited. Next minute a tip truck comes along fully loaded with sand. He stopped and said, “If you want a lift, you will have climb into the back. Two guys got in the front and eight of us jumped up onto the sand and got comfortable up the front of the pile. All very well, we were on our way happily knowing it was not that far. The one thing you can never predict is what happened then. Driving along the Broadwater straight, we ran into a swarm of bees, of all things. Most of got stung. I was allergic to bee stings and started to swell up. Lucky we were not far from home. When we arrived, I raced off home and swallowed some of the little blue tablets I had from a previous sting.
Figure 2271. Kirkland’s Double decker bus (printerest.co.uk)
Figure 2272. Tip tuck (arnoldicp.com)
It was now Not only that, but Dad had decided to move from Evans Head and live elsewhere. His first choice was the Gold Coast. We even drove up one weekend and looked at a couple of houses close to Surfers Paradise. I wasn’t so fussed about that. I would have to move schools and study in Queensland. Not cool at this time for me. Going through puberty has all sorts of complications when you get removed from you known surroundings. The very thought of this was all so over whelming. It was then by chance that on our way back to Evans through Ballina, dad just happened to say, I wouldn’t mind living here. Mum immediately jumped to attention and said, yes, this is exactly what I was thinking. He then turned off the main road into what I was to find out soon after, Manly Street. We drove down the hill towards the golf course and low and behold we pass this amazing single level house on the corner of Manly and Bonview Street. “That’s the house for me”: my father immediately said as we drove on past.
Figure 2273. York residence at 36 Bonview Street, East Ballina
We then stopped in the centre of town to check the real estates for listed houses for sale. To our wonderful surprise, the very first real estate we went to had a picture of that very house, for sale. That was it, history was about to be written, my mum and dad signed up to buy the house that very week. We then sold up Cedar Street and moved to Ballina. I was now in year ten doing my intermediate certificate and best of all, finally settled around all the close friends I had made over the past four years of high school.
After all this, it is truly a small world and how certain coincidences take place that really set you wondering whether there is a greater good out there looking after all of us. One such coincidence happened about a year before mum and dad bought the house in Bonview Street. It was Christmas holiday’s 1975. It was a time that was testing for me as I was at that very sensitive age. I was very interested in girls but at the same time the thought of getting too close scarred the hell out of me. It was almost time to go back to school, and over the Christmas break we made friends with every teenager that turned up to camp at the reserve or rent a holiday house with their families. Two such teenagers were holidaying here from Kyogle. Their names were Debbie and Jancy. This one day, my good friend Geoff and I were both hanging out down at the tennis courts across from the bait and tackle shop on the river. Geof was often somewhere around here as his parents owned the shop and he often worked there. It was on this day that Geof, Debbie, Jancy and me were in the park on the swings flirting with each other. Talking nonsense, I would hazard a guess but underlying it all was how wonderfully romantic it was. I was hot for Debbie and Geof was for Jancy. Both girls were stunners, and it was all so friendly. Nothing really happened, but you never know, maybe one day and of course were having a great time. As always happens though, the day ends, night falls and your left pondering on all manner of thought over what could have bene, but just wasn’t. After that, the girls went back to Kyogle, and we all went back to school for another year. A few months later it was Karnie Cup time. This was a special sporting event set up between Ballina, Kyogle, and Mullumbimby High Schools. Each school went into an exchange program whereby the athletes and teams for each sport and age division would travel between schools and compete. One year Ballina would travel to Kyogle, Kyogle to Mullumbimby, and Mullum to Ballina. The next year it would be the same in reverse order. Each student athlete had to qualify in an A grade team or at the top of the athletics rankings to be eligible. It was this year that Ballina had to travel to Kyogle. I had a place in the under 15’s rugby league team and Geof had a place in the under 16’s. When we arrived in Kyogle, we all got off the bus, picked up our gear and assembled in front of the entire Kyogle school ready to meet with the student we were to be billeted with. When we’re all there patiently waiting, an announcement came over the PA. “Thank you all for attending and we now need to get you allocated with your billet. But firstly, there has been a special request by two students from Kyogle.” The teacher announced Debbie and Jancy’s names and that they had requested to billet both Geoff and me from Ballina High. The teacher went on to say: “Would you two students make your way to the front to meet with your billets.” Well, could you ever believe how that felt. To be singled out in front of the entire student body of both schools and paraded up the front to meet with the two hottest girls in Kyogle. It was like a dream. From there I went back with Debbie to her place and Geof went with Jancy. Debbie’s mum was so thrilled to have me there. The four of us had arranged to catch up we settled in and so Deb’s mum offered to drive. We picked up Jancy and Geof from her home and went down to the pool hall in the main street. It was so cool hanging out and playing pool with all the locals. What a start to the three-day event. My footy team went on to win our games as usually and so all was good. The strangest coincidence now kicks in. It was Jancy’s father who built the home in Bonview Street for himself planning to move the family there from Kyogle. His plans only changed when he won approval for a new subdivision in Kyogle and had to stay there to build all the new houses. Funny world isn’t it.
Year ten was where it all began for me. A destiny into adulthood that was announced by my obvious development physically. I had grown a few inches. Now taller than mum. I could even justify running a razer over my face. At least every two or three weeks when a close study would reveal a slight shadow. That said every part of me was turning on the prospect of the next great challenge. Losing my virginity. Well, if anyone has anything to say about what possesses your mind when leading up to this wonderous adventure, I’m sure I didn’t miss out on the thinking. So much so that it seems to take over as every priority in life. Nothing else mattered, or at least mattered as much. That said, it is a wonderful time in your life. Especially if you have arrived at a point where your confidence reaches outside of your normal self, and you start challenging your fears. In saying that it doesn’t happen automatically. You must work on it. It took me another two years to finally convince a certain someone, into going all the way. Everything I did up until then was so obviously naïve. My biggest mistake was my wish to be with the woman I chose. Turns out if only I knew at the time; as a man, it is not up to you. It is the girl that choses you that you have the best chance with.
While all this was going on I was really settling into my new life in Ballina. The surf was fantastic. North Wall, Main Beach, sometimes even Shelly Beach, Trestles, Flat Rock, Boulders, and most of all and so very consistent, there was Lennox Point. Of course, in a northerly wind, there was also South Ballina with a testing paddle across the bar, but so worth it when every other break was blown out. At least seven quality breaks on both sand and rock bottom, all within a ten kilometre stretch of coastline. On the odd occasion you might venture up to the Pass or the Wreck in Byron Bay, or even down to Angourie near Yamba, but only ever for a change or an adventure. The variation in wave types and conditions between Ballina and Lennox was for the most part, on top on the quality scale anywhere on the North Coast. Of course, Kirra and Snapper were a different story but dealing with the crowds was never such an attraction. As it were, as a maturing teenager and into my early twenties, surfing provided everything for me to stay fit and enthusiastic, and a love and passion for surfing has forever been an enduring pleasure.
My friends at school were mostly surfers and forever challenging each other. We sat together in our respective affiliations. Ballina crew in one spot, Lennox crew in another, and of course the Evans Head crew over by the fence under the trees as far from the teachers as possible given that most of them smoked cigarettes, and of course, that was against school rules. They were my friends too, but I didn’t smoke so I sat with the Ballina crew. If it weren’t lobbing water bombs over the roof from inside the English block quadrangle, it was avoiding the counterattack from the Lennox crew sitting over in front of the science block. The best water bombs were always the clear plastic Mr Juicy bottles with a lid. Compact, thin wall, perfect size, and shape to fit in the hand and would most always splatter every time when they hit the target. The half-pint and pint-sized cardboard chocolate milk cartons were the other choice. They had a problem exploding unless you got the best lob throw in from a height and had the carton splatter on the seat or the concrete. If it hit the person, it would not splatter and just hurt an awful lot. The other favourite pastime was playing this game for money where you throw a coin up against the brick wall in the quadrangle stairwell. This was absolutely against school rules and had to be out of sight from the teachers. The game plays like this. You stand behind a line drawn on the pavement and throw a coin towards the wall. Each player throws the same coin and the closet to the wall collects the money. If you have four or five players, the stakes were high. Two cents, five cents or ten cents and even sometimes twenty cent games. The best shot was when the coin lands, bounces, and leans up vertically against the wall. For both pass times over the lunch and recess breaks, it was the art of not getting caught. The trick was to have someone stand watch and warn everyone when either a teacher or the deputy principal was close. I remember there was a running joke about our deputy principal Mr Parry wearing out so many pairs of shoes, for ever trying to out-flank us and catch us red handed. Hi tolerance had its limits and who ever got caught were in for ‘four of the best’. Cuts of the cane that is.
It was in year ten over the mid-term break in 1976 that four of us planned a trip down to Angourie for a two weeklong surfing trip. Mick was a knee boarded and his parents owned a holiday unit just up from the blue pool car park next to the rock cake shop. Him, along with another Michael, Rod, and me all ventured off for a hell trip in the hope of scoring it big with some great waves. Another bunch from school, Ants, Pete, and his brother Dave and another Mick all came to Angourie to, but they were camping in front of the car park and had only planned to stay a week. The first few days were flat, and it poured rain. The crew camping got so wet they pleaded with us to let them stay in the house but there was no room. We did eventually give in to have them move their tents up to the front lawn of the house. They could at least come in when it poured rain. We did all sorts of things to fill in the time. Playing card games for money was of course a main stay to get over the boredom. Red dog was the stayer. One high card, one low and you bet to hit in between. I won all the money. My luck was running hot. Toward the end of the two weeks, I had to lend each of the guy’s money so they could buy food from the rock cake store. Rod owed me over a hundred dollars. I could almost buy a new surfboard. It was all such great fun, and we were free to do as we want with no parents. The one and most deadly challenges every day was sneaking off to the outdoor dunny to do your morning business. Everyone was challenged to come up with a plan or strategy to get away with it unscathed. There was this big stash of oranges and even eggs to start with. It was every man for himself. Anyone who sat down on the dunny was a target. We would all line up and throw oranges to splatter them on the door and then pick them up and throw them through the open gap above the door, and underneath. It was all so serious a hit and miss system literally whenever you got caught. The trick was to get in quick, do your business and get out. Not so easy when pay back was against you. One strategy was to wake as early as you could, before anyone else and be as quiet as possible to sneak out and get it over with. I remember, one morning we all loaded up with wetsuits and surfboards to head off down to the point for a surf, as usual halfway there, Rod calls out: “Oh I left my wetsuit back at the house.” Of course, it was his plan to go back to answer natures call. And he got away with it. It came down to having to either put up with the pounding or sneak off into the bush. In the end no one escaped from the torment.
On the sixth day the swell started to rise, and we got a few waves at Spooky’s. This was a break that needed the swell to be over six feet to break far enough out from the rocks. Coming from deep water onto bare rock it was a hell of a take-off, but after the initial throw and usually a deep barrel, the wave filled up into deep water and became a cut-back challenge to stay on the wave. This day was alright at about five feet and was the first real surf we had had the whole time. The best news for our crew was the swell was on the way up. The other guys though, were due to bunk out and had to pack up the next day and head back to Ballina. The Monday was a good four feet at the point, and it was the first time it was working as its reputation describes. I nice line of swell coming in from the east hitting the shallow flat reef out on the point. The wave then running off all the way into the shore with two or three fast sections testing the rider at his best. The Tuesday a little bigger and the same. Good right-hand waves that turn out to be quite long if you can make it all the way through. Run back along the beach and out to the point to jump back in over the flat shallow reef and you’re back in the lineup. It was the next day that we had been waiting for. ‘Big Wednesday’ and the swell had finally hit. Eight-to-ten-foot perfect right handers. Huge long straight lines of swell with walls peaking and breaking from fifty meters north and outside the end of the point all the way through to the rocks to the north. Massive vertical sections breaking all the way through and about fifteen guys out surfing. We were all out there as soon as possible and got some great waves. Michael had his super eight camera with him and came in early to set up to take some footage. When I eventually came in I was standing up on the hill with him and this massive set came in. It had to be twelve feet or bigger and broke way out past the point. A perfect set of waves but no one was out far enough to catch them. One guy was the furthest out past the end of the point and copped the first wave on the head. It washed him so far inside and then the next wave and the next and kept pushing him inside until he found himself frantically paddling to get through the shore breakers in front of the rocks. If you know Angourie, the rocks in front of the blue pool never come into play. You can always make it to the beach before you get there. On this day that was not the case. The swell was so big, the shore break closed out on top of these rocks.
Well, that was one hell of a day, and we were up early the next morning to hopefully catch it again. But not so. The swell dropped out of sight and that was it for our surf trip. We had one day left and no surf, but all was good; we got the big day on film. The one last challenge I was not aware of until it was said was to empty the outdoor dunny. That was a black tin in a timber thunderbox, and it was full to the brim. One week of eight guys craping and then the second week with four, the effluent was spilling over the edges. I’m not sure how this came about but house rules were house rules. Split into teams of two and flip a coin. Heads gets to dig the whole. Tails has the job of dumping the tin into the hole. Mick and I flipped tails and had the job. We had to first get a grip somehow and lift the tin out of the thunder box, carrying it over twenty meters to the hole and tip it in. I had my diving goggles and snorkel and that at least saved me from vomiting from the smell. Not to mention how careful you had to be to stop the splash. Horrible job, I must say. All said and done a great holiday was had by all that were there, and it was now back to school Monday. The bonus when everyone who surfs hears the tail, we’ll be the envy of all at Ballina High.
Year ten soon ended and it was time to make a crucial decision. Was I going to leave school and take on an apprenticeship at the shipyard? Something I had not given hardly a thought to. Was I ready to start work? What would that be like? Am I still too young to work. I’m still growing. Pat of me felt like I was still a kid. Not that I’d ever tell anyone. It was all so overwhelming. On the other hand. What would year eleven be like? What subjects would I select. Do I study Physics and Chemistry. I’ve was always told those subjects are very difficult. What should I do? I will have to think about this. School isn’t that bad and I’m finally having a great time. I can always take easy subjects. I like the thought of Biology. Modern history can’t be that difficult. I’m terrible at English but I can study the easy Unit-2a course. I’m alright at Maths and I can take the 2-unit course for that. And then there’s Industrial Arts. That sound good for when I start work. It was set. I’m going on with school. And that was that. Decision made.
That was a load off my mind and so I relaxed and had a great Christmas surfing for the next six weeks. Those days there were always patterns of when the surf was good. Winter was always the best with big southerly storms building up from the Southern Ocean moving up the Eastern seaboard. Great for all the right-hand points and Lennox was one of the best. The wind was always offshore early in the morning because of the difference between the land and the sea temperature. The spring moving into summer was always a slack time for swell. On the other hand, every now and then there would be a major storm somewhere and the swell would pick up overnight. Cyclone season started from Christmas through to March and was usually the time when it flooded. It was always a thing that Christmas day was a day the swell was pumping. I’m not sure why but it just happened that way. On reflection, it was like Huey, the surf God, was shining down on us on that day and sent through the best present of all, pumping waves. This year was my first in Ballina and the swell was huge. Six to Eight feet and a nightmare for me with no experience getting out. Lennox point is particularly challenging. It’s a right-hand point break with this huge vertical cliff soring sixty-five metres straight up. As such, the eroding coastline has forged a unique barrier for the vertical face, with rounded boulders anywhere from meters to less than half a meter in diameter forming a natural revetment into the ocean from about five meters above the high-water mark to the low water mark.
Figure 2277. Lennox Point - youtube.com
The rock bottom extends right out to the back to where the waves break and is somewhat flattened by the infill of sand over the seabed as sand is pushed north along the coastline throughout the year by the southerly swells. This produces a very long consistent surf break running north for about two to three hundred meters. It is consistent but changes throughout the year because of the movement of sand. When a huge swell pumps through from the south, it removes the sand and exposes the natural reef. Over time with the smaller swells the sand gradually refills all the crevices. between the rocks. As it is, this transition or movement of sand, happens over a long period of time, so when the sand is paced just right, the waves pump for weeks.
Figure 2278. The Point pumping - Printerest.com
Small swell, medium swell and large swell. It takes a huge southerly buster to have one great day of surf, but invariably shifts so much sand the process re sets and sometimes, there’s quite a wait for the best rideable waves to return. This brings me back to my what I was saying about paddling out in huge Lennox Point for the first time. It was early Christmas morning in 22976. As usual, Ants would turn up a daybreak with his board at my place. He lived about half a kilometre away just down the hill in Bell Air estate. He was as keen as me when it came to going surfing and we were so well suited as mates with our mutual passion for it. This morning was no different, however knowing the swell was up we had to hitch hike. It was the days when the road to Lennox wound through East Ballina down through Shelly beach and out past Trestles, or more commonly known as Black Head. To get there, we road our push bikes over to the light house shop, dump them there for the day and walk down to the bend in the road at the south end of Shelly. That was about the only place a car could stop if you knew the area. This day, I’m not sure about given it was some time ago, but for the record, I will say we had many mentor surfers in Ballina and there were those that would stop and pick you up and there were those that left you behind. Why I could only imagine, given crowds were all the disappointment in a good surf. That said, anyone who could handle themselves on a wave always drew respect. Picking up a couple of teenagers on the side of the road was all a part of it. If you were good, you wanted everyone to know, without saying anything yourself. I will say, a favourite surfer of my, and ants was of Couse Wayne. He was that calm, quiet style of a man, with nothing to prove. Tall, well built and a very good surfer when the waves were big. He stopped often over those early years when my friends were on push bikes, waiting to get a car. This day he stopped for us, and we parked facing the waves at the Point. Holly mackerel. It was huge. Eight to ten foot I called it. It was a magnificent sight. A dream come true.
Figure 2279. The line up at Lennox - youtube.com
We quickly got our gear out of the car, thanked Wayne for the lift, and headed on down the track to get ready. Boardshorts and sunscreen on, and leg rope connected and checked by pulling it firmly. As if that would be any test, but you do it anyway. A sprint, then run, then walk out to the jump off point as you begin to ponder on the next task of getting off the rocks. The best jump off spot is about equally east of where the set waves broke. Any further and the rocks got bigger, the frontal assault of waves breaking got more direct and anyone who attempted it was taking fate into their own hands.
This spot was where there was slight bend into the land from the front that provided relief from the frontal assault of waves. The smooth boulders were smaller and more tightly packed. You could stand a meter or so above the high-water mark, wait for a set to break with the whitewash getting smaller running into the shore. Then moving as quickly as you can between the wave surges building back up that break on the rocks. You would pick out a prominent rock, race out across as the others as quick as you can, then stand ready with surfboard pointing out, then jumping into the built-up surge wave about to break on you. It was all in the timing. If you waited until the sets ran through, by the time you were halfway out the back, the next set would show up and wash you all the way down the point. This was particularly difficult right on high tide when the surge waves would continually rebuild and break on top of you. That, along with not slipping on the sharp barnacles needed all the skill and balance you could muster in the moment. Something you had to really concentrate to pull off without making a fool of yourself. As it may well be understood, I and many others would not say it wasn’t a thing to be caught on a few occasions over the years. Plenty of scraps and abrasion scars to confirm that.
Figure 2280. Waiting for a break in the sets (surfline.com)
At low tide it was a different event. More a wading exercise to make your way over the never-ending protruding rocks to get out far enough to get some clean water and prevent your fins from hitting. That was all much easy than at high tide, other than for the sea urchins that loomed between the rocks waiting for you to step on them. They were nasty when the spins would sink into your foot. When you tried to dig them out with tweezers, they would break off. Probably because they’re mainly made from calcium. If you got spined it was a matter of taking to your foot with a needle and digging a great big hole in your foot to scrape out all the little spots of spine. It was either that or stop into see the ambulance service on the way home. They always did a great job with this sort of injury. At any one’s call, it was this year that was the real test for me.
My first attempt at eight to ten feet Lennox Point. It was high tide early and there was no stopping us from getting out there.
Figure 2281. High tide at the Point (surfline.com)
Possibly about fifteen minutes studying the timing of the sets, a willing courage to give it a go and Ants already running across the rocks to jump off. It was my time, and I went for it. I must say focus and concentration really pays off. I spotted my jump-in rock, clambered my way over the other rocks as quickly as I could, waiting for the surge wave, then jump. Clink, Clink fins hitting rocks, my chest shifting forward on the board from the clang of fins. Flapping arms, paddling furiously, then finally some clean water. Re-adjust my body back into balance on the board and I was through it. Paddle, paddle as hard as you can from there. Clear water, duck diving whitewash to punch through and then the last fifty meters hoping the hell a set doesn’t show up. A few more dozen paddle strokes and I was out there. You lose some ground washing down the point, but you get into clean water and start the long paddle out the back. It is not so bad but there a slight rip pushing against you makes it a challenge on your way out the back. Once your set in the lineup, it’s time to hassle with the crowd to pick off a wave to ride. The big advantage at the point is there is a wide take-off zone. The big southerly swells push up and wrap into the break resulting in each wave having its own character. The uniform long wall shape, the peak shaped wave sitting up inside, of the wide peak catching all the hustlers out of position. It was experience that provides the ideal take-off position on the day somewhere over about a fifty to a hundred meters of reef. This allows for quite a few surfers jostling for position in the lineup. More surfers can sit inside and wait for the biggest sets breaking wide that usually clean up most of the crowd. Sitting inside offers the chance to catch a screamer all the way through. The best waves of course the long line starting from way out the back and running perfectly all the way through to the end section, where on big days ultimately closed out.