Shapers are the innovators and craftsmen behind the history of our sport. Without them there’d be no surfing. Sydney, 1960s. Photo courtesy of Phil Jarratt.
When you’re old time doesn’t stand still anywhere, not even in the tube, if you could bend over enough to get in one.
The years fly by in a nano-second, and in the 18 months since Mark Warren, Shaun Cairns and I recorded the first interview sessions with the Australian surfboard industry pioneers for Men of Wood and Foam, age has taken its toll on a few of them, and I know we got it in the can just in the nick of time.
The film focuses on the “Brookvale Six” – Gordon Woods, Bill Wallace, Scott Dillon, Barry Bennett, Greg McDonagh and Denny Keogh – who range in age from 91 (Gordon) down to 79 (Denny), but there also many valuable contributions from contemporaries in the Brookvale factories of the early 1960s, such as Joe Larkin, Bob Cooper, Shane Stedman, Bob McTavish, Nat Young and the late Midget Farrelly. (When I started out on this project I had no idea that only Midget, at the younger end of the spectrum, would not live to see the film.)
Gordon Woods Surfboards. Photo courtesy of Phil Jarratt
In the months since we completed filming, Billy Wallace’s immobility finally forced him into a nursing home, then a broken hip as the result of a fall saw him hospitalized for some weeks. When I gave him a private screening of the final cut in his room (his Wallace Surfboards sign hanging above the bed) he laughed at all of his own jokes and some of Scotty and Gordon’s.
When I phoned a Coffs Harbour nursing home to arrange a visit with Scott Dillon, his chief nurse told me that Scotty, who suffers from dementia, was a bit depressed. “Do you reckon we could get him a blank and set him up a little shaping bay?” the nurse asked. With a lot of help from shaper friends, I arrived at the home a week later with a brand new blank, which we set up in a little portico outside Scotty’s window. A couple of weeks later Steve phoned to tell me that Scott had been shaping every day and was talking about going back into business!
Scotty’s best line in the film is, “You can’t even get a beer in the nursing home these days”, so I smuggled in a couple of beers for the screening in the common room. We sat and guzzled happily while passing nursing staff turned a blind eye, and occasionally marveled at the youthful images of Scott on the screen.
Bluey Mayes group shot. Photo courtesy of Phil Jarratt
The other pioneers are faring well, although Greg McDonagh and Joe Larkin have not been so robust of late. Australia’s king of foam blanks, Barry Bennett, meanwhile, refuses to acknowledge his 85 years and continues to get up pre-dawn, drive to the factory and blow foam.
I was just a kid when I traveled up to Brookvale from the New South Wales South Coast to buy my first new surfboard off the rack at Woodsie’s. Gordon himself came out and helped me choose a poo brown Nat Young model. It was the beginning of a rite of passage that lasted a decade, until the industry decentralized.
Now I’m getting old and the Brookvale Six are ancient, but those memories are etched in me like measurements burnt on a balsa stringer. The Brookvale pioneers turned our generation on to the possibilities of modern surfing, and for that they deserve to be remembered and revered.
I hope our film helps that process.
Men of Wood & Foam makes its US premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, screening 8pm Tuesday, February 7 at Metro 1, and 10.20am Thursday, February 9 at Fiesta 2. Tickets available at box office.
