Local legend Turtle Morris unearthed some old Super 8 footage from way back in the day. Classic stuff from JBay, Seals and all around PE. Yssss, the ballies aren't lying when they say many of our spots were so much better back then. They were. Fence locals will see why Fence is called Fence. Pretty obvious really. Guys used to drive right down onto the beach. A-frame peaks with schweet lil barrels. Pity the sand build-up over the decades has all but killed it. Talking sand - flipping hang, Denvils used to be epic! Freight train rights pumping across the beach and past the wall at McArthurs. Pretty ironic that today it's the unofficial learn-to-surf beach. Avo's also used to have plenty more sand. There's a clip of a solid set that runs past behind Bird rock! Stoked to see the footage included a short snap of Turtle in his helmet. That's why he got dubbed "turtle". Got clonked on the head whilst surfing as a lightie so his dad said he couldn't surf unless he wore a helmet to protect his pip - and Turtle was born! Some kiff skating footage too - the guys used to ride down the stormwater drain at William Moffet. The authorities heard about their exploits after a coupla months, and proceeded to jack hammer sections of the drain to stop the ou's from skating. Municipal muppets. Luckily it was possible to escape the confines of over-zealous officials with a quick trip west to Seals. Dirt roads, no bridge across the Krom - but Full stop was still Full stop, and Turtle gets barreled over it. Would be stoked to get hold of some more old super 8 stuff - so if you're a ballie that has some stuck in a box somewhere - go dig out and give me a yell. Let's get it off film and onto digital, let's not lose any PE surfing heritage. Pollok beach, home to Pipe, was named after the Pollok Hotel that used to stand where the present Summerseas is today – before it became the legendary (and infamous) Summerstrand Hotel. Buildings here dated back to the 1890’s, when the sand dunes were reclaimed and allocated for use of a hotel. The dude who built it came from Scotland, and was called Pollok – so guess what, he named the hotel after himself! And the name of the beach followed.... Pollok was always a popular surfing and bathing beach. The Summerstrand Lifesaving Club has always been a familiar landmark. Favourite chill out spot was right in front of the club, where the ou's used to park their brolley's and hang for the day. Bit of a chick magnet thanks to all the hot lifeguards. Back when lifeguards used to be hot. There used to be plenty of brush fences scattered around the beach - designed to help trap sand. So the whole sand loss thing isn't a new problem at all. Actually, Pollok has suffered from some serious sand loss issues at various times. At one stage the whole beach was reduced to stone - looked a bit like those dodgy rocky beaches in England. Summerstrand Hotel was a favourite hang-out back then. Ou's used to sit on the wall and chirp everyone on the beach and in the water. A favourite possie for after-surf beers that could end up as an all-nighter and the guys going home with as many glasses as they could sneak under their jackets, the odd table and chair even a few attempts were made on the ciggie machine. Summies ended up getting pretty ratty, so it had to get demolished. The building of Summerseas in it's place wasn't without controversy, as no new developments were meant to take place beachside of Marine Drive. But up it went anyway. More issues ensued, when there was a moerse argument about the construction of the walkway in front of it, which finally went up in 2008. Pipe's got a fair bit more developed over the years. But some things never change. It's still the most popular surf spot in town, and it's still the coolest beach to hang out on. Long live Pipe.
Thanks to Peter Schwartz for all the images. All images courtesy of Peter Schwartz Might be good to start by saying that Hobie Beach doesn't officially exist. Well, not on any municipal maps at least. It only picked up the name Hobie Beach in 70's when Hobie Cats became popular and this was the beach they launched at. It's actually officially called Shark Rock beach. Interesting bit of info on the name Shark Rock. It's actually a total misnomer. The rocky outcrop known as Shark Rock upon which the pier was built was so named after the Shark River that empties into the sea at Humewood Beach. However - it isn't actually the Shark river at all. It was the Sark river, so named by the Dutch originally (maybe a distant relative of SuperSport commentator Ashwin Willemse...he's always talking about Sarks!). The English then somehow bastardised it into Shark instead of Sark...and Shark it stayed. Development along this stretch of beach started in 1976, with the construction of Katie's Walk - which is the pathway built along the shore in this area, and still stands today as the walkway running in front of Barneys all along the beachfront up to Pipe. Part of building the walkway was the construction of the wall along the shoreline. This had the effect of destroying the small sand dunes that used to replenish the adjacent beaches. So what happened was all of a sudden rocks started to appear on the beach cos now the sand wasn't getting fed back onto the beach from the dunes. This lead the municipality to recommend Hobie became a boating, not a bathing beach. The municipality then decided they wanted to create a breakwater to try build up the sand a bit and make it safer for the Hobies to launch, so they just went and plonked a whole bunch of concrete blocks out without doing any sort of study on it's possible impacts beforehand. There was plenty opposition to the eye-sore, and it eventually got removed. The Red Windmill was an iconic landmark at Hobie. It was built in the 60's, and was PE's most famous roadhouse at the time. Had the best soft serves you could imagine. And that lil "FLICK YOUR LIGHTS FOR SERVICE" sign on the wall above the menu always had peeps giggling cos the "L" and the "I" in "FLICK" were a bit close together n it looked like "F*CK YOUR LIGHTS FOR SERVICE"! In 1982 the Hobie National were being held in PE, and organisors decided it's be a great idea if they could build a breakwater just off Hobie so that they could make it easier for the guys to launch their cats without getting slammed by the waves. They came up with the doff idea of tying a whole bunch of tyres together and then dragging them just off the backline and anchoring them there. Everyone told em it was a kak idea, and needless to say just before the event a huge east came up and destroyed the tyre breakwall after it'd been floating out there for just 36 hours. Coupla big things went down in 1984. The Hollywood Hotel - a landmark possie which was a surfer hangout back in the day - was demolished. It made way for what today is the apartment block No1 Summerstrand on the corner of 1st Ave. In the same year, the Yacht Clubhouse was built next to the Red Windmill - where it still stands today in the carpark at Hobie. Yet another controversial beachfront saga - as no building was meant to take place on the sea side of Marine Drive. But probably the same then as now, anything goes if you know the right peeps. Hobie beach as we know it today took shape in 1988 - with the building of the new car park, walkways and the start of the construction of Shark Rock Pier. The plan for the pier was to capture sand on the beach to cover what had become a really rocky stretch. And whilst not strictly Hobie - the SugarBush deserves a mention. It was the roadhouse that used to stand on the corner where the Courtyard Hotel is today - opposite the City Lodge. Another favourite haunt for burgers and milkshakes. Nothing beats a roadhouse for a good post surf chow, and PE was lucky to be spoilt for choice back then - with the SugarBush (later known as the Casbah), Red Windmill, Something Good and Sundowners, out at Flat Rocks. Glad we're seeing the return of the Roadhouse era with Something Good being brought back to life. Thanks to Peter Schwartz for all the images.
Paradise is just down the road - and always has been. Ou's raid their piggy banks to get over to Indo, when you could just load up your tent and cabbie and get epic waves 300km east of PE. OK, so there is a lil bit more of a danger factor....sharks (on both land and sea) for one. But what's a trip without a lil adventure? The Kei is a wave garden of note. PE locals like Jonty Hansford, Peter May, Richard Roth, Phil Weddall, Justin Erasmus and Andrew Honey used to make the pilgrimage regularly back in the day, and scored insane waves to themselves. Check out Jonty's shots here. All images Jonty Hansford. Just hover over the image to get control for slideshow - pause & play at your own speed. With all this wonky weather happening it's worth reflecting on the fact that sometimes weird weather systems bring with them some pretty awesome surf conditions. This happened back on the 26 March 1981. A rather innocuous looking cold front made it's way to PE, didn't appear to be anything special to the forecasters. But then things went pear-shaped once it hit PE, and it resulted in floods....and some all-time Baked Beans. How all-time? Well - this lowly surf spot made a full page in the Zag! Don't think a shot from there has ever featured since! Thanks to Jonty Hansford for the article. Above is the article as it ran in the June issue of Zag. Below I've just broken it up into bits so you can read the text and check the pics better.
Mike Mee's an ex-PE local (who’s now a Kiwi) sent in a bunch of cool old shots of PE and Jbay from back in the day. He has some flipping classic tales too. Take a read. Those were the days.....when ou's used to have to surf in rugby jerseys cos there were no wetsuits, you could hitch-hike to Jbay...and camp in ou's car-ports! Just loving that shot of you and your boet thumbing it to Jbay. Run us through the whole hitching thing. That shot was taken on our first JBay camping trip in the school holidays of April 1975. We were hitching from the corner store in the centre of town to Supertubes, as it was quite a long walk with boards. I think I was 14 at the time and Dave was only 12! Amazing how times have changed! We did quite a few hitchhiking trips during school vacations to JBay or Vic Bay , although with boards it was always a bit of a mission. Often we hid the boards behind a fence or tree and when a car stopped, quickly retrieved them and tried to persude the driver to let us sqeeze them in! On one occasion, it took us nearly 3 days to hike back from Vic Bay to PE. No doubt because of the boards, but probably due to looking rather feral, having just spent the week living rough in the bushes across the railway line at Vic Bay. On the first day of hitching home, we only made it to Knysna and had to sleep under a bridge on the outskirts of town. Not that we actually got much sleep! In the middle of the night, some locals started having a fight on the bridge above us, so terrified we crept into the furthest corner ready to flee! Did you used to camp out at Jbay at all? We camped at JBay quite often as school kids, staying in the campground a few times. Often, however, we just camped in the bushes (now houses!) just to the right of Supertubes, as that saved the hassle of hitching or a long walk to the surf every day. Your one shot is of the Jeffries Baai Vakansie Oord! Where was that!? On our first trip to JBay, dad dropped us off at the Jefferies Baai Vakansie Oord, which was on the road to Humansdorp, a few blocks up the hill from the centre of town. Probably a housing estate now? We pitched our tent under clear skies only to be woken by a massive storm that night, which thoroughly drenched everything. Even the labels washed off our tins of food! In fact the old Afrikaaner lady who owned the campground felt so sorry for us, that she upgraded us to a rondavel the next day. In the morning we scrouged some black plastic rubbish bags from the shop and used them to line our wet sleeping bags. A year later, we were bush camping at Supers and after a few days were feeling rather filthy so we decided to sneak into the Oord (as we called it) and have a hot shower. Unfortunately the campground owner, the old Afrikaaner lady, saw us wander in. Midway through our shower, she burst into the mens change room and turned off the hot water. Then she started yelling in Afrikaans " Julle is nie van hier nie," and that she was going to call the police. I tied a towel around my waist and I signaled to Dave, in the next cubicle, that we had better to make a run for it. Unfortunately his gear was in the foyer, so he had to run past the old woman kaalgat! Unluckily for him, she had a leather belt and whipped him a few times as he ran past, trying to retrieve his clothes. She then proceeded to chase us through the camp ground yelling like a banshee. Finally we escaped and Dave managed to put some clothes on! We then hid in the bushes for about an hour as we were worried that the police would find us! On another occasion, a mate's dad said that we could camp under the carport at their JBay beach house near Albatros, as they weren't using it that week. Four of us were dropped off at by one of the dads. Stoked at our relative luxury, we pitched a tent in the carport, gathered some firewood and started a nice braai. Just as we were sitting down to eat our boerewors, a car pulled up and strangely the occupants just sat and stared at us for about 5 minutes. We thought this was a bit weird but then they left so we continued eating our meal. However, twenty minutes later, a cop van and the same car arrived and threatened to arrest us for squatting! We told the cops that we had permission to camp there, which provoked the car driver to start screaming at us in unintelligible Afrikaans! It then dawned on us; we were at the wrong house! After a grovelling apology for our mistake and telling the senior cop that we thought it was Dr Finestone's house, (whom thankfully he knew) he relented. He then pointed out the correct house, also with a white fence and carport, but a bit further down the road. We actually scored some really good surf at Albatross that holiday. JBay obviously got well and truly into your blood, cos there’s a coupla shots there of you and your boet on some really solid surf. What were you guys riding out there? My first JBay board was a 7’ single fin. I think I sold that one to Grant Myrdal, who was a young grom at the time. A year later for a birthday/Christmas present I was given a really cool 6’10 pink double winger, channel bottom, pintail shaped by Larry Levin. (He was always happy to let us watch him shape boards and fixed a few dings for us) A couple of years later the boards got shorter and I got into twin fins and stuck with them ages. I rode a couple of really good Glen D’Arcy designs. Even when thrusters were popular, I stuck with my twins. Dave got into thrusters a lot earlier than me, probably because as a goofy footer, they seemed better suited to backhand on the bigger days. Any memorable sessions out there? Probably that first day of our first surf trip. Thinking about it, we were just kids and it was probably a bit reckless of dad to let us go to JBay on our own. The massive storm front which drenched us the previous night, brought with it surf, which we could hear crashing in the distance. On hiking to Supers, we encountered waves far bigger than we had ever seen before. Although terrified, but spurred on by youthful enthusiasm, we decided to paddle out. After waiting on the rocks for probably 45 minutes, watching unrelenting sets pour through, we finally leapt in. Although swept half way down the point, I finally made it out. Dave, who was only 12 years old at the time, gave a valiant attempt, but didn't quite get there. After 2 hours of sitting miles out and berating myself for being a big wuss, I finally plucked up courage to catch a wave. Or more precisely took off on a huge closeout, got thoroughly beat up and nearly drowned. Some what demoralized, freezing cold and completely knackered, we hitched back to our sodden tent. However, the next day the surf dropped to a clean 4 -6 feet and stayed that way for most of the week. A week later when dad picked us up, we were totally surfed out, but stoked beyond belief, having had the best waves of our lives. From then on every school and university vacation was spent on surf trips up and down the coast. My best ever session at JBay was on a solid 10 ft day and I scored a wave which I will probably remember on my deathbed! Boneyards through to the end of Tubes, with an insane barrel across Impossibles. I didn’t quite make it into Point, probably because my legs were too tried to pump! Although I did see Shaun Tomson make it the whole way through from Boneyards to the end of Point later that day. Who were the crew that used to surf with in PE, and where was your local spot? We started surfing as kids with our dad at Cape Recife Lighthouse. Our first board was his old longboard cut in half with the ends rounded off. As the older brother I got the longer back piece and Dave the shorter front end. His board's fin wasn't put in straight to it and made this weird buzzing sound as it went along! Cape Recife was a good spot to learn, but in this pre-leash era, a bloody long swim to shore if you lost your board. As teenagers, the main crew we used to hang with were, the late Bryan Knowles, Steve McKechnie, Martin Haynes, Dave Collins, & Jason Marais. Pete McAinch came along a little later and we taught him how to surf old school style! We'd drag him out in some quite big waves telling him it was only 4 foot! Rincon was probably our favorite spot as it was often bigger than the other PE breaks and had very few crowds. Although we also surfed Pipe, Avalanche, Millers (when it broke!) were also keen on a lot of the Wildside breaks like Secrets, Lookout, Noordhoek, etc. Our crew was known as the bushmen by some of the guys, as we often made fires on the beach after a surf, a habit from our early pre-wetsuit, rugby jersey era. Love the Pipe crew shot, plenty of legends there. When did that transition from the short boards back to into the longboards again happen? Did the guys ride both, or was it a case of guys trading in the shortboard for the longboard permanently? I found my dad’s old longboard lying under the house in ’85 and just started fooling around on in when the surf was small (quite often in PE!) Steve McKechnie got quite keen on the idea and suddenly all these long boards were being dug out and a sort of longboard revival began. Most of that crew rode both long and short, but a few changed permanently to long boards. Nowdays I am still mainly riding a short board, but enjoy a longboard on smaller days or on fat, slower waves. Despite being a ballie now you’ll still a full-on surf grom – see you did a recent trip to the Ment’s where you guys scored some solid surf! We've actually done Ments for the last four years in a row. Having surfed JBay as good as it gets, it is still my favorite wave, however Rifles, a barrelling right, is a pretty close second. Mentawai surf is ridiculously consistent and of my 40 days there, I’ve only missed 3, due to a broken foot bone! Fin v foot in a wipeout at Hideaways! Being a natural footer, the big sucky lefts like Hideaways, E Bay and the freight train, Nokandui are pretty scary once they get over head high. However my brother Dave, a goofy footer, is in surf heaven on these breaks and is still charging pretty hard. Thus said, he has donated a bit of skin! There are also some pretty cruisy waves like the ever reliable 4 Bobs staight out in front of Kandui resort, as well as a perennial favorite, a mellow left called Beng Beng. You’ve got this Masters of the Mentawaii thing going, what’s that all about? The Masters of Mentawai came off the back of the initial trip my brother and I took in 2009 to celebrate 50th my birthday (and before we got too old and decrepit to do this sort of thing!) We were so stoked after this trip that I jokingly suggested to Dave that since he runs an event company, he should organize an event which would give us an excuse to come back year after year. He thought this was a great idea and so he now hires the whole of Kandui Resort resort for 10 days. The aim is to get a bunch of like-minded, over 40’s surfers together and provide a fun, low stress surf trip with unlimited free surfing and the beauty of escaping the New Zealand winter. So we basically surf non-stop all day, and in the evenings chill out playing guitar, listening to music and watching the daily surf sessions pics, and enjoying the local drop, Bintang. The Mentawai Islands are awesome because they cater to all surfing abilities and being islands, within half an hour of the resort, somewhere is always offshore! So this August (3- 13th) we are back again. We still have some slots open for this trip so if anyone wants to come along, contact James Calver at james@smcevents.co.nz You can also check out Masters of Mentawai page on Facebook for details You’ve even written a book about it? Earlier this year I decided to pull together some of the great footage from 4 years worth of Ments trips into a coffee table book for the guys called, Masters of Mentawai – a surfing odyssey. It took ages to compile, but I am stoked with the outcome, however I don’t think I will be able to retire on the royalties from it! The link for it is: http://www.blurb.com/search/site_search?search=masters+of+mentawai So you moved from the land of the right to the land of the left! NZ is pretty famous for Raglan, but any other decent surf that should get us booking a ticket over? New Zealand has some really good surf and because of the length of coastline, no doubt some undiscovered stuff. In addition to Raglan, my favorite breaks include Shipwrecks Bay (a world class series of left hand points), Whangamata Bar ( mechanical barreling left hand bar), Whangapoua Bar (ditto but a right), Port Waikato Reef and Goat Island Reef. The Taranaki and Gisborne coasts have stacks of quality surf spots. I haven’t surfed the South Island much but the Dunedin region has a lot of surf, but is Cape Town cold! The Upper North Island has similar water temperature to PE, and only a few, well fed, friendly sharks. Other than Raglan and some of the Auckland breaks, crowds aren’t really much of hassle and to be honest, the Kiwis are quite friendly in the water. Far more chilled than our Australian cousins. Last question – you a Bok or a Black?
Still a Bok, but we really need some wins as I have been taking a bit of flack these past few years! Jonty Hansford has some cool stuff in his vintage photo collection, including this copy of a Huisgenoot article on JBay from June 1970!! It was all about the beach squatting surfers that were setting up camp in the bushes on the dunes at Supers. Lighties with an average age of 22 were just pulling in, setting up their tents, and living the dream. Which confused the hang outta the conservative townsfolk! Check out Larry Levin as a 20yr old surf rat in the first pic, together with Robin Mair in their surfboard factory. Robbie Ponting and Ken Freeland, also shapers from back in the day are on pg2. If your Afrikaans is up to speed, you can read the whole article by downloading the pdf below, cos it's a pretty cool insight into the early days at JBay.
Still on my mission to track down old shots of our beachfront and surfing from back in the day. My quest led me to Dr Peter Schwartz, who has the most incredible collection of shots of PE's beachfront from the 70's onwards, plus a quite few from the museum archives There's so many good 'un's that I'll be putting them up on a beach per beach basis. So let's start with Hummies... Thanks for sharing your collection Peter, stoked! Jonty recalls the beach having a lot more sand back in the 70's, with ropes being really close to shore at low tide. It made surfing at high tide a bit of a lotto though. Apparently you just suddenly heard this whooshing sound coming toward you - and you knew it meant it was the rope slicing through the face of the wave. Plenty guys apgot axed by that rope! Musta been funny to see, but not so funny if you were the one getting guillotined! Rumour has it that Barry Heasley was one of the unlucky one's!
Turtle Morris remembers seeing some dude hung out to dry on it - he'd bailed on the wave, and his board ended up on the other side of the rope to him - so he was left dangling by his leash! Ah, those musta been the days! Dig to see more vintage pics - check out the Vintage section here. Cool sh*t just turns up randomly sometimes. I'd bummed a board from Greg Smith a while ago when my electricity went out and I couldn't get into my garage. I dug the board so much I ordered one. Popped round last week to see how the shaping was coming on. Got chatting and ended up discovering Greg had a box full of Jonty Hansford's old surf photo's. Bingo. Another kiff walk down memory lane.....
Got this classic story from Julian Pledger about nearly getting arrested for surfing Hummies back in the day:
"Looking at those old shots of Humewood reminded me of the time we were surfing some real storm stuff and the beach manager called the flying squad to get us out the water! This was after the loudspeaker effort had fallen on deaf ears. It was mid winter, raining with not a soul on the beach and we had these real boere policeman running into the water trying to grab us at the end of every wave(guns and all)! The cable was still attached, running from the pylons across to the small breakwater and you had to watch out that your head was not taken off by it as you surfed past. One of the locals pointed at the No Surfing sign and asked me what the sign meant, I told him I did not know! He kindly pointed out that it was to warn us to watch out for the cable! To avoid being arrested we surfed till dark and paddled in where the Shark Rock pier is today. My car was parked at the back of Humewood and I had two flat tyres - the beach manager really hated us! No sweat, I drove the car into the army camp behind Humewood and pumped the tyres up........now THOSE were the days!" Nice one Julian! John and I also nearly got arrested, must be about 6 years ago at least. Also surfing with no-one on the beach and had ignored the calls to come in. Next thing a police van screams up onto the grass, and this cop runs down onto the beach to wave us out! I was so mad that they would waste a policesman's time with suck kak, that I paddled straight in to tell him he should rather be trying to catch rapists and murderers than harrassing surfers! I made an appointment to see the beach manager the next day, to discuss why we weren't allowed to surf even if no bathers were around. It started the long discussion process which finally culminated in us being given permission to surf there if there was no-one swimming. The deal is now that if they raise that yellow flag with the black circle on it, and hoot the horn/blow their whistles to get us out, then we have to bail. The lifey's are pretty tolerant at letting us continue to surf if peeps are just wading in the shallows - but then use some common sense ou's, and don't ride the wave right to the end and finish off with a closeout manouveur right into the bathers - that's plain dumb - and of course we'll all then get chased out the water. And you'll be amazed at how many ou's do this! And then moan when we get called out. Rather just pull off the wave before the shallows, and at least we'll be able to keep surfing! And if the lifey's call us out and there isn't even a swimmer in sight, it's normally for a good reason. This happened recently, and turns out they were about to have an inspector come to review their Blue Flag status...which means no surfers allowed. So they not just being arsey, they saving their ass! Hummies is one of our best waves by far, so let's co-operate with the lifegaurds, and make sure we're allowed to keep surfing there. As if they have too much hassle with guys not coming in when they're called in, then they'll just ban surfing outright. Kak idea! Photo's by Malcolm Turner |
AuthorMillerslocal Archives
July 2021
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