Good Aussie True Story.

General Discussion
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Bill, a budding young father and shaper, rents a house from a foreign  couple in an quiet area in Sydney, theres a few houses around but its essentially a small 1970's industrial area. He moves in with his family, pays his rent to Maria and Luigi whove gone back to the mother country, and Bill does a few boards out the back.

As his board building business develops,he extends the little shed in the back yard that over the next few years fills the yard.

 His family move out as the business thrives but he continues to pay the peppercorn rent because the distant owners are happy to keep the same tenant and theyre never coming back.And Bill likes an affordable factory.

 Now several decades on the house is now quite different to what it once was..., theres been a million boards made, a million parties held in the house. Concrete covers every square inch of land and shipping containers fill the property as all manners of new surfcraft, repairs and construction ideas have been in progress for about 40 years. There are office areas with the ceilings falling in, but computers fill the same rooms. Meetings are held to discuss next years clothing ranges and overseas shipments of product lines and samples are piled high in every dry nook and cranny.Theres a surfboard showroom but no toilet. Well none that any woman would use.

 The floor is carpetless, florboard gone, drywall removed and reshaped with obvious surfform marks, no doors, steel mesh and iron screwed over every window and in the roof a family of possums live happily.

 The construction area is now an EPA lovefest, whats run into the drains when it rains for so many years probably glows in the dark and theres definately no sign if life, even flies dont land there. Drums of unknown chemicals have piled up and rusted out and theres not an actual clean place to sit or stand from mailbox to back fence.

 All in all, its the perfect guy place, devoted to work and function, highly successful and dirty.

 Luigi calls and hes bringing his bride back to live in their little cottage and tend the gentle back gardens they planted all those years ago. They ask if Bill and his family could move out in 4 weeks , if thats OK?

 

 It really happened just a month ago.

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someone isn’t getting the security deposit back.

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I wonder if Luigi wants to learn how to surf?

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Hey Brett,

Make sure you find out when Luigi is turning up so you can capture his reaction on video to share with us.

I hope Luigi isn’t from a powerful family in Sicily.

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Mate Mate Mate !!!!!!!!!!!!!

This just cracks me to the core old mate, brings back some long forgotten memories !!!

32 something years ago I'm heading to South Africa to surf this new place called "J-Bay" and decide  to get a board from an Aussie guy whose surfed it.

Track down his details  go to  an industrial area  in Sydney called Brookvale and pull up in front of a fibro home /shack 

Knock on the front door loud enough to have  to get over the noise of a screaming electric planner.

Young foam dust covered guy with Afro, sun bleached hair answers the  door, (Terry Fitzgerald)

My intention are put to him, he graciuosly guides me into his shaping bay, (converted front bedroom of house) for discussions on most suitable equipment for the trip

The rest is history, check out "Beleive DVD" for shot of house and how it all got  started there "classic" .......

On ya  Surffoils ..... shit might be same house your on about (lol)

W

 

 

 

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If it’s the house that Shane Steadman was working in it’s been knocked down, anyone know what happened there?

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BINGO !!

 All those manufacturers in that area worked out of old homes. Terry Fitz, Simon Anderson and  Shane too. In the day there were McDonaugh, Keyo, Bennetts (still there with Barry at the helm), Aloha with Greg Clough, and a ton of others, all within a beer bottles throw of each other in Brookvale. There was a line of surfboard factories with shiny showrooms out the front in Winbourne Street. Now theres brothels, car repairers and dirty concrete factories blocking out the sunshine that once was.

 I think his operations have moved (cough)"off-shore".

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Oh, and the block of land has been razed, not a single solitary item to show that the liveliest surf factory and home to an amazing man for 40 years ever existed.

 Not even a blade of grass ( not that any could ever grow there)

 

 Its good to hear that others have good memories of the old days in Brooky.

 Cuttlefish, I reckon Luigi and Maria mustve both died on the spot, theres no other realistic scenario that wouldve happened.

Foamhead, I remember seeing Terry wandering around Brooky in the 70's~80's?, in and out of the Hot Buttered factory just off Winbourne Road. Derek Hynd used to be there a lot too. I remember talking to him about his revolutionary "Slingshot" rubber front foot deck strap for extra radical reos. Terry was always a bit distant.

 Midgets been a mainstay and local identity in the area forever, he still? "sweeps' for the local Freshwater girls boat crew and was often seen in a big white van with either a 16ft wooden 'pick' or a windsurfer on top.

 Simon Anderson was in Brooky when he came out with the Thruster. I remember him looking either terse or tired. But he was always approachable and quietly capable, like a glacier, nothing seemed beyond him.

 Terry and Simon were part of a very , VERY small band of pros who shaped their own boards, MR was another. Dont think there were any others. Funny how those 3 went on to have a real careers with their own labels instead of becoming reps or labourers.

 How many do that now ?

Marsh, you must be local, care to meet ?

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    Howzit surffoils, Back in the 60's/70's Russel Surfboards "The Brothhood Glassing" Factory was on 16th street in Hunt.Bch about 2 or 3 blocks from PCH. The place was like a bee hive with so many workers.

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Hey Foils...I guessed you were refering to Shanes. I remember a relatively recent photo with signage on a housefront like you don't get away with anymore. So it's gone the way of HB and Energy...

 Absent landlord and no rent increase? Gimmee that!

I never worked there but had the dubious "pleasure" of doing a stint at Bennett, where time stood still. If any of the youngsters want to know what naked ladies looked like in the 70's, go visit the porno-walls of the Bennett finish-coat room.

 

Josh

www.joshdowlingshape.com

 

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Jeeeeeeze mate I thought I'd be pretty close .....

I got some blanks at Midgets the other day and always take a slow drive thru the "Brooky"  to fire up the spirit

Can still remember Terry's boys (toddlers at the time) running riot, I always found Terry to be fully full on and focused / driven to a point of seperation ........ always racing something around in his head, somewhere else but in the present

Damn, some 35 years ago I'd sweep Bennets place out ( for nothing) just to get a glimps of who was in his shaping bays tearing foam apart ...... the names I could drop now

I'd walk back to Harbord and call into all the shaping houses thru Brooky ...... frigen Golden, Bitch'n dayzzzzzzzzzzzz I tell ya !!

OH S**T now I'm getting all emotional and teary

Anywayzz Catch ya

W

PS One name and shaper that don't mentioned much is  "Col Smith-Morning Star" remember him guy's Derrrrrrrr!!

His Twinny's were the bomb, should have kept mine

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great stuff

 

  was it bill [?or barry?] bennett or are you not allowed to say , because of the luigi friends from sicily visits

 

  i too fondly remember brookvale …i surfed harbord and manly and use to check out the factories on my way to visiting my brother simon in newport , avalon , bilgola , dee why , over the years 75-82…

 

   cheeers for the funny true story

 

  ben

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Hey Ben'sta....

Yeah it was Bazza B !!!!! (lol)

I can't help myself but I gunna drop  another name, .......... even remember a younger sandy coloured, full head of hair "Bob McTavish" haunting the place

S**T done it now .... although I probably reminded him of the days he had a full of hair (lol)

See ya old mate

W

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Think surfoils is talking about the house Shane Steadman and friends worked out of for 40 years+, a lot of history there.  I’m ok with Shane retiring and getting his designs made where ever possible, the dudes a f@rkin legend.

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You mean to tell us you can get away with this type of shit down there?  That’s unfrickenbelievable.  The owner never  bothered to check their property or have someone check their property?  And, some board builders turned it into an industrial center?  Destroyed the property?  And, that’s an alright thing to do as long as you pay your rent?  I don’t get it. Will there be any restitution to the owners of the property?  It sounds like everyone had a good time and all.  Made some money.  But, to f…k up someone’s property?  Even if they’re dip shit owners?  Did the owners do something to make the guy angry? Just wondering. Mike

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Yeah I was, but there were so many different places and people around then.  A lot of makers have moved up the road to Mona Vale.

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The thing about it is that if the surrounding neighborhood did evolve into a bunch of rundown commercial and industrial uses the old retired couple wouldn’t have liked living there anyway.   Surfboard shops and auto body/paint shops put a lot of chemicals and dust into the air, not to mention the noise factor. Add in some adult entertainment venues and you end up with noise and pollution of one type or another 24/7.  

Maybe it was time for the shaping operation to move on anyway, but failing that maybe the smarter thing to do would have been to leave that workshop use in place and have the shaper buy them a small cottage in an outlying quiet residential neighborhood.  

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Kind of sounds like what has happened in Honolulu around the Kakaako and Ala Moana areas. Houses and open land turn into small industrial sites, so you have these old houses bordered by car shops and all kinds of small businesses that make a big mess. Then the small strip bars come in because all the hard working men like to have a drink and look at pretty naked girls dancing around. Then Walmart comes in and buys the whole block and a hundred small businesses are kicked out for one mega retailer selling cheap junk made in china. When they started building the Walmart complex, they found that it was a toxic site from all the years of being home to car shops and all sorts of industrial shops. Took a lot of time and money to clean it up. 

Back in the 60’s and early 70’s the area we grew up surfing, Oneula Beach in Ewa had 5 1-acre beach front lots and across the street the lots were much larger farm lots. There were a couple of chicken/egg farms, a pig farm, and who knows what back there. The lot across from Shark Country was leased by a family named Tanaka, and they were part of the family that ran a small Mom and Pop store on the corner of Ft Weaver Rd. and Papipi Rd. 

Isaac Tanaka had a surfboard factory in an old quonset hut in the back. My first real boards were all made by Isaac Tanaka. I used to go over to the shop during the summer months and hang out watching him make boards. His good friend George Kaholokua would come over and also make boards there. About the time I graduated from high school Isaac moved to the Big Island, and I haven’t seen him since. George passed away some time ago. I really liked the boards I got from Isaac, I think his boards were the first boards I saw with the color airbrushed onto the foam. 

Tanaka store was torn down many years ago to widen Ft Weaver Rd. and now there’s a 7-11 at the intersection. Today, those farm lots have been replaced with very expensive homes, and there’s probably more than a couple dozen homes on each lot. Eventually there will many thousands of homes on the land once occupied by a dozen or so families and a sugar plantation. And there’s a giant hole they’ve dug in the earth to create a marina that will eventually destroy one of the better waves in Oneula, a place known as the cove.  

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