East Coast Discoveries..

Story By Tim Baker

Photos By John Witzig

Bob McTavish and his buddies were so keen to chase down a cyclone swell, driving north from Sydney back in ’62, they refused to stop even for calls of nature. “We had a hole in the floor and you’d push the carpet back and piss through a hole in the floor,” Bob laughs.

This was the golden era of the great east coast road trip, when a new discovery, another classic point break might lie around every bend in the road or at the end of every dirt track.

“The whole road trip thing started in my era. Everyone was in surf clubs and going to one beach, and that kept everyone locked up in the ’50s,” Bob says. “It started in the ’60s. I was at Coolangatta in 1960 and I met Bob Cooper, Laurie Short and Joe Larkin, and they had just driven up from Sydney and they had found Angourie on the way up. I was stoked to meet traveling surfers. I’d done the Noosa to Coolangatta trip but when I met those guys who had driven up from Sydney I thought that was really cool.”

Bob didn’t even own a car until 1965, yet during ’62 and ’63 he reckons he did the run between Sydney and Noosa 24 times.

“I bummed rides all through ’62 and ’63,” he says. “Anyone going north from Sydney I’d bum a ride, and anyone heading south from Noosa I’d bum a ride... I’d shape a bit then go on a trip and have lots of adventures.”

That mad dash north in ’62, as floodwaters rose all around them, still stands as one the most memorable. “John Mantle had a 1948 Ford single skinner, the classic 1960s surf car. Me and John and Russell Hughes were all working for Scott Dillon in Brookvale. There was a cyclone heading down the coast so we all jumped in and headed up to meet it. You had to get ferries across all the rivers in those days, and the floodwaters were rising. We were doing head dips out the side of the cars, all through Maclean we were doing head dips for 20 minutes.”


They caught the last ferry across the mighty Clarence River, near Yamba, before they shut the ferry and the river broke its banks.

Bob and The Pass

Somewhere between the Clarence and Richmond Rivers, traveling 110km per hour in pitch dark they hit waist deep water and aquaplaned for 100 metres before the car gradually slowed and sank. “We had to get out and push the stinking car out of the water, dry out the ignition and then drive on,” Bob remembers.

But the rewards would proved worth it. “We got to Byron Bay at some weird time in the middle of the night, and the next morning the Pass was off its head, just the three of us out, no-one else surfing. We had mental Pass and then moved on to Kirra.”

After 50 years of east coast road trips, that one still sets the benchmark.

These early road trips were Spartan affairs, characterised by little money or provisions and sometimes desperate measures to make ends meet. “A lot of the guys used to milk cars [siphon petrol] to get home. We heard of one gas station that left its pumps unlocked, just south of Taree, and word got around so we’d all stop there to fill up in the middle of the night,” Bob says. “I was a bread and bananas man. In Coffs Harbour every surfer would break off a bunch of bananas on their way through.”

Grom and Dog tagging along

Local bakeries and a few generous fishermen sharing their catch provided the rest of their diet. At Angourie, surfers could stay in an old concrete bunker, a deserted ammunition store left over from the disused quarry, for 20 cents a night. It was overseen by local character Alex Campbell, who called it “Wavers’ Inn,” provided firewood and woke his guests each morning with a surf report.



Bob reckons most of the major surf discoveries were made during that magical five year window from 1960 to ’65. Surfing World founder and pioneer surf movie maker Bob Evans was leading the charge, Bob says, shooting his first films up and down the east coast during 1960 and ’61. Bob Evans’ brother Dick, a bodysurfer, discovered Angourie in 1960, soon making it a mandatory stop-off on any east coast run.
But McTavish wasn’t far behind them. “I was on the road a year or two later. Surfers were few and far between. I found Noosa in ’59 but no-one believed me until about ’63.”

Main Beach - Noosa back in the day

Floodwaters played a part in another of his most memorable surfing experiences, when he was stranded at Noosa during an epic swell and no other surfers could get in. “We had incredible Nationals for 10 days, when the road was blocked due to flooding. I rang Bill Wallace [Bob’s boss at the time] and said, ‘We’re stuck. We can’t get back.’ He said, ‘How’s the surf?’ And we said, ‘Eight foot and perfect,’ and it had been like that for 10 days. Bill closed up his factory and moved to Noosa in ’64 and he’s been there ever since.”

Bob reckons they always thought there’d be many more classic points lying undiscovered along the east coast. “We always thought there would be more Angouries and Crescents. We used to go down every little dirt road, but most of the discoveries were made by ’64 or ’65.”

When Bob eventually settled in Byron Bay in ’68, he and George Greenough took the search one step further when they hired a Cessna and flew from Lismore to Coffs Harbour, scouring the coast for undiscovered breaks. The footage can be seen in Greenough’s classic movie, “Innermost Limits of Pure Fun,” but despite a few prospects no more Angouries were uncovered. Soon after, Bob undertook a similar aerial survey north from Noosa looking for surf and spotted the waves of Double Island Point and Fraser Island, but also “millions of sharks. We stopped counting at 400.”

Noosa

These days, Bob is as enamoured as ever by the east coast road trip, though his tactics have changed somewhat. “Today you’ve just got to look a bit harder. The first thing I look for is uncrowded waves, the second thing is quality,” he explains. “I’ve got beach permits from here to Kempsey Shire, and drive along the beach looking for spots.”

Bob and his wife still head south of Byron most weekends in search of empty waves, and time doesn’t seem to have dulled his sense of adventure. “Heading south from Byron, it’s Hallelujah. We leave Sunday morning, just my wife and I, and come back Tuesday. I still love it, and my wife surfs too. You’ve just got to be a bit careful four-wheel driving on the beach. I nearly got caught by tidal surges north of Port Macquarie a while ago... The dunes were eroding with the swell, and I was going at high speed, having to time it between the sets, to drive on the wet sand but not get caught by the surges. I was freaking, I thought I was going to lose my car. But I still surf heaps of empty waves. It’s still very much alive.”

I am reminded of a conversation I had a while ago with a Gold Coast surfing elder, maligning the lack of adventure among today’s younger generation. “If there isn’t a car park in front of it and a McDonalds across the road, they’re not going to surf it.”

I run this one by Bob. “That’s great,” he laughs. “Keeps the crowd all in one place.”
If I have half the sparkle in my eye, the spring in my step, the infectious energy in my conversation as this man when I am his age, I will know I have lived well.