MEMORIES OF WRECK BAY AND BLACK ROCK

Raymond Fredrick ‘Gus’ Ardler is a Dharawal and Wodi Wodi man who grew up in the village at Wreck Bay. As a kid he’d look across Summercloud and watch the first guys from Nowra and Wollongong who’d driven down to surf the peak off Shelley Point. It was secret treasure, it’s location closely guarded. For Ray and his Koori mates, it was something far deeper. Ray led the first mob of local surfers, their connection to the land extending out to the waves of what would soon be known as Black Rock. One of the first areas on the Australian coast recognised officially as Indigenous land, has, in time, also become the spiritual home of Aboriginal surfing in Australia. Ray shared his memories of those early days with Dean Dampney.

Ray ‘Gus’ Ardler: “I first started surfing out there when I was eighteen or nineteen. We used to go out on these little foam boards, called Coolites. When we got smashed, the board would come up in bits and pieces – so that was the end of that. Before that we used to go down to Caves Beach. There’d be a mob of us, you know. We’d go down there and when the guys out there surfing lost their boards we’d take ‘em back out. That got us interested in trying it. They’d give us a loan of their boards for 15 minutes or half an hour to have a go. It took us a very long time before we even tried to go out there [to Pipe] on surfboards.

“The first guy to surf Pipe from home was this guy from La Perouse who married one of the ladies from The Community. His mum came from Nambucca Heads. Him and one of his cousins were one of the first to surf it on nine and eight-foot boards. His name was Doug Whaddy. They were the first to surf it. We all came later.

“One of my cousins got a Bob McTavish board. I didn’t have a board back then but one of my first cousins, one of the rangers, he came out looking for me one day and he says, ‘Get in the Jeep, I want to show you something.’ We went around to Green Patch – that’s a camping area with a righthander off the rocks. It goes from out near Bristol Point and comes all the way into the beach. I went over and my eyes almost popped out of my head. I thought, what! I couldn’t believe it. There has to be a really strong southeast swell swinging around that point. I went over and got me cousin and said, ‘Can I have a loan of your board?’

“When I first started surfing I didn’t have any surfboards. My mum, she seen how keen I was, so she went into town and into a couple of the record shops, and they had a few surfboards in there. I seen this one and I liked it. Mum got it for me. When I went out surfing it was making this funny noise. Woody was out there one day – Geoff Woodham – and he came down to the rocks, picked my board up, picked up a rock and used it to sharpen off the back of my fin. ‘You should try that, brother,’ he said.

“When I got the courage up to start surfing Black Rock in the seventies or late seventies, it was a bit scary at the time because there were no legropes, so if you lost your board you rolled up the rocks. There’d be dings in it everywhere by the time you got it, or it’d float out into the middle of the bay, cause there used to be a strong current when it got bigger. Your board would float out to the middle of Summercloud Bay. When I first surfed it, all that point was covered in seaweed. When you used to get done on the righthander, you’d pull the seaweed away and you’d see where you put your foot in case you stepped on a sea egg.

“But when we all got out there and we all walked into the water together,” remembers Ray Ardler, “that was heaven for us.” Photo Mick McCormack

“There were 22 of us. A couple of guys on kneeboards, but mainly we were on stand-up boards, you know. Me and Steve Williams were two of the standouts in the day. Terry Richardson gave us a big rap in his book. There was another young guy who surfed with us, and he had a style like MR – you know, like Mark Richards – and I thought to myself, if he keeps it up, he might be our first Koori guy to go into the pro stuff. But he sadly passed away too young. His name was John Ardler. He was a rello but a distant one.

“I’d get the shits with Steve Williams because he could surf Pipe backhand and forehand. He could get a barrel on the left on his forehand and then do the same on the right, and then do the same switchfoot on his backhand. I was natural. Going left, I used to grab my outside rail with my left hand. I realised that would get me further back in the barrel. That was the way I done it. Out of all of us, there were only five or six goofies.

“With surfers that came there and influenced us, Terry Richardson was one of ‘em. I really became good friends with Richo over the years, me and him. He was an animal in the water. He could sit out there for five hours straight some days. I was in Wollongong Hospital last year and I get this phone call, and I’m thinking, who the hell are you? And he says, ‘It’s me, Richo.’ And I said, ‘How’d you know I was up here?’ He says, ‘I got my ways! It’s been too long, brother. We’ve got to get together and have a talk and reminisce about our days out there.’

“And umm, who else was there… Paul Brooks from Wollongong, yeah ‘Dirty Face’. Then one day I got to surf and sit in the water next to one of my all-time idols – Shaun Tomson from South Africa. Yep, just sitting there next to him. There’s lots of guys. The brothers from Vincentia, the Clout brothers. And you know Owen Wright and Tyler Wright? Well, their dad, Rob used to surf with me. We grew up out there, so that was good. There were a couple of other guys. There was Col Cheadle from Culburra. He was a good surfer. Timmy Gehlhaar, he’d come down from Wollongong. These guys would come early in the morning and knock on my window, wake me up so I’d keep them company out the point. The more we surfed with these guys, the better we got.

“When there was a crowd out there, everyone in the water would know we were coming, ‘cause there’d be a heap of dogs coming before us. They’d say, ‘Here they come!’ We just looked across [from the Wreck Bay village] – if there was a wave outside, then another one, then we’d all just go. We all went together. A lot of the time there’d be about ten of us that would go out. Some days we’d surfed that long that we’d be coming home, and it’d be dark. We couldn’t even see where we were going along the bush track.

“I found it really disturbing when I first surfed. There was a lot of racism then. You’d paddle out and a lot of blokes would look at you going, ‘What the hell is this guy doing out here?’ They wouldn’t talk to ya. These guys would come from all over the place, and you’d see them just sprint down the rocks and jump in the water, just to get in the surf. And as soon as they get in the surf, they’re looking for their first wave and I thought, you don’t wanna do that to us. You gotta respect us first before you come out here and start clowning around and doing stupid stuff like that. I found that all the locals from here to Gerringong and Wollongong, they’d always sit down there and talk to us. And then when they found out that I surfed with Richo and Brooksy and all them, people would just move aside and sit on the shoulder. Steve [Williams] used to get very loud when people would come out and try and drop in on you. He’d be singing out to them and telling them to fuck off. If there was someone getting hassled, we’d just paddle over to the guy and we’d just tell him what.

“I couldn’t handle the crowds that well, but I made a lot of friends through surfing and that helped me out a lot because I didn’t like to talk all the time. But once I got to know all these guys and who they were, we’d get to town and used to play touch football against them and play footy, so we were always in touch. But at first, I just held back, taking it all in and just watching everybody else. Other times I used to sit out there in the water for hours looking for someone to come around the corner to keep me company. Some days I’d get out, have a rest and get back out there. People used to come around and sit there on the rocks and just watch us.

“At home, you know it works off a southerly swell and you get the nor’-easter? Then when the easterly comes across the wind just opens up the righthanders that good. So, we knew what swell and what wind to go. We’d see how far out they’d be breaking, and we’d know. And you know when you get a big tide and the current kind of comes across? Well, we could tell when it was working properly because the suds off the bloody waves they’d be going across the bay. That’s when you’d know it was really pumping.

“With boards, I’ve never ridden anything under seven foot. Richard Futcher was a shaper for Skipp Surfboards in Wollongong. He used to shape me some boards, and he’d come with brand new boards and say, ‘Hey, just try it.’ Yeah, I was very lucky with that. I was also lucky cause my brother-in-law, he used to make surfboards for Woody Surfboards, and Barry Taylor had a shed in town in South Nowra. The Husky guys – Pure Soul – they made me a couple of boards too.

“I remember one year, one of my best mates, he came down from Chinderah from up there in Tweed Heads. He came down and come out one day, and you know when you get an eclipse? The water was just silver, and you had to put your hands up over your eyes when you’re paddling otherwise you got really bad headaches. And we surfed it six-to-eight foot that day. That was one of the standout surfs I’ve ever had out there.

“It became a National Park there in the nineties. They made a track all the way around to King Georges Head. That made it a lot easier for guys to come, because at first, they had to walk around the rocks. We wouldn’t show them our track. It just takes you up along the top of the high rocks. You know, when I first started out, there were a few guys that would come around into the mission and park their car at the cemetery, then walk down to the rocks and paddle from the cemetery across to Pipe. There was no way I’d do that. We used to walk all the time. If someone was going out in a fishing boat, we’d get them to drop us off by the point, but we mainly walked around there.

“I was 26 when I moved into town [to Nowra]. My mother-in-law used to drive a Baker truck and she’d go out to Husky, and she used to drop me off at the Vincentia crossroads and I’d hitch a ride from there [to Wreck Bay]. I’d still surf but after a while I just couldn’t be bothered.

“After our mob there was a couple of guys with boards but most just didn’t worry about it. Anthony Roberts and Todd, his brother. You know, Jeff Williams and all them. They were the next ones after us, but then after that, that was it. Like, Nicky Carter still surfs today and Jeff Williams, they still surf out there today. Johnny, he died. Steve Williams, he died. Heart attack. Anthony Roberts, he was another goofy. He died on the football field. There was another guy, Woody Carter, he passed away. They were the main four that passed away on us, but yeah everyone else is still there, you know. A lot of them just fell by the wayside. Kenny Dann was seeing one of my cousins, but he went back to WA. There was him and a few others. We used to have a few Koori guys come down from Gerringong and Shellharbour and that way.

“They’re all into boogieboards now. One young guy rides a surfboard then he jumps on his boogieboard when he gets sick of standing up. My young grandson, he’s a really good bodyboard surfer. They seem to enjoy it. Some of the tricks you see them do… like my young grandson, he gets up there and he’s doing 360s off the lip, but he gets pissed off with it after a while. I wish he’d stayed with it; he could have made a name for himself. Morgan Brown… Morgs still gets out there a bit. He’s mentoring all the young ones. You always see him. My other grandson gets out there whenever he feels like it. There’s another young fella who gets out there, Tereki, he’s six-foot something and can do amazing things on his boogieboard. He’s one of Doug Whaddy’s grandsons.

“There’d be a lot of sacred sites there. My older sister, she had a good feel on what was sacred and everything else out there. Even Black Rock in our culture, you know how on the beach they call ‘em ‘middens’ where you get a lot of seashells and things? Pipe, up the last beach there is just loaded with ‘em. Now they’re doing regeneration out there. They’ve got a young group out there that are planting trees and doing the track stuff and learning more about the culture and the history of the place.

“A lot of people come around on and off with cameras, but you didn’t really get to know ‘em. There was Mick McCormack. Him and another guy – Nat, maybe – who used to come down with his kneeboard and he’d remind me of an ewok. He’s coming around the corner and he’s got his wetsuit hanging off him, his camera and everything else. And I’m thinking, how the hell did he carry that around from the boat ramp? Someone else done a big heap of photos of me and Steve, and his daughter gave me a loan of them. I had them for nearly two years. They’d be wondering if I was ever going to give them back. I’m going to go down to… that place down downtown with all the computers and everything? Officeworks, yeah… I’m going to go down there and see what they charge to print ‘em.

“In Nowra there’s a building in town and it’s named after my mum. It’s the Aboriginal Medical Service. She was one of the co-founders of it and there’s a lot of other elders with her. But out the front, someone’s taken a picture of Pipe and put it all in one big photo.

“It’s just Pipe. It was a dream come true for a lot of us. Because, you know, we’d see all these other guys come out, come down and go out, surfers. And we’d just sit down and dream of surfing the spot and having enough guts to get out there and try it. We lost a few brothers along the way. Every time I go out there now, I sit in the cemetery, and I sit beside my mum and just look across the point. Because every time I look across the point, I can see us all in the water enjoying ourselves. We’d laugh out there and carry on like lunatics.

“I done a poem when I was at TAFE and the teacher was like, ‘What do you like? What do youse do? Is there something you wanna try?’ And I came home to the Mission and I say, ‘They want us to do a poem, what am I gonna write about?’ And so I wrote this poem about Pipe. When I went back to the English teacher, she gave me 40 out of 40 for it. It’s been a trip down memory lane. Every time I go there now, I go down to the cemetery. It’s the most peaceful place. I feel like just laying around and just looking at the surf and listening to the wind and just sitting there looking across the bay. It just brings back that many memories. But when we all got out there and we all walked into the water together, when we walked into the water, that was heaven for us. There’s a lot of memories out there. Everywhere you looked there’s memories of all the boys.”