From balsa to Bell’s, WA’s ultimate board room

It’s fair to say the WA Surf Gallery isn’t your typical museum.

First, it’s in a winery — Aravina Estate. Though appropriately enough, that’s in Yallingup.

Second, the gallery is a king wave of surfing memorabilia and collection of “sticks” which threatens to wipe out the unwary visitor — in a good way.

WASG is officially the State’s first surfing museum. It opened on December 2, 2017 as a joint initiative between Surfing WA, Aravina Estate and, crucially, nearly the entire WA surfing community, who for the last nine years have loaned or donated key items within the collection while sharing their own incredible stories.

“The gallery (comprises) donations from all around Western Australia, and it’s just West Australian,” says Bill Gibson. “That’s what’s so special to me about this place. It belongs to the public.”

Bill – one of three “historical heavies” at the gallery’s heart — is himself a veritable walking museum. He’s a legendary surfboard shaper, restorer and lifetime member of the Margaret River Boardriders Club, Surfing WA, and the Indian Ocean Longboard Club.

Still a competitive surfer today, Bill admits his personal “quiver” is so large he’s stopped counting, and he lovingly ensures every vintage board on display can tell its own tale.

Bill’s fellow surf historians are Jim King and Mick Marlin.

A life member of City Beach Board Club and Surfing WA, Jim started surfing in the mid-1960s. Fear of losing this history inspired him to co-write the book Surfing Down South and manage the website of the same name.

“Prior to us starting down here, there was no (surf) history in WA. It wasn’t recorded anywhere,” Jim says.

Today, Jim’s work ensures these stories are archived by the State Library for future generations.

Mick is a photographer and founding member of the North Narrabeen Boardriders Club who moved west and became embedded in the local scene. A life member of both the Indian Ocean Longboard Club and Surfing WA, he’s spent years documenting the “Malibu revival” and the rise of local legends.

“If it’s not there, it’s lost,” Mick says. “The old guys will die out and all their history will be lost, and all the young kids who are coming up today, they won’t learn about that history.”

It might surprise you to know I’m not devoid of knowledge of such history, having been a kneeboarder back in the day while hanging out with those who preferred to ride a board standing up. I even looked quite fetching in a wetsuit.

So it was with great pleasure that I was able to spend a leisurely hour wandering through the WASG during a recent visit to Aravina Estate, paddling out through decades of rare memorabilia from roughly the 1940s to the 2000s.

One of the great features of the gallery is its easy-to-read design: hanging from the roof are boards signposting which decade is the subject of the exhibits below it.

This enables you to follow the technical transition from the 16-foot “toothpick” boards of the 1940s to the hollow plywood Okanuis from 1958, eventually ending up at the high-performance thrusters which put WA on the map. Bill highlights the evolution of fins in particular, from “old boards with D fins” to “twin fins, bonza tails and thrusters”.

Among the photographs on the walls and free-standing panels are real “the way we were” items such as the photos featuring the old wooden change rooms at Yallingup, and surf film reels that are no more.

It’s these kinds of stories that movies and magazines such as Surfer and Surfing World, which Mick has donated to the gallery, used to tell before the advent of social media and the internet.

“Once a year there would be a surf movie would come through town,” he says. “And that was the only way you learnt how to surf and how to advance your surfing.”

One of the greatest contributions to the gallery’s evolution has arguably been a focus on diversity, especially the role of women in the sport.

For example, in 2019 curator Thea McDonald-Lee mounted the groundbreaking exhibition WA Women in Surfing, showcasing stories, trophies, memorabilia and surfboards from generations of WA women surfers.

In the gallery, you can still see Albany-born surfer Jodie Cooper’s 1987 Bell’s Beach trophy. Jodie was winning major events at Sunset Beach in Hawaii way before the era of equal pay or big sponsorships. “These girls used to battle,” Jim says. “They’re top surfers and top people, too.”

Then there’s Flick Palmateer, a former WA State champion and professional big wave rider. On display is the 10-foot “big gun” she rode at the WSL Women’s Big Wave Invitational at Pe’ahi (Jaws) in Hawaii in 2017.

The board broke in half after Flick “went over the falls”, thus serving as a reminder of the courage of WA’s female surfers. It’s a legacy that continues with the next generation, including local “rippers” like Bronte Macaulay and the Hardy sisters, Willow and Olive.

What about WASG’s “crown jewels”?

For Bill, the “Holy Grail” is a circa 1968 Hawke Tracker. The 8ft 6in board belongs to the Hawke family and remains one of Bill’s personal favourites not least because “the Hawke family kind of let me ride it”.

Jim likes Jennie Cordingley’s 1958 8ft 2in plywood Okanui board. Built by her husband Colin and his brother Rex in their parents’ backyard in Mosman Park, the board features the original Cordingley Bros boat builders logo — a piece of history on loan courtesy of Mike Singleton.

Enthusiasts will find among the gallery’s boards the quirky and the experimental. Take, for example, Johnny Budge’s 1957 homemade board made from balsawood which he bought from Boans department store in Perth. Or Alex “Alfy” Cater’s early foil board from Hawaii, complete with a heavy steel base and boots still bolted to the deck.

The gallery’s location could be seen as a nod to the historical intersection of two industries. Bill remembers the 1970s as a pivotal era when wave surfing coincided with winemaking.

“Two things happened in the 70s,” he says. “They planted grapes, which gave us a job, because there was nothing to do other than milk cows, or cart hay.”

This allowed surfers to work as “stick pickers” or grape pickers in the morning and hit the breaks in the afternoon. “The wine has evolved: world-class; so did the surfing: world-class,” Bill says.

In 2022, the WASG won the surf culture award at the Australian Surfing Awards on the Gold Coast. The award recognised the team as the group that “best captures and explores a quintessential aspect of Australian surfing culture”.

At the same ceremony, Surfing WA CEO and “linchpin” of the gallery Mark Lane was honoured with the Peter Troy lifetime achievement award.

Today, WASG continues to feature exhibitions on professionals, amateurs, and those surfing with disabilities. In 2018, it ran an exhibition on the Margaret River Pro and its impact on the region.

In 2022, it collaborated with enthusiasts to produce a specialised kneeboard exhibition.

Yet the curators are only too aware that while boards and photos are essential, the backstory is what brings them to life. To ensure these stories aren’t lost when pioneers “fall off the perch”, the team collaborate on captions and social media storytelling.

Mick also manages the WASG Facebook page, sharing photos and anecdotes, while Jim publishes two stories a week on the Surfing Down South website. They even make videos, interviewing pioneers like Len Hawke.

“We do our best,” Jim says. “It’s a living thing.”

fact file

+ The WA Surf Gallery is at 61 Thornton Road, Yallingup (within Aravina Estate).

+ It’s open Wednesday to Sunday from 10am-5pm.

+ Entry is free but donations to help maintain and process new memorabilia are welcome.