The Boarding Office in Sunshine Coast, Queensland | Cafe

The Boarding Office

Locality: Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Phone: +61 7 5475 0285

Address: Mooloolaba & Nambour Sunshine Coast, QLD, Australia

Website: https://www.theboardingoffice.com.au

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24.01.2022 Fu@ktard keyboard warriors that respond to a surfer losing his life to a shark attack that say Well, it’s their environment and you enter at your own risk. No... empathy for the victim, the family or the surfing community. Take their iPhones off them God, they don’t deserve the privilege of owning one! When you value a shark’s life more than your fellow human, you have some serious issues to address. Australia’s commercial fishing industry has been decimated by over zealous fisheries management and the world’s most extensive marine park zones. It’s illegal for a commercial fisher in Qld to unload shark larger than 1.5 mtrs. Pair that with a greatly reduced commercial fishing industry, tyrannical fisheries management, green zones and marine parks. Add in the fact that our island continent imports 80% of the seafood we consume and grossly under utilises our own resources, while happily importing seafood from 3rd world countries with no fisheries management = a shark problem. Want to argue the point ? Try me See more

24.01.2022 RIP Michael Tomson and nice words PT

24.01.2022 How damm good is this, all the elements of a beautiful happy life!

23.01.2022 Does this count as 3 barrels Holy Shit!

23.01.2022 Oh Dear, nice take off

22.01.2022 Not really a SUP fan but this I’ll pay complete respect too

22.01.2022 We didn’t want to rush to this, RIP Uncle D @derekho1980 others descriptions and superlatives are fitting and deserved. Were pleased to have a little part of you in our World Champions hall, just before @markocchilupo @sunnygarcia @andyironsforever RIP and all the other male professional world champions from PT to @italoferreira Too many Hawaian champions gone @ The Boarding Office

21.01.2022 A great candid share from shaping legend Mike Davis, cool reading. Epic life moments just like the 1000’s his creations inspired with its riders Thanks mate!

21.01.2022 Great perspective

19.01.2022 Sunshine Coast Royalty

19.01.2022 Fine fins ... according to Hayden spoon kneeboard maker Terry McLardy: ``That was a Greenough-design fin, that was the shape he had. And then we started making ...surfboard fins similar, but not as long. He probably didn't need to have them that long.'' Hayden Kenny says: ``Greenough was the bloke, he was the fin guru. He had all these theories on fins and so forth. What he did was, he hung around, he surfed a lot, and I let him experiment with the kneeboard he brought down.'' However Hayden recalls Greenough being such a messy worker that he was usually allowed to work only out the back of the Alexandra Headland factory.

19.01.2022 People ask me, ‘What is the use of Surfing?’ and my answer must at once be, ‘It is of no use.' There is not the slightest prospect of any gain whatsoever. Oh, ...we may learn a little about the behavior of the human body in a water based environment, and possibly medical men may turn our observation to some account for the purposes of story, even Oceanography. But otherwise nothing will come of it. We shall not bring back a single bit of gold or silver, not a gem, nor any coal or iron If you cannot understand that there is something in a Surfer which responds to the challenge of the ocean and goes out to meet it, that the struggle is the struggle of life itself upward and forever upward, then you won’t see why we go. What we get from this adventure is just sheer joy. And joy is, after all, the end of life. We do not live to eat and make money. We eat and make money to be able to live. That is what life means and what life is for. Adapted for fun and personalisation from the words of George Mallory, a mountaineer who led early British expeditions to Mount Everest in the 1920s, on the joy of climbing: Source: Climbing Everest: The Complete Writings of George Mallory and finally thanks @jamesclear for the inspiration in sharing this piece. #propertysurfer #propertysurfing #life #inspiration #georgemallory #mounteverest #ocean #anoceanlife

18.01.2022 Absolutely what it’s all about

17.01.2022 Thrusting! 80’s colour and shape at its best. 8/10 condition Ken Gardner shaped Island Sun No. 481 5’10, swallow tail, double flyers, channel bottom. Into Space #theboardingoffice #islandsunsurfboards #kengardner #norahhead #vintagesurfboards #1980s #thruster #surfboardart #surfboards #theboardingofficemooloolaba #propertysurfer #propertysurfing @ The Boarding Office

17.01.2022 Small Beginnings, Gerry Lopez on his first surf

16.01.2022 The Zuck gets stoked

16.01.2022 This is Pure........ take 5 mins for some perspective and gratitude

15.01.2022 When I arrived in Australia, I had the complete package of board and fin developed for it. We’d take off deep and steep and drop as late as possible and then ho...ok into the bottom turn as hard as we could lay it it at maximum pace and the squirt out of the turn was like being shot out of a cannon and then roll it over on the other rail while still accelerating and screw it back around the other way and back up into the top third of the wave yet again with the same vigor as the first bottom turn; always hooking it back up into that top third of the wave. We were high-energy perpetual-motion machines, milking every wave until it was no more! It was an exciting and fun time to be a surfer. MICHAEL ‘MACKEREL’ PETERSON I was thusly equipped when I met human dynamo, Michael ‘Mackerel’ Peterson in December of 1970 on my first trip to Southeast Queensland. When we pulled up at Kirra Point that morning, the sun was just high enough to illuminate a smooth emerald bay with a school of Spanish mackerel chopping-up outside as empty, cute, back-lit, waist to head-high waves peeled down the point with no one in sight. The waves were so thin and perfect, but I just rolled my eyes and gybed him about the perfect square tubes he’d promised. Danny’s response was a knowing, We’ll crack Burleigh after this but right now it’s ‘Speed’n distance!’ It would be the beginning of my love affair with Queensland’s fabled long and perfect sand points. Challenge thrown down, he switched off the Mini-van and started kicking off his clothes. Speed and distance was a game we’d been playing riding from county to county or what are now post codes to post codes wherever it was applicable, in California, Mexico and Hawaii for as long as we’d known each other, well over a decade and was played by simply taking off as deep as humanly possible and making every section as far as the wave can physically be ridden, driving hard, punching one more bottom-turn that would lead to one more off the lip and another bottom-turn eventually leading to that one last drop where one is forced to straighten-off in the close-out, just beating the lip down before riding straight in to drag a heel mark in the sand, challenging whoever follows to beat it. The wave has to be finished No Kamakazi ending Must be clean A swim disqualifies the rider. And the game had taken on a whole new dimensions in recent months as boards had not only gotten shorter They’d become nearly friction free with the advent of down-railers and this coupled with lower profile fins gave us seemingly endless speed potential Had us charging back up anything that might get us one more drop and maybe one more climb which could lead to one more drop which just might lead to one more climb that’d lead to racing the lip to the bottom on the close out. The ultimate win was busting through the Kurtain (what they now refer to as the ‘Doggie door’) cleanly and riding right up on the sand, meters further into the bay than any previous ride and best yet with your best bud watching and giving you the finger. We’d only been out for a few minutes when this kid showed up on his bike and sat on the guard-rail on the bend in the road and watched us intently for about five minutes obviously deciding whether to get ready for school or come out surfing with us. Surfing with us won. He was in the water with us on the point within minutes on his little board. My first impression was his penetrating stare. Danny’d say later he thought the kid was a little ‘slow in the head’ at first because he wasn’t very friendly or curious like most kids. At any rate, he was pretty intense, all arms and legs, a lot of wiggling and wriggling while energetically ‘ooching’ his sub six-foot round-bottomed little Joe Larkin disc, covering as much ground as he could gyrate. I particularly remember his dark, piercing glare trying to figure out what we were doing as Danny or I’d drag a new heel mark in the sand before jogging back out to the point. After a while, he asked us what we were doing and we explained our game. He was more than a little sorely disappointed when he hadn’t managed to come within thirty meters of even our earliest of heel marks and he was trying hard! I was on my way back to the car after my last ride when the kid comes running up and asks to check out at my down-railer. It was so different to what he’d ever seen, there was nothing in the magazines or anything so all he could do was shake his head in disbelief. Don’t those rails catch? A little Vee in the tail and a long clean entry No problem, I explained. What? What’s entry? The gentle nose lift transition that leads the board up onto the surface instead of bashing whatever chop or whatever is thrown up at you in the act of riding a wave. You know, always allowing the forward part of the board to be faster than the aft. Otherwise you’re always swapping ends and that’s a pretty bad way to eat it. I explained as succinctly as I could. I’m Michael, the kid introduced himself finally offering me a hand. I chuckled, and snapped. No, I’m Michael. I’m older, pointing to my mustache, So I’m Michael And you’re Mackerel! laughing at him, recalling his frenetic energy like the Spaniards we’d seen chopping the bay earlier. No, you’re Mackerel, he growled back. I just laughed and shook my head and howled, YOU’RE MACKEREL! Finishing off with my best wolf call, AAARROOOOO! After a couple of seconds he laughed and capitulated and began his inquisition. What’s with the mustache anyway? I grew it when I was about your age and learned to look like I might just eat someone alive, so the older guys would think twice about hassling me at Rincon, I explained. That cracked him right up. What do you think of my board? he asked showing me his little shooter: A little S-decked, round tailed mid- railer with a thick insensitive fin. Obviously on a different trip than we were, I told him Michael Cundith was shaping a similar length George Greenough hull design for small Rincon that’d probably improve his little disc (a term he really didn’t like much but it was better than Renny’s Tongue Depressor tag) as I suggested that he move the wide-point a bit further ahead which would straighten the mid-ship curve in the plan-shape so that it’d look more like a capsule than a pill. But most importantly, drop the rail in the tail so that when you put your foot on the gas it would squirt like a bar of wet soap The harder you squeeze it The farther it goes instead of suck and and then described what Greenough was doing with his knee boards and Michael Cundith was doing with like length stubs in California and suggested he go and see George down at Byron. (Alby Falzon’s TRACKS cover photo of Michael was taken on the board that came out of that trip to Byron where Michael met George. And once anyone ever talks to George and learns his language and reference points and understands the physics They’re ready to develop their own boards and surfing.) I built the 6’10 x 18 12 yellow Cooper in the August ’71 Tracks feature before Easter which I rode with great success at big Johanna and equally big Lennox Heads with Nat Young in what Derek Hind calls the Lennox Sessions because they were such turning-point watershed moments in board design. Again, I am faced with a big one of those bloody old ‘S’ decked blanks. The next time I saw Michael was at the 1971 Australian Titles in Torquay, Victoria at Easter. Bob Cooper and I were staying with the Queensland State team in Torquay which included Joe Larkin, Terry ‘Weenie’ Baker, Keith Paull, Ricky and Paul Neilsen, Brian ‘Furry’ Austin and of course the juniors Andrew McKinnon who’d just returned from Hawaii, Mackerel Peterson and a young and diminutive Peter Townend. We’d been surfing this peak at Johanna at about six to ten feet that was really drawing a lot of water and smoking like small Sunset with the offshore plumes of spray. A young Mark Warren, Dappa and the rest of the McCoy crew were on their short little twin fins and were finding the going a bit daunting on the heaving double overhead peaks with their looping tail-enders that were as thick as they were high in the final shut down on the beach. Mackerel was waiting on the beach for me when I came in to have a look at the board that allowed me to take-off fifty-feet further inside and squirted like rocket out of bottom turns. I saw the flickering of the light-bulb go on behind his eyes. The board was the yellow, six foot ten that I rode all that winter and eventually sold to a collector in Sydney in 1972 when I went to work at Skipp Surfboards. Every other board besides the one Cooper and I had were round bottom little S-deck disks that the Australian’s had persevered with despite the World Title loss to Seppo Rolf Aurness on a bigger, lower railed board at Johanna the year before. On the way back to Coffs Harbour: Cooper stopped in to see Barry Bennett and dropped me off at Shane’s because Terry Fitzgerald wanted to see what I thought of the board he was taking to Hawaii in a few weeks. It was long and flat, had a huge bellied hull and a soft straight bottom and a deep narrow-based fin Straight out of the dark ages of previous gun design. I laughed aloud and told him he too would be laughed out of the water. What am I going to do? he demanded, panicked. We raced to Bennett’s and he begged Cooper to delay picking me up until late in the afternoon and raced back to Shane’s with the biggest blank we could get. Again The BASTARD blank. I shaped him a seven foot something down railed gun with a clean water entry and the right rails, tail, rocker and fin configuration which was somewhat of a feat because the blanks were about as far from finished product as it’s possible to be: S-Deck, crowned bottom, long flat rocker with longboard volume distribution. When what was required was a long clean entry with the thickness up under the chest and rails that tapered from that wide-point to nose and tail like a foil with rails that were perfect, not too hard not too soft, and the slight Vee was crisp, accentuating the division of the two Vee planing panels with their sharp speed bead release edge at the tail. The fins on these boards were just as important as the shape. Gone were the high aspect narrow based fins of the past. The new fins were a low profile or low aspect, wide- based foils that reduced drag, managed to keep the back at the back where it belonged gave a lot of drive and squirted out of turns as well. He traced my fin on a piece of cardboard after I’d demonstrated how energy is translated into speed by squeezing a dry bar of soap which either sticks to your dry fingers or plops onto the floor and then the same exercise with wet hands and it flies all the way out the door That was the difference between he soft rolled bottoms which seemed to absorb the energy while the harsher, flatter bottoms resisted or pushed back and that in turn converted the more vigorously applied energy put into turns Into speed out of bottom turns. We called it ‘Squirt’. I left Terry to fine sand it at about 5:30 it when Cooper arrived and physically dragged me back into the Bongo van without a good and thorough blow off and then complained all the way to Coffs about the foam dust floating around in the front seat with us. When Terry arrived on the North Shore and met Brewer, Dick thought Terry was a ‘fucking genius’. You’re welcome Tezza. About a week or so later after returning to Coffs after Easter and Bob was a little quiet for work, I was recruited into helping Bobby Newland paint and fit out his Bare Nature surfboard factory in Byron Bay. Danny said to go for it because, I could score a couple early Lennox or Broken Head sessions. The night I arrived at Bobby’s farm, the cows on the farm next door were distressed and lowing because they hadn’t been milked. It was worse the next day and the next. A couple of days of this and the evening weather promised epic Lennox: So Kingsley ‘Knackers’ Kernovski and I loaded up his Kombi camped on the point. We awoke to six to ten feet and smoking Lennox and we were the first on it. I will never forget that day. After a treacherous launch Knackers and I paddled further up and around the headland and sought that first gem to break the ice. We’d only arrived at what I assumed was out-side when Keith Paull launched successfully. He was paddling out when I took my first wave, which was well over ten-feet to bottom turn and squirt up under the lip to sight down the longest curl line I’d ever seen! The off-shore breeze had this thing smoking and hanging for fifty yards as I climbed up into it and began to drive. Keith told me later, Your eyes were big as dinner plates when you saw how long that section was! With the proximity of those big black boulders that constitute the beach or lack there of, I just kept turning and burning as I raced that smoking freight train down the point. And while Lennox was not as thick and chunky as Rincon at that size It was three times as long, steep, hollow and gnarly And way more demanding. And if you lost your board on the headland Well, let’s say your day is finished and more than likely so is your board. Years later Michael Cundith told me about his first session there in 1972. He’d been staying at Nat’s house at Windy Ridge in one of those flimsy little two-man dome tents when Nat excitedly dragged him out of his sleeping bag, Wakey, wakey! Lennox is breaking! It was six foot and breaking so hard. It’s the hardest breaking wave, I’ve ever seen! And it breaks right on the rocks! Michael explained truthfully. I got washed off the rocks at the launch spot and dragged all the way along the headland hanging on to my board. There was bark off of me everywhere and my board was totaled. And I never even got out! The next morning when Nat slapped my tent, I held the zipper shut, pulled my pillow over my head and told him to go away. That place is just so scary! Back to May 1971: When we came in about mid- morning, we were met by Michael Peterson and Peter Townend, who were on their way back from Bells with Steve Core and his wife Susan who was shooting his movie In Natural Flow. Lennox at that size is pretty daunting, especially if it’s the biggest waves you’ve ever seen and losing your board is not an option, because the rocks that form the point are notorious and this was three years before the invention of the leg rope. So Mackerel asked me to take him out with me, as he’d never surfed Lennox and the board he had was not quite up to it. I still have to chuckle at Steve’s response when I mentioned, You might want to shoot Nat when he gets here from the farm. Because Nat too, was on a down-railer and the kids were on their soft- railed rolled-bottom discs.shooting Michael and Peter Townend on their old style boards at perfect Lennox and poo-poohing Nat and I on our down-railers. The footage that Alby shot of Nat a few weeks later for Morning of the Earth would certainly bear out this faux pax. The biggest surf Michael had been in to date was Johanna and that first session at Lennox Head a few days earlier. The heaviest prior to that was six to eight foot Snapper, Kirra or Burleigh Heads. After Knackers and I’d had a bowl of muesli and a cup of coffee, we took the kids out. I told them both to wait for the last wave of the set, run down over these rocks and sprint paddle for Byron Bay to get wide of the next wave in the massive drift. Mackerel followed me and we got out without getting our hair wet. All I remember of Peter that session was seeing his head punch through the lip of a set wave as he paddled out and the terror on his face as he got sucked back over the falls backwards. Tommy Peterson told me, that Michael had put butter on the nose of Peter’s board. I’d ask Peter about it years later and he said, that wasn’t the case, although Mackerel had done it to him somewhere in their travels. After that session at Lennox, Michael entreated me to come to Queensland and shape him a board exactly like mine, promising me good waves and a place to sleep at his Mum’s while we built it at Joe Larkin’s after I finished at Bare Nature. He’d square everything with Brian ‘Furry’ Austin the factory manager. While we were out surfing the police showed up at Lennox looking for Knackers and I. It seems the lowing cows at Bobby’s next door neighbors was a sign of something a lot more sinister. A mother and father were found shot dead in their beds and their teenage son was missing. We were all suspects. As I was out in the water Knackers volunteered to bring me to the cop shop when I came in. Knacker’s said they were cool and had jokingly called him ‘Killer Kowalski’. They were not so kind to me. I was taken into a back room and roughed up by a couple of big bruiser/thug coppers. The kind of thing you see in the movies. After one of them sat me down and asked my name, a second whacked me in the side of the head with a telephone book and the third punched my rebounding head. All I could see was stars! I didn’t know what’d hit me. Once I’d shaken it off, I did everything in my power to ‘Not’ leap up and respond in kind to at least one of them. Wisest move of my young life as it turns out. Once the coppers had identified me, ‘shown me who was boss’ they cut me loose to hitchhike the five miles back to Bobby’s farm in the dark. What really pissed me off was the fact that they’d already apprehended the son who’d confessed to killing both of his parents, found the gun in a stream and charged him before Knackers and I’d even shown up that afternoon. It was just ‘60’s tough-guy cop stuff. I’d see it again and again: If you were new in town, pulling you over to check your license and then proceeding to routine strip-search your car on the side of the road and leave what had been neatly folded in the back seat and trunk, in a big pile of towels, wetsuits, tools, spare tire, candy bar wrappers, jackets, sunglasses, sweatshirts and whatever else was in there and then driving-off was just par for the course in those suspicious country towns. It was the Tyranny of distance thing Australia is a big, big place and the cars and two-lane ribbons of concrete that meandered up the convoluted coastline were not conducive to speeds above 35-50 MPH, so people tended to not go far when the fact is you have to go so far to go anywhere there. I understood it and learned to take it in my stride. I would laugh my ass off a few months later when I heard that Russell Hughes had broken into the cop shop one night and stole the marijuana plant they had there to identify the plant and smoked it! We surfed Lennox for the next few days and I soon put my first encounter with the ‘Wallopers’ behind me. A few days later Knackers dropped me off at Joe Larkin’s at Kirra with my board, bag and sleeping bag, to shape the board for Mackerel. Furry Austin stowed my stuff in the tea-room and Mackerel whisked me straight into a shaping bay. I was just beginning to attack the ‘Bastard’ blank’s crappy entry while chasing thicknesses on a foot longer blank when Joe Larkin, fag in one hand and ‘tallie’ of beer in the other; burst in and bellowed, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOIN TO THAT BLANK! I very nearly dropped the planer and tried to gnaw my way through the back wall. Unbeknownst to me, Joe Larkin was a great larrikin and practical joker and he and Renny Yater had some history and had even gotten Renny Yater thrown in jail one night in the early sixties and were buds. My showing up meant ‘game on’. Joe and Furry laughed about it for days. But I’d very nearly soiled my undies. Joe and I became great mates and I always loved seeing him. The following accompanying clip illustrates the point of difference in my boards: I wasn’t into the whole publicity thing unIl I met Alby Falzon and John Witzig. They were interested in what we surfer/designer/shapers were doing and recognized the importance of what we did and how we achieved it. Wish I’d bothered to comb my hair for these shots illustrating the difference between my rocker templates with their long entry, dead straight, front foot planing panel and accelerating tail lift and Vee configuration. And while this may seem fundamental now The long entry, dead straight sweet spot and accelerating tail lift was contrary to what Dick Brewer and Co. were advocating. I loved it when guys came in from riding the ‘stiff’ Brewers and then riding mine in the same session and ordered one of their very own. Very satisfying indeed. This is the second or third design artiIcle I wrote for TRACKS. They didn’t want to know what we were building at Coopers but what ‘I’ was building and riding at Coopers. It was the first time I’d been thrust into the spotlight. It took a couple of days to build the board and whenever we’d get it to another stage, we’d be off surfing somewhere. And while I didn’t think about it at the time, he always managed to take me surfing where there was no one to ‘bump’ into, so he could ‘Pump’ me about Hawaii. The biggest surf Michael had been in to date was Johanna and that first session at Lennox Head a few days earlier. The heaviest prior to that was six to eight foot Snapper, Kirra or Burleigh Heads. All I could do was regale him with what I’d seen BK and Gerry doing at their respective breaks of Sunset and Pipeline and the only way to surf any of it was to ‘Charge it’, Wheel around and paddle for it like you really want it No hesitation and get in as early as you can because at fifteen to twenty feet Early is still as late as you can handle. For me, as a young man in a foreign country, it was nice to be taken into a family situation for a few crazy- assed days of family bliss at the Peterson’s. And like me, Mackerel was an older brother and for all of his surf crazedness, he was a good big brother and responsible son around the house. There’d be stuff flying everywhere to get the place in order for when Mum got home from work. I liked that in him. His Mum, Joan, worked all day and his younger brother Tommy, a scrappy little guy with a lot of attitude and chutzpah and who loved challenging his older brother, went to school, on most days I think, and then there was their little sister Dorothy. But like my early surfing years, surfing was really all there was. His bedroom walls were adorned with pictures of Nat Young, easily the best surfer in the world at the time. I’d surfed with the best in the with the world’s best and no one had yet achieved Nat’s ‘Total Animal’ attack in surfing. Mackerel’s life was divided into three distinct zones: There was the life at the beach, the theatrical almost carnival atmosphere of Joe Larkin’s factory with Joe, Brian Furry Austin on baton and planer, Billy Grant on squeegee and then there was the wild-west version of it under the Peterson’s house with Tommy smoking reefer, concocting smoking-hot ding repairs and the odd re-shape while he tried to make sure everything was up to scratch when Mum got home after working all day. The next time I saw Michael, he had a dark smudge on his upper lip. Now, you’re Mackerel! he cackled. From that day on we would both refer to each other as Mackerel. It would be our joke from that point on. Within weeks Mackerel was the hottest kid in Australia; much to the chagrin of the Sydney siders where most of the surfboard factories were and all of the surf media. When I look back, Mackerel even kept me away from his younger brother Tommy, steering me away so he couldn’t get the same answers and information that he’d been pumping me for since my arrival, though I doubt it would have occurred to Tommy because he was younger and couldn’t have had the same questions yet. The day we finished Mackerel’s board, we went to Kirra and launched it by playing ‘Speed’n distance’. And yes, after about ten waves of blasting every single turn as hard as he could, he’d smoked me too. Later that morning, I was sitting on a log watching Mackerel blaze by on a four or five foot wave and put all of that frenetic energy into scintillatingly blistering speed, when this big hand clamped down on my shoulder, FUCK! WHO IS THAT? Wondering if the FBI’d just caught up with me, I tentatively turned to discover Nat Young who, was on his way to Brisbane for something to do with his new house at the farm. Look’s like they’ve finally found my replacement! he chuckled as he dropped down beside me. I was relived, firstly that it wasn’t the FBI and secondly because I thought he might’ve been a bit peeved because I’d lit such a fire under the competition, but my fears were quickly allayed as he confided that he’d had enough weekend contest bullshit and that he and Marilyn were about to start a family when the house was finished on the farm. Danny and I haunted the best point breaks on the East coast on every swell by plotting them on the weather maps that winter and never missed a one. Coffs too had been a good call because we surfed overhead surf most days between big ground swells.

15.01.2022 As seen at Port Macquarie Surfing Museum

14.01.2022 A little bit of surfboard photo art from our Nambour Museum this week, thanks Brad

14.01.2022 Win an epic stick and help a local business

14.01.2022 Awesome news all round and congrats Owen Cavanagh

14.01.2022 When a dog drops in on you......

13.01.2022 Surfing, Music and a Cowboy. Watch for a great great 30min smile. https://youtu.be/eyAlvpv8lys

12.01.2022 Mint Gold A rare bird in many respects. 1980’s unridden thruster Shaped by a World Surfing Champion - Nat Young Fall Line - 6’0 - Tom Carroll type sash spray, colour and style #theboardingoffice #falllinesurfshop #falllinesurfboards #natyoung #robertnatyoung #worldsurfingchampion #thruster #1980s #1980surfboard #vintagesurfboard #vintagesurfboards #rideableart #functionalart #fun @ The Boarding Office

11.01.2022 The waves are on

11.01.2022 Finally got the Surf Museum board up! I had made this several months ago but Covid shut things down on the week we were supposed to put it up. Today it’s up t...o greet everyone that comes to visit the famous Surf World Gold Coast There are so many cool surfboards and history on display there! See more

10.01.2022 11:18 AM This year has been an incredible struggle for all charities, clubs, associations and just about anyone in our community whose main aim is to raise fund...s to help others. For those of you who know me, you know how much I love a raffle. I buy tickets in just about anything. But there is more to it than that. It is the donation to the club that is the most important part. Win or loose, I will always support any club to help them with fundraising, especially at the moment as this year has brought it to a grinding halt. The Board Meeting Surf Charity also felt the pinch of having no money to help kids with disabilities and special needs on The Sunshine Coast. The Board Meeting through our online raffles has successfully raised over $12k this year thanks to our amazing sponsors and supporters. Although Mark and I have been running the raffles and of course bought tickets every week since April, I have not had a win. So yesterday at the Surf, Show and Shine event I did my usual purchase of course not expecting to win and I did not even know my numbers & to my surprise I won the Mitch Surman Electric Lady Surfboard. Completely gobsmacked!! Now I have been a surfer’s wife for 35 years and there is nothing better than a trip to the beach but chilling, fishing and relaxing is more my style. So I have made a decision to donate this very special, beautiful board back to The Charity and Auction it at Legends of Surf Long Lunch with Occy on 30th October. Knowing that every cent raised will help a child and family here on the Sunny Coast. So if you are coming to the Legends Lunch remember all auction items have been donated and to see this gem go to a good home and ride the waves warms my heart.

09.01.2022 Now The Boarding Office isn’t your standard workplace affair. We aren’t at all normal as a Co-Work shared space, a Co-shared office or in old school terms a ser...viced office and nor do we want to be. But it’s not just the Museum of Surfboards that makes us different. Our most secret ingredient is our Receptionist, Security guard and all in one personal trainer, Ember. She gets more comments than the 70’s Gerry Lopez Lighting Bolt’s or Midget Farrelly 60’s logs but today a visitor, Simone Neal put together such a great summary we had to share. Please also make sure to read the follow up comments from Simone that sums up our little girl perfectly. https://www.facebook.com/theboardingoffice/posts/2003532139916137

07.01.2022 Kelia Moniz, Tahiti . . 2016 Photo: Ryan Heywood

07.01.2022 Jesus, who would do this to a craft that provides so much pleasure. A late 80’s Fluro 6’1 Murray Burton @pipedreamsurfboards shape thruster with the ‘Rabibit 360’ logo And a brochure rack of all things, oh the injustice and pain she must have endured Free, roadside and to be Free’d again #theboardingoffice #propertysurfer #propertysurfing #theboardingofficemooloolaba #theboardingofficenambour #theboardingofficeclubhotel #sea #ocean #surfer #surf #servicedoffice #servicedoffices #entrepreneur #entrepreneurlife #worklifebance #coworkingspace #coworking #innovationcentre #sparkbureau #thehivecommunity #vintagesurfboard #vintagesurfboards #restoration @ The Boarding Office

06.01.2022 Great words, a greater message. Thanks for sharing Mike Davis

06.01.2022 It was a real pleasure to add this special piece to our Moolooloaba Museum today. Since returning from the magician beautician that is Mark Surman from MS Surfboards, after a Nose job and skin treatment she’s been hogged at home so I could eyeball her as I walked past the lounge room now though she is now ready to be Ogled by others on display. Research tells us she was shaped by 1964 and 1st World Surfing Champion Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly not long after under the Keyo log...o No. 1512. Beautiful tail and nose blocks, a 1 inch Balsa stringer, rails and fin pointing to the future, with a lovely patina for a 55+ year old lass. Keyo began in 1957 in the back streets of Brookvale on the Northern Beaches of Sydney by Denny Keogh becoming one of the pioneering brands in Australian surf history and a major player in the short board revolution. (That story for another time). The brand is still family run and owned. Headed up by Denny’s son in law, Johnny Gill and his wife Vanessa #theboardingoffice #theboardingofficemooloolaba #keyosurfboards #midgetfarrelly #dennykeogh #vintagesurfboards #propertysurfer #propertysurfing #malibusurfboard #surfing @ The Boarding Office

06.01.2022 We have, another Woody! Perhaps our favourite category of boards although we may say that about all our girls Made in Australia in a brief period between 1956 and 1958 Balsa was Queen and it was beautiful! Check that grain and colour The period was bookended by the Americans arriving for the Olympic Exhibition Carnival on their Balsa ‘Malibu Chips’ after an unsuccessful lobby by the sport to be included as an endorsed Olympic event. They wow’ed the Aussies wit...h their turns on their manoeuvrable 9ft light timber craft when compared to the cumbersome 16ft hardwood framed plywood ‘toothpicks’ ridden by Aussie’s at that time, these were immediately discarded. Sadly, Balsa’s rein was relatively short in Surfing as the mass adoption of foam went on to dominate almost all Surfboards made until today. We have yet to track down the makers backstory, despite a few theories but still no definitive genealogy as yet. #theboardingoffice #theboardingofficemooloolaba #balsa #balsasurfboards #balsasurfboard #1956 #1956surfing #surfaricustomsurfboards #propertysurfer #propertysurfing #vintagesurfboards #vintagesurfboard #timber #functionalart #rideableart #evolutionquiver @ The Boarding Office See more

06.01.2022 Couple little cameos for our most favourite cause on the day that stops the coast surf community x

05.01.2022 NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN There were ten levels of weirdness to closing a museum, enjoyed by thousands of people, temporarily. In the previous 26 years the museum ...had only been closed 26 times, for Christmas day each year. We have some really great pieces of the Australian surfing story on display, that is what we are there for. It is so strange that the place is locked up, the lights are off and people aren’t getting to enjoy what we have to share. We were due to launch a new exhibition First Wave celebrating the genesis of surfing in Victoria in time for Easter. instead that exhibition will be freshly installed when we next open our doors to the public. But that got me thinking about our Simon Anderson Bells tribute . . . That unique collection of boards, all surfed at Big Bells in 1981, the stash of unpublished images from Bells 1977, and Simon’s two Bells trophies will never be seen together in public again. So I thought we should share these images one last time . . . Enjoy! See more

05.01.2022 MANLY FINAL As part of our iso quiz we asked who rode the shortest board in the final of the Manly world championship in 1964. As you can see from this pic Bobb...y Brown's board is significantly shorter than the others. Left to Right Joey Cabell, L.J.Richards, Mick Dooley, Midget, Mike Doyle and Bobby. As you can see triple stringers were big, Mike Doyle's was longer than the rest, and Bobby was riding a punked out hand painted Jackson n Cansdell. Notice Midget wearing the number 2 jersey? We'll talk about that another time . . . See more

04.01.2022 FRANK Frank Beaurepaire is perhaps not a name you would associate with surfing, after all how many surfers do you know have been knighted? As we have detailed p...reviously Frank was a world class swimmer (world record holder when Duke visited in the summer of 1914/15). That Frank and Duke became firm friends is a great story but for us the most significant surfing connection of Frank's is that he recorded the earliest known footage of anyone surfing in Victoria (featured on here a few weeks ago). Frank confessed that he was no great surfer, but here we are 100 years later, grateful for his connections and r.ecording the genesis of surfing in Victoria Thanks Frank! Images (C) courtesy of the National Sports Museum @ the MCG See more

04.01.2022 On predicting the future Two things: We do it all the time. Constantly.... We’re terrible at it. We spend our days guessing how an action will impact the future, and we’re often wrong. And we spend the rest of our days hoping we were right or worried that we weren’t. We try to control the future by telekinesis and anxiety in equal measure. When the future doesn’t cooperate, we spend even more time trying to change the next bit of future so that it ends up more closely matching the future we were hoping for. What if, instead, just for a little while, we simply did our best? And let the future take care of itself. Because even if we don’t fret, the future is still going to take care of itself. All that’s on us is to do our best work. Paying attention to models and the community and the people we serve.

04.01.2022 When you’re deep inside the hole at Pipe and the foamball is coming up and it wants to consume you and lifts you up and your tail is getting all squirrelly, boy oh boy are you dancing. And if you do it right, get up high enough, get a little push from the spit, you can dance right out of there. Every time I’d come out of one of those things, I’d think, ‘Wow, wasn’t I lucky. Wasn’t I privileged to be able to partake in that experience.’ You know Mike Armstrong right.... Lope...z calls him Army, apparently well I definitely didn’t but how is that when, he finished runner up in the first 3 Pipeline Masters then 4th, 5th, 4th. Five years in the top 5! Thanks once again to Matt Warshaw and his Encyclopaedia of Surfing (EOS) for both the endless reference material for the Museum but equally his Sunday emails. The packages of great surfing clips plus the surfing, life and people stories- especially the unknown ones like Amry all this for just $30 a year to anyone, get on board! Text from The Encyclopaedia of Surfing with some excerpts taken from The Surfers Journal August 2013 Photos Jeff Divine #jeffdevine #mikearmstrong #mattwarshaw #encyclopediaofsurfing #eos #theboardingoffice #pipeline #pipelinemasters #northshore #surfinghistory #lightningboltsurfboards @ Sunshine Coast, Queensland