Wayne Dale Interview Part One...
Alan and I recently sat down with Wayne to reminisce about his early days shaping surfboards in South Australia with John Arnold, Malcolm Lock and his friendship with Wayne Lynch. Today Wayne works his magic with wood and creates beautiful works of art and utility. Part Two on its way...
How Wayne discovered Surfing
"As a young man my Father would take us water skiing up the Murray River. I was a proficient water skier in the summer and in the winter a District grade Hockey player. When I worked as a panel beater in Dad’s crash repair spray painting business, one of the young employees was a Glenelg lifesaver who surfed. He would always say to me, Surfing was better than water skiing… You need a bloody boat to tow you along, you should be surfing all that needs is nature and a surfboard it’s much more fulfilling. After numerous times of hearing this I made arrangements to meet him out by the Patawalonga entrance where they surfed wind waves on the northern side. We went down there with a 10 foot Malibu surfboard and I had my first attempt at surfing.
What happened next was during my annual holidays, I thought I wouldn't mind seriously trying surfing with a couple of other mates. My Dad knew people at Dunlop who made Dunlop Pacific Surfboards, a pop out surfboard. The boards were only 9 foot 6 long. Everybody was riding 10 foot plus at the time. I bought one of these boards and drove to Port Lincoln where I seriously practised and learnt to surf at Sleaford Bay. We stayed there for more than a week camping in a tent. We began by trying to paddle out at Sleaford Bay, I reckon it was half way through the week before we actually paddled out to the back. The surf was big and by the end of the week I’d get out the back and ride a green wave in and that was the start of it.
When I started surfing down the coast, they’d say that a 9 foot 6 surf board is a bit short. Everybody was riding 10 foot 6 or 11 foot boards so I thought it would be good for me to try one, give it a go. With that in mind I went and bought a McDonagh McDooley board. That surfboard had a high-density foam stringer and rails that were a different construction idea. When they put this foam on the rails and shaped it the resulting rails on the surfboard came out much thinner than normal. Everyone else was riding full round rails and I was riding a more tapered rail shape. It was a very good surfboard that most probably developed the way I surfed from that time on, good nose riding, good release and great speed, definitely behaved a little different.
I surfed with 3 of my brothers who would come down surfing with me, one of my brothers Barry was very radical and imaginative when surfing, he would imagine surfing upside down and doing 360s before anyone else had even thought of it and the second youngest Terry was also a very accomplished surfer.
We had a holiday house at Aldinga Beach and used to go down every weekend and surf Gull Rock in the morning and then we'd drive to Middleton for a surf in the afternoon. The only other people down here surfing were the Nurrangawi Board riders. They surfed the south coast every weekend, and wouldn’t venture anywhere else. We’d often be the only guys from Adelaide down there on most weekends with the Nurrangawi Board riders at Middleton, Surfers, the Dump wherever there was a good wave.
The start of my surfing career was when the next generation of surfers started to evolve. A lot of the first guys, the real originals, were mainly from the surf lifesaving clubs in the early days. People like Jimmy Miller, Peter Baker, Don Burford and Bruce Keelan just to name a few guys I can remember from that era, along with of course John Arnold.
I would get Don Burford to make my surfboards and I'd go down to Don Burford’s shop at Glenelg and watch him shape the board. I would ask Don to move the widest point forward of centre. I’d already started thinking how to get what I’d wanted in a shape, I needed to get the widest point forward. Don was reluctant to change and wouldn’t change as much as I would have liked. I then came up with the idea, when one of my brothers Graham, wanted a new surfboard so I bought a surfboard kit and shaped the surfboard I wanted Don to make for me, for my brother. When we were down surfing one day, Malcolm Lock happened to see the surfboard I made for my brother and liked what he saw and before I knew it, I received an invitation to go and shape for John Arnold. I was a Panel Beater at the time, about 20 years old and you wouldn't call me an experienced surfer at the time I started shaping, but I had the inquisitive mind. I was thinking about surfing waves better all the time. I started working part-time, shaping a few boards for JA and at the same time I was still working for my father. I was the eldest of seven, five boys and two girls. My father probably thought I would take over the business, but unfortunately for him surfing caught my interest. Within 3 or 4 months of part-time with JA, I was offered a full-time shaping position and left the panel beating. That was 1967.
I first met Wayne Lynch (nick named Fish) when I traveled to Victoria, and he befriended us, he was such a young kid, and was already a good surfer and went on to win many Victorian Championships and other competitions. He was recognised as a radical innovative goofy foot, there wasn’t too many other surfers around at that time who could just do unbelievable things on waves as he did. It all started when I drove him back from Lorne by invitation to meet JA. We’d already known Wayne from several surf trips to Lorne. I offered to drive him back for the initial contact with JA where they discussed a sponsorship package. This meant he would regularly visit Adelaide. That’s when I recall Wayne Lynch on one of his visits to Victor Harbor saying, ‘I’m not gonna surf Middleton that Dribbleton again where’s the better waves around here?' we spoke of Waitpinga and Parsons beaches, he’d say let’s go. We’d be thinking what are we going to do when we get there? Waitpinga wasn’t really a place anyone would go to in that era when I started because some of the early guys got smashed around there so badly. Surfers only ever went there when they looked out at Twin Rocks off to the left of Granite Island and saw a little tiny bit of white water and considered checking the conditions at Waitpinga or Parsons for a surf, but they all had a bit of the fear factor. Andrew (Arab) McCardle was the one often talked about, having been pulled out of the water blue after a heavy wipe-out. He was so close to drowning out there. It just put the fear up them because they were riding boards that weren’t easy to ride in that sort of surf.
The history was it’s such a fierce wave compared to where they normally surfed and the equipment didn’t handle it like it does now. So, in the end, when Wayne Lynch visited the first place, he wanted to go was Waitpinga it didn’t matter what the swell looked like, he’d go to Waitpinga. That started us surfing Waitpinga a lot, just my group at first then many others followed. A rejuvenation of surfing Waitpinga came from Wayne Lynch. We also introduced him to Yorke Peninsula and Eyre Peninsula and he became very fond of both great coastlines and their surf breaks.
I started shaping surfboards when they were 10 foot plus long and then Wayne Lynch came on board, he wanted them more manoeuverable so we built shorter and shorter boards and before we knew it, we were surfing 5 foot 6 boards. I can remember on one particular occasion I went over to Wayne Lynch’s place at Lorne into his father's shed and we built 5 foot 6 boards and I’d bring the templates back to Adelaide and that would be the current Wayne Lynch model.
On another occasion while over at Lorne, I met Ted Spencer, George Greenough, Charlie Bartlett and the famous Bells beach local Peter Troy all surfing at Bells on a big swell over several days, what an experience. George Greenough was riding a knee board spoon and air mats as well at Bells and Winki Pop. Ted Spencer had the short bull nose board that was designed on the lines of GG’s spoon. It had a very flat bottom and the rails lifted up to more central rails a full nose a wide diamond back but they were only 5 foot 6 long. That was the start of the era where everybody got down to 5 foot 6 boards and then things settled down and they went back out to 6 foot and then just fluctuated to the types of boards each individual wanted.
George had a lot of influence on the guys of that era because they would watch and think, wow can you do that on a wave?! He went out at Winki pop on a mat and he was making sections that we couldn’t make on surfboards. It was just his ability of how to ride a wave and where the speed is, how to control it, amazing. I’m sure the theory was, they wanted to do on a surfboard what he was doing on a knee board. They thought, let's make a board similar so that we can stand on it, and do what Greenough is doing, you could possibly manage the same manoeuvres, but on a surf board.
John Arnold closed down his surfboard manufacturing and after a short break I was lucky to commence working for Don Burford.
I haven’t been in touch with John for 30 -40 years. I was talking to Wayne Lynch just a week ago and John Arnold called in and saw him at Byron and he was just over the moon about the visit. He had been wanting to talk with JA for a long time.
I moved down south to Victor Harbor in 1973 to make my own name surfboards. It was an uncomfortable decision as I had looked after Don Buford’s Shop when Don went to the USA. On his return he had his heart set on me managing his shop while he made Surfboard Blanks but I had to tell him I was leaving and shifting down south to Victor Harbor. This plan I had in place well before he left on his trip which I did not want to mess up before he left. It shattered his plans for a little while; I was pleased it did not impede his future business ambitions.
The fact that in my early days I had Wayne Lynch in the camp to work and talk with to toss ideas around with and Malcolm Lock was not far away with great ideas as well. Wayne was fanatical about plan and rail shape as well as the fin shape, foil, size and the position on surfboards. You would start thinking about it and start understanding about how it all worked together then putting some of his ideas into practice out in the water and what a difference it made to a surfboard. What a grounding for surfboard design and manufacture for me.
When I got to making surf boards here at Victor Harbor in 1973, I made specific boards for riding this part of the coast. Even when I was working for John Arnold and Don Burford, I still had those theories that I know we had to have boards that actually generated their own speed on the local flat faced waves unlike East Coast boards that needed to control the speed that you’ve already got from steeper and faster waves. One board has to create speed and one not create speed but control the speed you’ve naturally got.
I could fine tune a fin on a surfboard and make it work better, and could watch a guy surf and know what’s wrong with it, and in turn would say, I could fix it for you. Wayne Lynch taught me the skills, he’s a technician and he had an influence over the whole of Australia and the world. Surfers have told me that when they got boards from me back in that era. Every time, it worked and when they got one from other surfboard makers only one out of five or one out of four would work better than their last board. They couldn’t get consistent boards. I was making boards that could ride these waves but if you were good enough to ride those boards on these waves you could still go to Waitpinga, Yorke’s and Caves and ride well until it got too big. So, when you got to the bigger waves that’s when you would have too much speed and you couldn’t control it again. It’s that time when surfers chose to have 2 boards. I could make boards designed for surfing the bigger waves and I believe my theories still stand up today, I must have been pretty well on the right track if it’s still somewhat applies today.
Unlike today's boards that are mainly mass-produced models, in those early days you had a really close relationship with your shaper. There is still an artisan element with some shapers and surfers today but it is nothing like it used to be. "
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Wayne took up a career designing and building golf courses in later years and has now retired. He is an accomplished wood turner and can often be seen working the wood and selling his beautiful creations around the Encounter Coast artisan events and galleries.
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more to come.... stay tuned