Pristine Wilderness in Yamba
What follows is the kind of story more often read in the mainstream news. It's the story of a cultural treasure that's been forgotten and then found. They pop up every year or so and we wonder about their improbability.
You know how it goes, an original Van Gogh is found in an attic, a demo tape of the Beatles Rubber Soul bought at a garage sale, or a deceased estate reveals Shakespeare's First Folio.
So how about a mint condition Wilderness, shaped 48 years ago, found in the rafters? High art from surfing's Romantic period.
Wilderness, for those unaware, was the board label during the shortboard revolution. Started in Santa Barbara by George Greenough and Michael Cundith, the label crossed the ditch with George Greenough and began operations near Angourie in 1969.
Greenough lit the wick to the shortboard revolution and the best minds of his generation circled around the flame. You can tick them off: McTavish, Greenough, Chris Brock, Baddy Treloar, the Keyes brothers, Brad Mayes, all of them served time at Wilderness.
So what's the history behind this one? It was found in the rafters in a house at Palmers Channel, near where the original Wilderness factory was located, then lived in a shipping container for a while before being "cleaned up and given much admiration" by its current owner. The owner recently took it to show Baddy and Rob Walters.
At this point I'll hand the microphone to Rob...
"The condition dictated that it had probably only been surfed on a handful of occasions and appeared to have never kissed the rocks. So when was it made? There were no details written on the blank, so the only clues were the shape and the decal."
"As far as we can figure this board was probably one of the first boards shaped under the Australian Wilderness logo. Local heads date the logo as '69."
"At first Dave [Baddy] thought '68, but that was then revised to probably winter '69. The brains trust seem to recall that Bob McTavish moved to the Yamba, Angourie, Palmers Channel area in early '69. Greenough also visited mid '69 and the Wilderness name was enabled in Australia shortly thereafter by Gary and Terry Keyes along with Chris Brock."
"So who shaped it?"
"95% Brocky, 5% Bob or Gary. Probably..."
"It's in beautiful condition for 48 years old. Almost perfect condition. There are no legrope plugs or holes, and the only damage is several rail shatters likely from moving the board around during the past almost-fifty years."
"It's a perfect link in the rapid evolution and quickly changing design of surfboards at the time."
It would also be a very valuable board on the vintage surfboard market. Scott Bass who runs the California Gold auctions says the criteria for collectable boards consists of just three things: “Provenance, pedigree, and condition.” And this Wilderness ticks off all three with ease.
Whatever the owner chooses to do with it, it's heartening to know that cultural treasures are still being found.
Go and check the rafters, people. Or the basement, or the attic...
(All photos Rob Walters)
Comments
How's the hull on that thing?! It's like a kayak.
In a way it's the 1969 equivalent of a banana board. Length wasn't the only factor in the shortboard revolution, vee bottoms were also a part of the breakthrough. In the ensuing experiments, length was dropped and deep vees sculpted into the design - each aspect was taken past it's limits to the point it inhibited performance.
The same could be said of Webber pushing the limits of rocker beyond what was functional then working his way back.
Greenough's Velo notwithstanding, I've not seen a board with more vee than that so this could represent the apogee for vee.
Have to agree Stu although have you ever had your hands on a wayne lynch" involvement "? I think these boards took rocker and vee to the limit same era just not as refined as a "short board. This is a cool link regarding the involvement http://www.theinertia.com/surf/the-involvement-dream-bindy-revisits-wayn...
Love the S deck!
Christ that thing is wild...with its worth it will probably never see saltwater again but it really needs to replicated to the mm and surf tested.
Plenty of nose rocker, but bugger all in the tail. Would be a very interesting ride. It's almost like a supersized version of the MP board from Morning of the Earth, the one he was riding when he did the iconic cutback at Kirra.
Mike Cundith started Wilderness surfboards in Santa barbara, with Richie West soon joining him after both quit from the Morey-Pope factory, according to Cundith because they moved it inland from C Street. Cundith borrowed some money from his mum and Wilderness was born in a small factory by Sandspit.
Greenough wasn't involved directly in the business, despite being the "godfather" of the brand and Cundith crediting George with the dna for the design.
It's a bit of a mischaracterization to call that forward hull of the board a V. To Cundith and others who wanted to copy the design and lines from Greenoughs Velo kneeboards that forward hull shape was described as a "bowl".
Really, Ted Spencer was the only one who completely made a transition from the short Greenough kneeboards to a similar design stand-up board.
McTavish and Brock and others quickly dispensed with that forward "bowl" entry.
Richie West still making surfboards at Sawtell.
The "White Kite" was the Ted Spencer design. Hare Krishna Ted, if you are still out there!
Did anyone video Baddy when he first sighted that board. I can just imagine how excited he would have been. Saw the post on Insta Rob.
Would've been a laugh. Rob's written account:
"I could hear his voice and he was excited. No-one can mistake Baddy's mega boom voice, especially when he's excited. He was yelling to my neighbour, but my curiosity got the better of me and I had to see what was going on. First thought was a monster fish. Not quite, but it was an exciting piece of gear he held under his arm."
Cant believe board design has moved past this point.......taking rolled vee/hull/bowl to its limits...and beyond...side view is seriously weird.Probably worth a small fortune.
A classic S deck. A classic board and geez that would got have got the Anga blokes going ... great to see. A fantastic example of the evolution of boards in the era.
Had an old 6' S deck in the mid 70's. It didn't at the time, nor since, hold any fond surfing memories for me with the way it went; IMO I thought they were a pig of a thing to ride. Then again, my mates reckon I still can't ride after all this time anyway. So I can't join in with those here waxing lyrical about them.... sorry, I just can't.......
They were a pig of a thing to ride for most, but they were also part of the journey. The board above is 7 foot long and has a rolled bottom its entire length. No vee, not on this one anyhows. Not long after, chines were introduced to this same hull design, a three to four inch wide flat running under the board from the rail edge, from the nose back a third where they vanished. Brocky, Robert Conneel(e)y and the Keyes brothers surfed them well. Then, probably with Ted's influence, they shortened the whole thing by 2 feet. Rolled bottoms, vee bottoms, flat bottoms, rolled decks, flat decks, s-decks, vees, concaves, deep fins, deep, deep fins, rigid glass fins, flexible glass fins, square rails, round rails, tucked under edges, square tails, round tails, diamond tails, pin tails, in any variety of width, 7'6", 4'9", 6'11" ..... and it went on. Anything was possible in any combination. They didn't know what would work, and if it didn't work, they modified it. If it did work, they modified it anyway, to make it work better. Surfboard design for the few years at the end of the 60's and start of the 70's was constantly changing. And it was bloody exciting.
So Freddie I'm with you, re waxing lyrical about this type of board as far as a surfcraft to have suited most punters capabilities. For me it was and still would be a pig of a thing to ride, but as far as a piece of almost 50 year old surfboard HISTORY is concerned, it's an immaculate remnant of all those years ago of events that occurred in my own backyard. It's part of a still working time machine.
Yeh poppy, no argument at all from me. As a side note, your description of the spontaneous and highly reactionary designing taking place actually had the same effect on me in a private and personal way.
The pig of a board that that was this particular board, almost caused me as a young fella to give up surfing before it had actually got going. But on reflection now, there were 2 wonderful outcomes.
The first was, even back then, my experiences on that board fed my young unknowledgable brain to recognise that the design elements of this board somehow were all wrong. My dissatisfaction prompted me to look around at other boards from a design point of view without knowing anything about the subject matter; but more from a visualising whether the design elements of the boards, to my eye, would flow and work with the curves of a wave. This spawned my life-long fascination with board design (still wouldn't say I technically know too much about it now tho).
The second was the visual discovery at my local breaks in my early 20's of one local shaper's boards that rode very differently to all the other boards out there. When you sat on the beach and watched the action, you could distinctly tell the few guys who were riding this particular label, because their boards behaved so effortlessly, fluidly and went to places on the wave that no other boards could at that time. Each of these guys, to me, were on boards that performed beautifully - that's the only word I can describe it. Of course, I went and bought one of these boards, and have happily only ever surfed them ever since for 30+ years. The shaper went on to acquire a loyal national and international reputation.
So a lot of good eventually flowed from the terrible experiences I had with that pig of a board S deck!
Damn, Rob...
"They didn't know what would work, and if it didn't work, they modified it. If it did work, they modified it anyway, to make it work better."
"It's part of a still working time machine."
Just wonderful. Next time I'll let you write the whole thing!
Freddie and co., as Rob so eloquently put it, no-one thinks the performance of this board has contemporary relevance, but it's an integral part of surfing's timeline. We couldn't get here without first going there.
It's also symbolic of a very special time in Australia's, and more specifically Yamba's, history.
S deck's went shit /go shit.Not to mention stuffing your back as well.Had the outline right but needed work on the bottom and foil.Great piece of history but as a performance based assessment up there with the worse.
Believe me there were much worse boards than that around at the time. Boards had gone from 9ft down to less than 6ft then back up over 7ft in the space of a couple of years. If you had offered me that board at that time I would have grabbed it for sure. The fin and fin placement look exactly right for that style of board. Remember too that it was for Angourie which is not a race down the line kind of wave so it would have been surfed from the tail in and around the pocket.
That thing is like the proverbial missing link. I came across one with pretty well identical design features a while back. Quite a bit shorter at 5'6" x 20". Hard down railer, dead flat and straight (no rocker) behind the keel nose. Domed deck and 4" thick at the stringer. WEDGE in Gothic script on the deck is the decal. Is this the same mob named above doing further tinkering or the product of others operating at the time?
Wedge - Sth African...?
Maybe. Before Indo opened up it was a time when there was quite a bit of traffic between the surfing communities in Sth Africa and Australia.
i took a new wilderness 5'8'' to california in '69. it had the kicked nose and a wide,12 or 14'' tail, it was only glassed with 4 oz. so it was easy to ding, lots of deck depressions. it was a total potato chip but it went really well.
i got thru maroubra boy steve saunders. travelled calif. with good mate graham cassidy and we surfed swamis,encinitas, san diego, rincon and el capitan[santa barbara].
it ended its days in hawaii in '70.
A pleasure to see , a blast from my past. had myself a few wilderness and hayden chinned hull boards, they also made a flex tail, but once again the boards were only ever suited to Angourie, the hull supposedly making the steep Anga take off more doable at the time. were really made at the time when guys were drift surfing some still suffering longboard flash backs beautiful waves nice bottom turn , cover up, and look as shit cool as you could doing it. Funny I always remember the first thing you did when you brought a wilderness or hayden board from Robert conneallys bondi shop was to get it home and tune the fin. this entailed sanding off the gloss or filler coat on the fin and showing the progressive glass layers, also making the fin more flexable. a lot of us at bondi rode those boards as being made by one of our local mates brad mayes but in reality I think the guys at the beach surfing Mc Coys round nose round tail boards were having more fun and surfing at a better level through those years. All said and done it was one of lifes great pleasures to be part of a that era and seeing that board for me is such a wonderful memory ,maybe not the mona lisa, but at the moment I reckon my smiles better than hers.
Forget the rest, I just want to see a pic of Walt riding it at solid spooks, or a nice big rolled bottom turn at the point..now that would be fun to see.
Me too. I reckon it'd spit him off real quick. Rolled bottom into a full hull nose and the S-deck accompanied by curved, no edge rails would have the young bloke winding up the windows real quick I reckon.
From Chris Brock:
"Most of the readers comments are somewhat off the mark about these boards. I am pretty sure I shaped this board because of the lead in rocker and the pinch on the centre of the rail, plus the roll is stopped toward the centre to tail. This is the thing most of the people who tried to imitate hulls did wrong.
The first hull I ever shaped I rolled it too far back on the rail, while surfing I would put it on rail and it would just stay there, so I ripped all the glass off it and reshaped it. That is the board I am riding in the second half of the 'Inner Most Limits' at Pippy beach and Angourie. It was Country Soul in those days before Wilderness. These boards were the first steps that led to the tri-plane flex tail I'm riding in 'Morning of the Earth' and a few rides in the newly resurfaced Paul Witzig underground movie 'Animals'.
The most important thing you had to have to ride these boards was the correct surfing technique. At this time just after mals, a lot of surfers who had been riding mals had their torso facing forward and not to the wave with the front foot across the board, this kept the body weight more centred on the board allowing you to surf these boards which a lot of people didn't jerry to in those days and that's why they couldn't surf them and said they didn't work. I myself had to change my stance because I had the torso forward from years on mals doing drop knee turns, nose riding and rail to rail bicycle stance.
Our main inspiration to build these boards was Greenough's ability to turn and trim off the one point over the fin, cutting out jumping forward to trim in tubes then getting back to turn. These boards did give you the ability to turn to get high again in the tube and also the beautiful feeling of their rail turns especially the roundhouse cut back then turn again under the pocket. The only person in the world who surfed like this was George Greenough on his spoon so you can understand at the time he was an incredible inspiration."