Last Sunday, Tommy Peterson exhaled his last breath.

The younger brother of Michael Peterson, Tommy was the outgoing yang to MP's reclusive yin. While undoubtedly a great surfer, Tommy was a raconteur who was in his element when breasting the bar, beer in one hand, rolly in the other, an audience at the ready.

As MP's career burned bright yet brief, Tommy became a stayer in spite of his immoderation. Gravel-voiced and appropriately imbibed he was surfing's own Keith Richards.

In fact, lifelong mate Kerry Gill admitted that in the last few years Tommy would ask: "Is Keith Richards still alive?"

"Yes Tommy," Kerry would reply sadly, "he'll outlive you." Tommy gave him a good run but.

Arguably, Tommy's finest hour came in 1994 when Tommy Curren unsheathed a 5'7" TP-shaped Fireball Fish while on a trip to the Hinako Islands. The footage Sonny Miller shot of Curren at triple-overhead Bawa set in motion the movement towards shorter boards, guaranteeing Tommy work for years to come, and a stool at the Pantheon of Significant Shapers.

The following accounts come from people who knew or spent time with Tommy.

Kerry Gill:

We were heading to a contest or Aussie Titles in the west.

Rossy Rainer came along along with his lovely wife, and he suggested driving instead of flying with other people. "Why don't we drive so we have our own car? We can go via the New England Highway and get there a couple days before others, then come back via the coast and call into Cactus."

When Tommy told me the plan and said "trust me" I should have known better. So we are on our way when we hit a big red kangaroo early the next morning which smashed the front of our car and the radiator.

We managed to roll into the next town, if you could call it that, I can't even remember the town's name, but it was what you'd call a one-horse town. It had a Trading Post-type shop and a little pub with one bar with a veranda just like the Queensland Hotel [Cabbage Patch) Front Bar and a little dining area.

...but thankfully it had a pool table.

Anyway there was a workshop next door and Rainer struck up a deal with the bush mechanic. We had to wait 24 hours for a radiator from what the locals called 'The Big Town'. So we played pool, drank beer, and smoked you-know-what, until Tommy ran out of papers with none available to buy anywhere due to the One Horse Town waiting on supplies from The Big Town.

People came from everywhere to check us out with Tommy getting around in his boardshort, t-shirt, brown beanie - his favourite colour - and uggboots.

Well, Tommy couldn't go long without the Tally Ho Papers and out on the little verandah sits a little man drinking 7oz beers with rum chasers and he's smoking a pipe,

Tommy goes missing. It's his shot so I walk out front and there's Tommy sitting next to his new old mate - who's also called Tom - and he's borrowed his pipe.

I've never seen anything so funny; here is Tommy talking to his new friend Old Tom, who's staring into space with his pipe hanging out of the corner of his gob, and he's got dribble hanging out the other side of his mouth.

Tommy had got Old Tom that stoned.

Next day we get the radiator and we're on our way. I can't help but think about Old Tom and I reckon if you went back to the one horse town today not much would have changed. Except maybe they put a bronze statue of Old Tom sitting on the veranda with a plaque that reads: "Here sits old Tom who was never the same since that spaceman came."

Hugh McLeod (Excerpt taken from Surfing World - see above)

Tommy Peterson is the personification of the outrageous surfer, both in and out of the water. If indulgence is an art, Tommy transcended the highest levels years ago. Outrageous people have always given surfing its character, so formulating the collective profile was a must to include someone a bit to the left and right of the straight line.

Though I’ve learned a few things about him, there’s no way we could possibly use anybody else to represent the ranks of the radical. Just for a bit of an update, Tom has been surfing around 16 years, always on the edge. He’s been shaping boards on the Gold Coast for a long time, but currently works at Pipedreams.

Okay, so rather than go through the usual personality ebb and flow we’ll select an antidote from the Tommy Peterson encyclopedia of Totally Outrageous Behavior for your entertainment.

Guy Ormerod tells us he was fishing off the bridge at Tallabudgera and less than straight Tommy cruised up to say hi. Upon questioning as to the depth of water there under, Guy maintained it was deep enough to dive into. Tommy, not being one to disbelieve a friend, proceeded to shed all his clothes, climb the railing and dive gracefully into the brine below.

Now it seems that Tom got quite a kick from this performance after swimming to the bank and sprinting naked up the Gold Coast Highway. He continued to repeat the whole performance with likes of high-powered real estate salesmen and middle-class southern state holiday makers.

Obviously someone was so impressed by Tom’s foray into the genitalia-flapping realms of nude ballet that they thought the local constabulary might like to observe the finer points of youth culture on the Gold Coast.

As the police car pulled up, Tom, in all his ringing wet glory, piled into the back seat and said to the boys in blue, “Got a durrie on ya?”

Then there’s the one about Tom’s venture into winemaking. At a recent presentation dinner, Tom decided the excellent cuisine deserved better than the carafes of rough red, provided for, drained one and substituted a fine vintage Peterson yellow Hock, later consumed by southern wine connoisseurs on the other side of the room.

All surfers haven’t got styled hair and satin smoking jackets. This is the real world where most surfers are looking for a nice wave and a good time. The Tommy Petersons are just as much a part of surfing as the mass media stars, and it would be bloody boring without them.

Gary McNeil:

Tommy and I were in Kirra Boardriders for years. The best heat I ever had with him also had Peter Drouyn, pre-Westerly Windina, in it and it was at Kingscliff. What a match up: Tommy Peterson and Peter Drouyn! I smashed them though, they were getting a bit older at that point and I suspect they were smoking joints in the bush before they paddled out.

At first, Tommy was in the shadow of Michael but I don't think it was a problem for him; he learned to live with it. Like, 'that's Michael and I'm Tommy.'

Plus, Michael was an introvert and Tommy was an extrovert - people wondered about MP because he didn't say anything but everyone knew what Tommy was thinking.

His big thing was the Fireball Fish, of course. I'm fortunate to have one of the original Fireballs. After that footage came out, everyone wanted a board from Tommy. I was the Production Manager at Nev, so I used to work out in the back room all the time. Out there, there was a shaping bay and it had a glass window about four feet up so the customers could come in and they could look through the window and watch Nev shape. That was the whole big deal.

Anyway, Tommy's in the shaping bay and there's people looking through the glass as they always did. Before he started shaping, Tommy dropped to the floor so no-one could see him, then he rolls this fucking big blunt, stuffs it in his mouth and he's smoking this joint. There's people up against the window looking in, and there's Tommy hiding down low getting himself ready to shape.

Clearly safety was a different matter back then.

He had to shape two boards. So he shaped one, then he had a break and dropped to the floor again, then he shaped the other one. Those boards were for two guys that worked there; they got one each, but after a while I ended up with one of the boards.

For a while there Tommy was big in Brazil. Curren got huge and because of that surfing he was doing on Tommy's board, Tommy got huge too. He used to go and do these trips in Brazil and he'd do a hundred Fireballs at a time. What a trip they must have been!

I've got to thank Tommy because when I recently shaped the Frankenfish, some of the ideas came out of his original Fireball - so his ideas live on to this day.