The Bay Post/Moruya Examiner profiles the hobbies of people in our community each week in the feature, ‘Get on your hobbyhorse’. Do you have an interesting hobby? Email journalist Josh Gidney at josh.gidney@fairfaxmedia.com.au or phone him at 4472 6577.
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TED Butler’s passion for longboarding may have spanned more than half a century, but he clearly remembers when its seed was sown.
“I was at Cronulla with my old man when I was seven and they had rubber Surfoplanes (surf mats) there,” he said.
“I remember my first wave; it was really good and I was hooked.”
When he got older, Mr Butler, now 63, and resident in Moruya, would board a bus with his friends from his home suburb of Peakhurst in Sydney’s south to Ramsgate on the shores of Botany Bay to catch some “cool little waves” on rash-inducing foam boards.
He remembers his first longboard like some would remember their first bike or car.
“It was a nine-foot-six-long Ron, and it cost me 40 pounds,” he said.
“I worked at Woolies and it took eight months to save up for it.
“Every week I would put money in a box.”
For Mr Butler and his friends, getting their longboards from Peakhurst to Cronulla every weekend was an adventure in itself.
“We couldn’t get on the bus with them so we made a 10-foot billy cart which could carry six boards,” he said.
“We would pull it uphill and jump on board and ride it downhill.”
One of the wheels gave way one day, and the resulting crash took skin off the young surfers and put dings in their boards.
Surfing movies played a big part in cementing their interest in surfing.
“The one that really got me in was The Endless Summer,” Mr Butler said.
He later bought a Kombi van, and added shortboard surfing to his repertoire, but kept up the longboarding.
“We surfed down at Cronulla when guys like Darrell Eastlake, Brian Jackson and Frank Latta were there,” he said.
“If a young bloke paddled out to where the old blokes were back then, he would get a thick ear.
“Surfing is very mainstream now, but back then it was a way of life.
“Surfers were social outcasts. You wouldn’t tell a prospective employer you surfed.”
His most frightening moment was when he was dumped by a 20-foot wave at Sandon Point near Wollongong.
“I was held under for about two minutes,” he recalled.
“I thought I was going to die.”
Longboarding went out of style for a while, but never with Mr Butler.
“There was a time when I could get out to waves and catch them more easily than the guys on their shortboards,” he said.
Mr Butler loves living in surfer-friendly Moruya.
“I would be living here if I didn’t surf,” he said.
“I am retired now and I go out whenever there is surf. It keeps me fit and I love the flow and the feel of it.”