Me and Roy...1972 onwards
When I first met Roy he looked like one of the ZZ top boys ,long beard and hair , and being winter ,all rugged up in wooly coats and scarves.He had a slow Californian drawl and "man" was used to some extent in his conversation, at the time he was one of the few Yanks that were in town. Through the board industry I got to know him better and better, he had a heart of gold, loved surfing and loved being alive. The other Yanks, were his close friends from his home beach of Torrence beach in L.A. Pete Green , Bob Franjose and Bob Newlands ,and as time went on I got to know all of them well.Bob Newlands is back in the States, looking after some cabins on a lake after being out here for over 25 years. Peter Green , who I worked with also at Warren Cornish's,still lives in the area and Franjose is in between the States and Aussie. Roy was called up into the US Army when the Vietnam war was on and served 2 years , when he left the States he was riding 9'10 when he got out of the Army boards were 6' and Roy could never quite adapt to the shorter board, he did make some shorter ones but his favourite was an old "V" bottom 9 footer which he often surfed at the Pass and Broken, Pete Green had 2 modern longboards, one made by Blanchy and the other by Mctavish, I got to surf both these but the Mctavish was my favourite.Apart from these two and a board Nigel Perrow made at Bare Nature there were no modern longboards around and the old longboards that were around were your other choice, but as I said before hardly anyone was riding them.....it was Bliss for us, can you amagine, the Pass on a very good day at 2 to 3 foot with only 5 out yet, there were at least a hundred surfers in town, but were not interested unless it was bigger. So Roy and I had many, many wonderful surfs and made some great boards while having fun at the same time. Roy learn't to shape and made most of his boards over the years , even after Bare Nature closed down. H
e still has that old V bottom board apart from some others he has kept. My favourite ( and Roys ) is a 9foot 1957 solid Balsa VELZY and JACOBS, that was his brothers board and has been in the family all this time,I featured this a while back , but here's a photo ...... As the years rolled on I left Byron and did what I did with my life,working on Prawn trawlers,and then settling down here on the Central Coast as a gardener, and did a hell of alot of travelling overseas, with my wife Fiona and eventually coming back to Byron once a year and catching up with everyone for the Byron Bay Longboard Classic, while staying with Roy and his wonderful wife Marilyn, it has been a long friendship with my amigo Roy and we still get out together in the surf, sometimes the body doesn't want to but we do and will do til we drop...Luv Ya Roy xx............... Photos The Velzy, Roy and Shop, Roy and Father in law Jack Waldron...Anzac day
Roy Meisel and Bare Nature 1972 to 1984....and Mcoy
Around 1979 to 81 I left the Byron Bay area and started work sanding, at Mcoy surfboards. I had known Geoff since W and M days , 1966, but had never worked for him before this, it was full production 30 to 40 boards a week tints, sprays, pinlines , finishcoats and full polishes. Geoffs team of riders was impressive he had Cheyne Horan , Bruce raymond ,Larry Blair , Mark Warren and a few others whose names I've forgot, Geoff also had most of the Hawaiians when they came over and Barry Kanaipuni would shape 4 a day for about 2 to 3 weeks. So the passing parade of surfers through Mcoys was continual ,but this was a sad time for me as my marriage broke up and with my 2 kids gone it was heartbreaking at work ,I still had to do 40 boards a week( fin panels and cut outs and foils) in the end I had to leave and go back north and when I arrived at Byron I was back working at Cornish's and Roys at Bare Nature. Roy had now upped production to about 15 to 20 a week and Nigel Perrow was the main shaper with John Scott (american) doing a few. These were wild days, the Top pub was Rocking, as was the Northern hotel, but the town was not crowded and the Rails was just a watering hole fore the locals, and mushrooms and Gungha was aplenty. I don't recall many days up there then, that many people were straight, most of us who worked at Roy's were single and loose and lunchtime was Smoko time and sadly for Roy if there was a surf not many would go back to work. Roy was marvellous , he was going through hard times, with his marriage breaking up, but at the same time he had to cough up the money for his ex, and this went on to the eventuality of having to sell the buisiness and the shop. But it didn't stop Roy from being Roy, he maintained through it all , with the help of Tooheys Beer and some very close friends, and here I will tell you Roy was an ex Vietnam Vet. Both Roy and I had a passion for surfing Broken Head and many,many a great surf was had by us together there. We surfed the Pass a lot as Roy , myself and only a very few, Mark Smith , Nigel Perrow and Ronny Blewitt rode Longboards at either the Pass or Broken so , many a glorious uncrowded smaller surf in perfect conditions was surfed. I was also riding a variety of short boards too, I had an old 6'6" Barry Kanaipuni ( for bigger surf
, a 6'0 made by me, a 5'4" kneeboard that I rode standing up, and 2 different styles of Mals ,one being Peter Greens chiselnose 9' 0 made by Mctavish ( this was the first custom Longboard by Bob out of San Juan) I made a few boards at Roys, they all went well but my little 6 footer was the Magic Carpet . I rode her in 2 foot slop at the Pass and 6 to 8 foot at the Haven ,magic board and with me at 33 years old and still bulletproof. The beauty of working at Roys was the passing parade of surfers and boardmakers that were there, and that Roy would let you make as many boards as you basically wanted....to be continued
BOB WITH PETER GREENS LONGBOARD, and me on Peters board BROKEN HEAD
JUST SHAPED and A GOOD EXAMPLE OF A BARE NATURE probably 1978 0r 80
Bob Mctavish starting back at San Juan and me working for three different labels.
Before Bobby Mctavish arrived at San Juan....THE DUNNY!!
Just before John Thomas (JT) bought San Juan Nat Young used to do a few, and I mean a few shapes and they would get glassed there, Nat left 3,roughshaped, Morning of the Earth style , 6'4' pintails , in Blanchies Shaping room which did not have much room in it, due to, that, unshaped blanks had to be also stored there. For quite some time, 5 or 6 months, JB ( Blanchy) continually hassled JT to do something with them as he needed the racks where they were stored , now remember both JT and JB were now Jehovah Witnesses, and after a long period of JB threatning " if you dont do something with them ,I will" Blanchy finally did. I arrived at work at about 8.30 and went to the Dunny( this is a tin can,about 500cm across, used as the toilet before the sewerage went in) and shoved into the shit and piss were Nats 3 roughshaped boards, nose first. I went back to the glassing room where Billy Mclean was just setting up and told him what was in the Dunny....We cracked up as JB was a bit proud of what he had done , and when JT arrived and heard and saw the Dunny , he went red ,stormed down to JB and said half stuttering and trying very hard not to swear "ttthaattts not very cool BLANCHY" . JB who was in the shaping room working said" I told you if you didn't get rid of them I would so there you have it", with JT replying " bbuut thats not cool Blanchy" Blanchy replied " who really cares, there pieces of crap anyway and they're where they deserve to be." You can amagine them both trying to hold there cool with Bill and I laughing away in the background ,more so, when JT was pulling the blanks out of the Dunny ......They never got glassed, as we didn't have really good Shit brown tints in those days and to reflect on it now they would have made good collector pieces but would have been a bit smelly...... Later on Blanchy left and went to Coffs harbour and Bobby Mctavish returned to the Bay, and started at San Juan, after being down Sydney at Bennetts. I never knew Bob at all before this but in a short time , got to know him and respect him which is still a strong comradeership with him today, his early passion around the Plastic Machine era set many of us on the same creative path pursuing design and ideas , and to boot He was and is a Bloody good Surfer.... to be continued
San Juan Bare Nature Warren Cornish and Sky... and the Sugarcanefields.
When I worked at San Juan I was also doing some work for Roy at Bare nature as were a few of the boardworkers that were then in town, the South Africans Tony Cerf, Deri Star ,and Gunther Rohn had arrived ,as did a few Yanks, at this time they were the only " foreigners" that were in town ,not like today. Both Tony and Gunther went on to be sought after shapers with Tony being the glasser at San Juans before Billy Mclean. This was still the era of tints and pigments ,Sylene glass, the new no lap stuff was only about a year old and expensive, it was only used as a clear on the top of an insert glass job ie. with a taped up deck and glassed to the cut overlap from the bottom. Bill still does quite a few of these still and, it is a dying art, but then 4 out of ten boards that were glassed were Inserts. The finbox was just starting to be kinda accepted but, 9 out 10 were glassed on fins and this remained that wat for some tim as single and twin fins were the norm, so a sander had to be able to foil well and make the fin look good and work well, in fact
as a shaper , if you coudn't make a good fin ,well foiled, you didn't get much respect. At San Juans the sand room's duct dragged the dust and fibres out onto old Tony Kibblewhites house which was right next door, and had been doing this for years . Tony knew this but never complained until his wife got sick, and that was the end of sanding at the shop, from then on I had to load the boards into my car and take them out to the old Piggery ( where Byron Bay Brewers are now) on a set of portable stands amongst the rubble and the Pythons in the rafters( they were pretty regular there) . Not long after this I had a bit of indifference with John Thomas who now owned San Juan and by the end of May 73 I started work in the Sugar cane fields as a hand cane cutter down at Ballina on the Richmond and on the Clarence river near Yamba for the next 5 years and at he end of the season ( December) went back to boards at Bare Nature and then Warren Cornish where Bill Mclean was now glassing as John Thomas had sold SanJuan and with Bob Mctavish, started making the Bluebird at a shed they rented of Warren (Warren passed away this year) Around this time I started to work partime at Sky so, at one stage I was working for 3 different Labels .... But Byron Bay was changing ....to be continued .....P.S. Bob the Yank in the above photo is Bob Newlands who was glassing before he and Roy started Bare Nature
San juan an Bare nature continued...The shots are.. Bill Mclean and Roy Meisel 42 years later on
SAN JUAN and BARE NATURE days 1972 Byron Bay.
I arrived in Byron with my FC holden station wagon packed to the racks with wife ,4 month old son and 3 boards, no where to live, only the hope of running in to a friend Bill Mclean. With that all sorted I chased up work which varied from working on the council, then the putting in of the sewrage system, and then San Juan surfboards and Bare Nature surfboards as a Sander and fin maker , gloss coat and pinliner. San Juan was managed by John Thomas ( J T) at the time with John Blanch the shaper ,Bill mclean the Glasser and me, it was still single fins and Keel fins were being played around with with no real success, which was apity as the shapes of the boards were , but the keel let them down. Many a nice board was made then there were some bloody great designer shapers around and the quality of the finished product was number 1. It was also a time of change for some ,with JT and Blanchy and Bob Mctavish ,among others .gave up drugs and radicalism for a more honest way of life and became Jehovah wittnesses, but the boards still had their flair and the rest of us Pagans still continued on our merry way. When Bob arrived,and after, the main focus was on a more gunnier board , hotdogging boards had lost out for the more sleeker looking gun , and pintail., but there were changes happening as Michael Cundith had been making short wide twin fins and the locals were like the feel of hotdoggin and within a year a big change in design and fins was coming about. Bob made a variety of shapes for a variety of surfers but i was his pintails that were the nicest and at that time he made his first asymetrical... yep there were changes a happening....... stay tuned more to come
Yeah! full concave pintail.... did it work!? Ian Lindsay who made this in 1980 said it was really fast, trying to control the speed on a turn was another story , this was in the days of invention and experimentation, trial and error ....ah! but what wonderful boards to look at and what wonderful boards that really worked , ask anyone from that era
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