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