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Recording brings on memories of joy and innocense
If you remember The Innocent Dingos and can go as far back as Country Joy, then you’ll be keen to listen to a CD of songs recently produced by Wainui jam band Big Water.
Pete Stewart and Trevor Herk (that’s them circa 1980 above second right and second left) are Gisborne’s elder statesmen of rock and roll.
Over the decades since the 1970s Trev has provided the bass line to numerous live performing bands around the town and Peter has added his dexterous lead breaks to an equal number.
For several years now Pete’s lounge at his home on the corner of Oneroa and the Highway has been the venue of legendary Thursday night expression sessions and the Big Water CD is a creative coming of age of those late night jams.
Formerly known as the Borderline Trio, Bigwater came about when Lincoln Wright (drummer) joined the long established Thursday night musical excursions.
Trevor and Pete are long established Gisborne musicians that have played in several local bands together, including the celebrated Innocent Dingos from the River Bar heyday of the early ‘80s. Lincoln Wright is a well-known DJ, (the Missing Link) with a CV from Wellington that includes The Hairy Lollies and Gamut.
Initially they explored a collection of mainly covers and a few original songs, but after a while originals replaced all the covers. Pete puts this down to his going through an especially creative song writing binge in recent times.
Don’t expect any head banging, plaster cracking mayhem from these musicians. As Pete says, they are lyric-based pop songs. Sensible, easy to listen to, with catchy melodies. The sound quality is as good as you would expect from an amateur recording studio, but crank it up and you’ve got some great sounds. All the better with the understanding it’s organic, home-grown, Wainui Beach-born music to boot.
Trevor Herk, the always unassuming bassist these days lives up the Lysnar Street valley and is a well respected music teacher at Lytton High School. Think back to the mid 1970s when the band Country Joy held the fort at the DB Gisborne Lounge Bar and you can picture Trev thumping out the bass notes to Long Train Running, Cocaine and other anthems of that era. You have to also picture the band’s drummer, Pare Street’s Paul Conole, hammering away at the rear as well. Those were the days.
If you have an interest in local music the first Bigwater CD is a must for your collection. Keep listening and the songs grow on you, and soon you think you’re listening to pop songs you’ve known all your life. Oh, and hey, Bigwater? That’s Wainui, the English translation thereof. And, at $15 available from Peter and Trev and at the Wainui Store, this is perfect Christmas present material. There are 11 tracks on the CD.
Since recording this initial sampling of some of their originals Bigwater has become in demand for live performances and are already working on a follow up CD.
Bigwater are: Pete Stewart, guitar & vocals; Trevor Herk, bass & vocals; Lincoln B. Wright, drums & backing vocals. Recorded and engineered by Trevor Herk.
Bigwater have an online Blog at www.bigwater.co.nz. RETURN TOARCHIVES LIST
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Artistic passion lands job with leading surf label
Luke Morrell is the head of the art department at Volcom – one of the world’s leading youth culture clothing labels:
I was actually born in Australia, but don’t hold that against me. Fortunately for my sisters and I, my parents realised that maybe raising a family in Adelaide – the murder capital of Australia – wasn’t a good idea. So at the age of three we were shipped out and moved to Gisborne. (Well done Mum and Dad.)
It wasn’t until my last year of primary school that I was introduced to surfing when we moved to Wainui Beach. This was the most influential move for me. Not only because I was introduced to the full brunt of the surfing culture, but also because this was when Mum and Dad began to take their artistic hobby seriously.
Our home was one big art class, which I embraced with much enthusiasm. Because these two new worlds – art and surfing – were being introduced to me at the same time, I found many similarities between the two. They seemed to inter-twine with each other. I started getting into the clothing, the art, the magazines, the videos and the music of the surf culture.
I still remember all the ads I pulled out of the magazines and put on my wall. I always dreamed of one day creating surf advertisements like those. But at this stage I was more interested in surfing and causing all sorts of mischief around the neighbourhood with the likes of the Two Jays and the Nalders. (Sorry to owners of all the roofs of our surrounding neighbours.)
It wasn’t until high school (GBHS) that I began to take my art more seriously. I think it wasn’t only my parents influence, but also my teachers. I was fortunate enough to have three very talented teachers who realised my potential and pushed me – Dick Calcott, Lee Morgan and Karl Johnson. It was there that I knew that arts was going to be my chosen career path.
After high school, I then got accepted into Massey University, school of design, fine arts and music, where I studied design and fine arts and after four long years majored in a bachelor of design.
I remember in my final year I did a whole surf themed project and commenting on my presentation one of the teachers said: “This is the only time you’re going to be able to do anything to do with surf. It’s not like that in the real world.” What did he know.
I now work for the surf, skate and snow clothing brand Volcom as the art department manager, where I get to work on all projects across marketing, product and catalogues and photo shoots.
We are one of the major competitors to Billabong and Quiksilver. Volcom embraces every aspect of the surf, skate, snow culture and is the leader of its field. Getting here proves that if you believe in doing something and don’t get knocked down by others beliefs – plus throw in a lot of hard work and persistence – you can make it happen.
As well as producing art for our seasonal art pools, designing advertisements and coming up with ways to keep Volcom fresh and innovative and leaders of our field – I’ve recently been working with Ozzie Wright on creating “Featured Artist” product packages using Ozzie’s artwork that we will be selectively offering to retailers.
It’s a pretty good job. I’m surrounded by many talented and creative people and every day is a challenge, which is part of the fun. We constantly have to think of ways to be different within this retail climate. My goals for the future are to keep learning and pushing myself and to keep looking for inspiration from all the unlikely places.
I live in Manly and do most of my lunch time surfs at Curl Curl Beach and North Steyne. I’m lucky enough to live and work five minutes from the beach. RETURN TOARCHIVES LIST
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Tom shapes up to best in the world
Tom Dalton really couldn’t have been anything else but a really good surfboard maker. Growing up, playing around dad Ray’s surf factory, watching and listening to all the talk about surf and surfboards, learning to surf as soon as he could walk – he really didn’t have much option.
Born in a caravan at Byron Bay in 1979 while Ray and Gail were building a house on their section by the beach at Suffolk Park, Tommy is a true child of the late ‘70s northern New South Wales and Gisborne surf cultures.
Tom, now 28, and a new dad himself, has these days well and truly taken over from where “Aardee” left off and has gone on some from there. Tom is one of New Zealand’s most respected surfboard shapers and that reputation is also gaining recognition internationally.
A business relationship and close friendship with Matt Biolas, the founder of Lost Enterprises, has given the Wainui local a global perspective of the surfing industry. Earlier Ray had latched on to the alternative Lost marketing concept, hand-shaping franchised Lost custom designs for the New Zealand market.
Biolas came out to Gisborne in 2000 to check out what was happening at the Wainui factory, did some shaping and took a liking to young Tommy. He invited Tom back to California where he went to work shaping at the Lost factory in San Clemente. This was a huge boost for Tom to be working alongside the world’s best shapers at one of the world’s top-three surfboard making companies.
In a recent issue of Kiwi Surf magazine Tom was quoted: “It was like I had qualified for the WCT of shaping. Arriving at my first day at work I realised that this was what I really wanted to do. This was my dream.”
At the end of that two month stint Tom had shaped 400-plus boards for Lost. What he would expect to make in a whole year in New Zealand.
When he got back home dad saw it was time to hand over the reins of the family surf business, moving aside to let Tom do the full-time shaping and generally take over The Boardroom with partner Hayley.
Tom went back to the States the following year again at the invitation of Biolas and went to work six days a week pumping out literally hundreds of boards for many of America’s leading surfers, earning more and more respect and trust from the Lost boss.
In 2004 he agreed to go to work at Lost’s European based factory in Spain where he shaped all the Lost boards for shops throughout Europe and for the entire Lost team in Europe. It was in Spain that he proposed to girlfriend Hayley and they were married the very next summer on the sand at Makorori Beach. Since then he’s been making the trip to San Clemente every northern summer, except last year, while Hayley was pregnant with Jett.
It’s an amazing and fruitful relationship for the local boardmaker, being befriended and trusted by one of the world’s leading shapers and surf brand entrepreneurs, being able to keep in touch with innovations and new designs, making boards for the world’s leading surfers (Cory and Che Lopez, Chris Ward, Shane Bechan, Aaron Cormican).
All this experience, knowledge and insight is brought back home to the shaping bay and surf shop in his Mum and Dad’s front yard.
Here he and Hayley retail custom and off-the -shelf surfboards incorporating a range of international labels such as STD, Lost, MR, Chilli, Placebo Fexlite’s and Ray Dalton Longboards – and coming before Christmas the latest in surfboard technologies Lost Firewire.
In the Kiwi Surf article Matt Biolas summed up Tommy Dalton: “Tommy’s a great guy. He immersed himself into my family and we surf a lot together, have a lot of fun. He’s driven to keep up with the times and grow his business. I am sure we will work together for a long time ahead.” RETURN TOARCHIVES LIST
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Amanda’s double life leads to body building fame
Amanda Foubister is a stunt worker, a health fitness consultant and the current Miss Fitness Australasia:
Little Amanda Foubister has LIVED a HUGE life since her school girl days at Wainui Beach in the 1980s. Today she is the current 2008 Miss Australasia Fitness Champion, a title she won first time up in 2007 after 10 years in the movie industry as a stunt performer. She is a sales and marketing executive for a sports nutrition company, writes training programmes for New Zealand Fitness Magazine and has plans to go professional on the world body building circuit.
Amanda, now aged 31, came to Wainui at the age of 8 with her parents Vi and Allen Foubister from Auckland when they bought the Chalet Rendezvous from Malcolm McArthur in 1985. Her passion in those days was horse riding, particularly with friends Amanda Ritchie and Katie Ellmers, a pursuit that was to be a great asset later on in the stunt industry. In 1996 she went to Brazil as an AFS student and in 1999 she was in the New Zealand team at the world trampoline championships in South Africa.
Amanda left Gisborne around 1999 for Auckland where she registered with an acting agency but ended up being persuaded to take on stunt actor work because of her gymnastic skills.
“I’ve been paid to dress up and fall off horses for the last ten years,” she said while home recently for a Body For Life seminar. Amanda gained her experience on the Zena: Warrior Princess series where she says she was killed at least twice each episode, usually after “running around in a leather bikini waving a sword”.
After Zena, Amanda went freelance as a self-employed stunt professional working on a number of US-made television movies and performing stunt scenes in local dramas like Shortland Street.
She spent a year on Lord of the Rings: Return of the King as Miranda Otto’s stunt double in her role as Eowyn, the Shieldmaiden of Rohan. She also worked on Narnia: The Lion,The Witch and the Wardrobe, and was briefly Naomi Watts second unit stunt double on King Kong.
All this stunt work required a lot of time spent in the gym working on fitness and strength, which led to entering the 2007 Miss Australasia Fitness contest, which she won, and then successfully defended in April this year. Her plan is to go to America early next year to compete in the 2009 Third Arnold Amateur IFBB International Bodybuilding, Fitness and Figure Championships, which is a stepping stone up to the world of professional body building and fitness.
This means over two hours in the gym, six days a week, with the aim of peaking for the Arnold Schwarzenegger promoted amateur title in March.
Amanda is still based in Auckland, working for EAS Sports Supplements and taking on occasional stunt work. Back home Amanda had time to catch up with her mum, Vi, and step-dad, Denis Irwin, out at the Colosseum. RETURN TOARCHIVES LIST
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The Ballad of Frankie and Laurie
Frank Russell and Laurie Lautmann are American-born New Zealand citizens and long-time residents of Wainui Beach. This is their story as told by Laurie:
Frank came to New Zealand on a surf trip in ‘75 and he never really went home. Meanwhile I was hitching my way across the Pacific Ocean on sailboats, arriving into Auckland on a passenger liner in ‘78. I met up with Frank in Auckland. We had earlier gone out with each other back in California. Frank and I knocked around New Zealand for a bit, but eventually went our separate ways.
Frank settled in Taranaki and I took off for Australia. Australia was okay but New Zealand had me hooked. Next time I returned I bought a Morris Minor in Auckland and made a beeline for Gisborne. I had first visited here with a couple of Canadians who I had met in Auckland back in `78. I fell in love with the place, especially the beaches. I had travelled quite a bit and was perhaps getting a bit weary, Gisborne felt just right for a place to unpack and stay put.
My first home in Gisborne was the YHA youth hostel for a month. That would have been in 1979. I bought the house on Murphy Road in 1980. The best thing I ever did. The house was not being lived in when purchased. I don’t know much of its history other than it belonged to a Mrs Midge McDonald. I was 25 years old, knew nothing about how to buy a house. All I knew was that my goal of living on the beach was coming true.
I had a variety of jobs here and I was coming and going a bit between here and California. A year here, a year there. In New Zealand I taught myself how to build lead-light windows and then during a home stint I got a job at a Southern California art glass studio where I fine-tuned my skills. Back in New Zealand, 1989, I launched my own business, Shoreline Glass. I was distributing bevelled glass, glass jewels, bits and pieces to the trade. All mail order, all from the house. Perfect business. In 1991 Women On Waves started up, inviting all women of any age to learn how to surf. Pivotal. I had been wanting to learn how to surf since I was about twelve. Seventeen years later and I am still surfing with many of the same women that were there in ‘91
Meanwhile Frank is over in Taranaki being a surfer, a dairy farmer and a basketball coach. Frank came over to Gisborne in 1991 for yes – you guessed it – another surf trip. He looked me up and again – never went home. He coached the Rising Suns for about six years. A year or two at the YMCA as programme director and then it was full time in the PE department at GBHS. 2002 was the first year for his Surfing With Frank business. He now teaches part time at GBHS and during the summer months he is nothing more than a blur between surf lessons. For the past six years we have been going to mainland Mexico during the New Zealand winters to surf.
California now holds very little interest for either of us, especially as our parents have since passed away. We are both New Zealand citizens. Wainui Beach is a huge part of what makes our lives as good as they are. We wake up to the most beautiful beach every morning. We walk it, we surf it. We spend endless hours just looking at it.
Frank and I have a saying: “ It’s a good day when you don’t have to get into your car to turn left off Murphy Road.” RETURN TOARCHIVES LIST
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A life-long passion for surf photography
He’s as iconic around Wainui Beach as the Norfolk pines these days. Rogan Houghton and his furry friend Precious are always about when the surf is up and pumping.
Surf photography is a passion Rogey has had since a youngster when he first tried taking surfing pictures with his Kodak Instamatic while on surf trips with big brother Brett.
He grew up on Auckland’s North Shore but is another local who now calls Wainui Beach home. Now aged 41, Rogey left school on the dot of turning 15.
“I left school real quick, I was out of there like a shot,” he says. A scant education left Rogey with reading and writing problems but this year he has completed a three-year adult literacy course at Tairawhiti Polytechnic which he says has given him a real boost.
Rogan also has a turned-out left eye which has possibly held him back a bit and must make it hard work to focus his camera for hours on end when the surf’s running high.
His first decent SLR camera set up was a Minolta X300 with a 300mm Sigma lens which he bought in his early 20s. Big brother Brett had moved down to Gisborne to live, so Rogan spent a lot of time down here. About 15 years ago when Budge Berge was running New Zealand Surfing magazine with CPL (Craig Levers) as chief photographer, they appreciated Rogan’s enthusiasm and helped him out a bit.
CPL pointed Rogan in the direction of a great set of second-hand surf photography gear that was going cheap. He ended up with a Canon F1 body with 800mm, 600mm and 400mm lenses.
His photos weren’t up to full page treatment, so they gave him a double-page spread of smaller images which they called “The Rogey Files”. The Rogey Files #2 and #3 followed in later years. He also had other photographs published in regular reader’s photo pages during CPL’s editorship.
The editor also gave Rogan a boost when I ran one of his surfing pictures, a photo of Clint Daly, in my first calendar published over a decade ago.
Rogey always stuck to the standards required by surf magazines which meant he had to spend a lot of money on slide film and professional processing. A single roll of processed slide film could cost as much as $100. Every now and then CPL would send Rogey the odd spare roll of Velvia to help him out.
So it was a relief when digital photography came of age recently and about 12 months ago Rogey bought his first digital SLR Canon. He can now fit hundreds of images on a single 2gig flash card. Sticking to the rules, Rogey is shooting both JPEG and Raw mode, which is what the magazines require should he get that elusive “money shot”.
His chances have improved lately with the purchase of a decent 300mm digital Canon lens ex Logan Murray and with the arrival of spring, good waves and bright light he is working hard chasing those great pictures.
Rogan says he loves the satisfaction of photographing other surfers. “I don’t surf big waves, but I love being behind the camera, it’s almost the same sensation as being out there.”
It’s great to see Rogan out there, perched in the dunes with his best-friend “Precious”, a tiny little Maltese Bichon who travels with him everywhere, even on the back of his motorbike. Rogan may not be one of the world’s best-known surfing paparazzi, but when Maz Quinn is pulling in to an overhead barrel at the Chalet on a late afternoon mid-week, it’s Rogan who’s behind the lens, motordrive whirring, capturing the fleeting moment of surfing brilliance in a mass of digital pixels.
His images might not get published in Surfer’s Journal – yet – but at least he’s out there, giving it a go. Keep it up Rogey.