BURLEIGH HEADS BOARDRIDERS HISTORY
Ringed by a National Park and the basalt boulders of thepoint Burleigh Heads is one of the most beautiful and mystical point breaks inthe world, and home to the Burleigh Boardriders Club.
The inaugural club President, Huey McMaster reigned over thepoint with a genuine soul arch. Original members included Brian Curtain, Allan Sykes, Greg Saal, Archie andBilly Hoogervorst.
Junior surfer Billy Kingston recalls; “Huey was the mostorganised. We didn’t have a secretary or treasurer, Huey would organize it alland we’d just go surfing all day.”
The clan of the red and white have been launching themselvesoff the point and into the waves from around 1965. A search of the historicalrecords finds the Gold Coast’s first documented interclub challenge-hosted bythe Burleigh Boardriders and sponsored by Peters Ice Cream, Bev and PaulaStafford. The Burleigh Festival of Boards was staged on August 22nd1965.
Young grommets of note at that contest were Rick and Paul Neilsen, Peter Drouyn, and a cadet called Wayne Deane. Burleigh’s team includedBilly Kerr (Manager of the Goldy Hotel, one of the club’s drinking holes), HueyMcMaster, Archie and Billy Hoogervorst, Greg Saal, and Brian Curtain.
Like most clubs Burleigh went to hibernation in the late1960’s, but by the early 70’s the short board revolution had hit BurleighPoint, and the club was re-born. The inspiration for this were local surfersMichael “Little Durry” Kline, Russell “Newt” Newton, Leroy Mathers, Michael“Big Mick” Denemeade and Jeff Pilcher used to meet in a room upstairs of a milkbar Pilcher’s parents owned. Therethey would have “meetings” over a few coldies.
A contest was held in 1971, not only was it a catalyst fornew members to sign up, but the top surfers from all the Gold Coast beachesentered. The surf was classic 4-6 foot running barrels running down past theshed. In a great final, local lad Peter Roberts claimed the day for theBurleigh Boys showing his class by beating Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew in the 40minute barrelfest.
The club changed it’s name to the “Bluff Boardriders” in theearly 70’s for a few years due to financial hardship, but the might and spirit of the club always remained, when the boys from Burleigh in their red boardiesstepped up they were always a force to be reckoned with.
Billabong was formed in 1973 and began a long relationshipwith the club. “Long Bongs (Billabong Board shorts) and Burleigh Barrels” was the company slogan for quite a while. The mid seventies was a classic era,including the classic 28 day swell of 1975.
Young guys like David McDougal, Paul De Pavia, Peter andDwayne Harris were Burleigh Boys ripping the point along with surfers fromother beaches, and became sponsored by Billabong featuring in many of theirads.
Peter Harris was the first Burleigh Boy to make a mark onthe pro surfing world winning the 1980 Stubbies Classic in front of 10,000parochial supporters on the point. Dooley’s tube down the point showed hislocal knowledge of the wave and Hawaiian Dane Kealoha had no answer, thus goingdown in history as the first Burleigh Boy to win a pro contest and travel onthe world tour.
Throughout the 1980’s Grant Hoskins, Dwayne Harris, GlennHarris, Russell Newton, Mick Denemeade, Ash Humphries, Jeff and Chris Pilcherwere instrumental in steering the club though the 1980’s then President and Burleigh legend, Mick Murphy, and Ash “Champ” Humphries the guiding force in the 1990’s.
1997 saw the creation of the Burleigh Heads Single Fin Classic, originally the Peter Roberts Memorial, the first event every year onthe Surfing Calendar, held in the first week of January, and now held in memoryof our members who have passed from this world. It is now a festival ofsurfing, and includes the Burleigh Boardriders Charity Luncheon where guestspeakers like Andrew Johns, Wayne Gardner, Sandon Stolley, Damien Oliver, andmany other celebrities and sport stars have attended, and also surfed in theevent as well.
The luncheon raises much of the funds we need to run theclub and has been very successful over the years. The main feature of thecontest is the boards must be pre-1985, so everyone is surfing a board that isa living piece of surfing history.
The current focus of the club is our junior development, andwith Jay “Bottle” Thompson our current surfer on the World Championship Tour,the young grommets of our club do have a role model to follow and a futurecareer path.
CLUB CHAMPIONS
1982 – GRANT HOSKINGS
1983 – DWAYNE HARRIS
1984 – DWAYNE HARRIS
1985 – DWAYNE HARRIS
1986 – PAUL SURMAN
1987 – DWAYNE HARRIS
1988 – ASHLEY HUMPHRIES
1989 – RUSSELL LEWIS
1990 – IAN BYRNE
1991 – ASHLEY HUMPHRIES
1992 – IAN BYRNE
1993 – PETER LAWRENCE
1994 – JYE BAZENAS
1995
1996
1997 – JAY THOMPSON
1998 – ASHLEY HUMPRIES
1999 – ASHLEY HUMPHRIES
2000 – JAMES WATSON/JOSH STEWART
2001 –
2002
2003
2004 – KYLE ROBINSON
2005 – KYLE ROBINSON
2006 – STORM HOSKING
2007 – ADAM NEILSEN