The original Point Leo 'resident surfer'?

These photos are from the
Scotty Palmer article on the '73
Point Leo 1200 surfing contest
which appeared in the July 24
Sun newspaper. Someone at the
CES (Commonwealth Employment
Service) saw it and thought it
was a good idea to put it in my
 file because Scotty mentioned
that surfers weren't much
interested in getting a job when
the surf was up. 

As far as I know, I am the original Point Leo resident surfer: I first moved to Point Leo in May, 1970. I would come home from school and go to the beach, only to find it deserted.

Nowadays, everyone would consider this a blessing. But it was the early 70's, and surfboard riding was only just starting to blossom, and surfing buddies made it a whole lot more enjoyable, especially as a teenager. I missed them.

So, at first I considered this as a sort of punishment, the mid-pubescent relocation from a prominent Melbourne suburb to a lonely remote Peninsula locality (technically a hamlet - the population grew from 9 to 13 when my family moved in) as I had no-one to surf with except for weekends.

That lasted only a couple of years. Soon it was teeming with surfers from Frankston, Seaford, Mornington and the whole Melbourne Metropolitan area. Basically I had one year of lonely surfing (1970) followed by a summer of making friends with all the campers and tourists who surfed; then the next year of getting to know  anyone and everyone who visited the area to surf, and by '72 it was getting crowded.

In contrast, during the Xmas holidays when the camping area was full and on weekends every man and his dog would gravitate to Suicide Point on Sunday, it was common to find fifty or sixty surfers out at the Point and half a dozen scambling on and fighting for each wave.

My first year out of school, '73, was punctuated by a couple of Melbournites moving down and a lot of panel van fringe Frankstonites frequenting the area, often midweek. By 74 and 75 popular surf spots were starting to get seriously overcrowded.

During that first year, '70-'71, my father (Wal Treloar as he preferred to be called, although he also answered to Wally or Walter) was the Ranger. At times I would man the ticket box and collect parking fees. By the time I was 16 years old I was driving the Foreshore Committee's Massey Ferguson tractor, doing the rubbish rounds from East Creek to the Point, through the camping area, and down to First Reef.

At that time there was also a temporary arrangement for under-age camping on the other side of the creek at First Reef (roughly where the old Surfie Shacks were built for earlier National Surflifesaving Carnivals), which made bin collection a real hassle. There was no proper infrastructure, no proper campsites or roads, just a paddock with vague markers here and there.

Eventually the instigator, local General Store proprietor Arthur Jones's plan was nullified and camping went back to the normal 126 sites max instead of 200. (there was always a certain amount of flexibility but always only a handful of extra campsites were allocated).

As my dad was the ranger, I understood the camping arrangements. There were maps in the front verandah showing campsite layouts, 1-126 in detail. I made it my business to familiarise myself with all these campsites' locations, because I was a frequent family camper since 1963 and had experienced several shifts from one campsite to another, making for a diverse camping experience.

So that's how I developed a quasi-eidetic memory of everyone's name (and Star Sign)... Doing the ticket box. Whenever anyone questioned the fee, I'd deliver them the standard "The 1948 Land Acts, Section 218, paragraph 30 states that upon entry into the reserve, the Foreshore Committee may charge a parking fee, etc. etc." Usually they would fork over the twenty cents in order to shut me up.

When I was young I failed to appreciate how privileged I was to have had that experience in my upbringing. Certainly it is out of the ordinary, but I couldn't fathom it at the time. It is only when one sits back, hears about others' accounts, and reflects on how unique my circumstances were that I realise what extraordinary karma I must have accumulated in order to qualify for this sort of existence. How many kids get to grow up as the first resident surfer in a relatively unpopulated area? Not many. Thank you Lord. 

Hare Kṛṣṇa हरे कृष्ण