Once Upon a Time

So in the beginning a group locals gathered down at the South wall beach car park and decided to form a surfing club. Brunswick heads was a small prawning village, on the outskirts of civilization. A rugged blue collar town. Which even to this day never wanted the Glam of Byron or the Gold coast. There were two groups of surfers in town, The Clubbies and the Wallies. The Clubbies were more traditional lifesavers, regimented, and rule orientated. The Wallies were a rough and tumble bunch of core surfers. Who explored the beaches of the far north coast. The group consisted of the O’mara  Brothers,  Zac and Peter, Michael Skaravalotti, Ian, Pete and Jeff Storey, Ian Cameron, Tony Cooke, Al Casin, Al Spigs, Pete Sigley, Bluey Ven, Mick Trevett, Mark Plater, Scott and Gav O’Donnell, Gary Addison, Col Williams, and Taska. These guys wanted a club, but didn’t want the rules that went with it. They formed the Brunswick Boardriders Club in the south wall car park, in the summer of 1974.

The Original club lasted for a few years, then split into two distinct groups, B.B.C,(short boarders and The Fringe Dwellers(Longboarders). It is not known yet how many years these two rival clubs were running, but they finally both dissolved into the memories of the original members.

So here we fast track to february 2004. Over a quiet beer at the Hotel Brunswick a group of conserned locals stuck up a conversation, wondering why the B.B.C was no longer an entity. There were plenty of surfers still actively surfing in the Brunswick area. But there was a definite need for the youth of the town to have a club. “Feathers” Buckley, Mark Stevens, and Steve Drew were present at this impromptu meeting, and in April the Inaugural meeting was held and a committee put in place. Keith and Leona Anderson(Surfing Far North Coast) and Trish McCulloch( Hotel Brunswick) worked tirelessly to get the initial paper work and proceedures in place. There is still a lot of history to record about the club, This is only early days in seeking out all the gritty stories. If you have any news or memories about surfing in the Brunz area please send me an email at bellyvision@mac.com so we can update this history page. Lets find out the real truth of what how we started. Cheers Belly