Shorty Bronkhorst (1936-2009)

Legendary South African surfer Shorty Bronkhorst recently passed on.


( Shorty Bronkhorst, [left] and a friend surfing plywood boards in Durban in the 1950s - photo courtesy of Weekend Post )


[ From: "Death of SA surfing pioneer Shorty Bronkhorst in J-Bay," by Robbie Hift and Clayton Truscott, HERALD, November 30, 2009 ]


THE South African surfing community is shocked and saddened by the death of legendary surfing enthusiast Shorty Bronkhorst, 73, in Jeffreys Bay...

Bronkhorst was a pioneer who first surfed Jeffreys Bay in the early 1960s. He started surfing in the summer of 1949 in Durban and was still doing it more than 50 years later at Super Tubes and Surfers Point...

He started out as a professional lifesaver in Durban where he surfed on 5m boards made out of plywood at South Beach, North Beach and the Bay of Plenty.

When Bronkhorst turned 19 in 1956, he and a friend hitchhiked across Africa via Johannesburg, the former Lourenco Marques and Rhodesia, on to Uganda, Sudan and Egypt, eventually arriving in London.

In 1957 he went to Jersey and began building the first surfboards there and was invited to do surf promotions for a travel company. The big tour buses full of spectators arrived to watch Bronkhorst and his friends from the long breakwater.

They were called “the Hawaiian surfboard riders from South Africa”.

Bronkhorst once said: “We first surfed Jeffreys Bay in the early sixties. It was a bit of a secret spot then. I fell in love with the place as soon as I arrived. We used to ride Supertubes on a primo day with just three guys in the water and 3m waves pealing from Boneyards down to the Point.”

He offered this advice for fellow surfers: “Surfing has always been a noble sport. We should try to keep it that way. Tell the youngsters to be polite in the water. Show some respect towards others and you will be appreciated much more than if you just drop in on everybody else.

“It’s unnecessary to sneak around the waiting surfers and catch a sly wave. Rather just get in line and wait your turn. The guys will think more of you if you do so.”

Eastern Province Surfing president Etienne Venter said he was deeply saddened by the news and had nothing but praise for Bronkhorst...

“He’s one of the biggest legends of South African surfing [said Eastern Province Surfing president Etienne Venter]. He always greeted you and was really friendly. It’s such a terrible loss for us, he was really loved by everyone.”

Democratic Alliance MP Tim Harris... said: “The African Surfer crew sends condolences to the family and friends of Shorty Bronkhorst – one of the original surfing pioneers on the continent. We never knew Shorty, but he and his crew were among the first explorers of surfing in the rest of Africa.

“We are grateful for the path they blazed in promoting surfing in South Africa and on the rest of the continent. May you rest in peace Shorty.”

There [was]... a paddle-out at Surfers Point... November 28, at 10am. Bronkhorst’s ashes [were]... scattered in the sea off the beach where he did most of his surfing.

Peter Troy (1938-2008)

Australian surf adventurer Peter Troy passed on, 29 September 2008. I'll post more resources about Peter as they become available...



From Surfers Village:

Surfersvillage Global Surf News, 29 September, 2008 - Australian surf adventurer Peter Troy has died from a bloodclot. Troy is best known for his discoveries in Bali and Java. In 1975 he was one of the first to surf Nias He is also known for his part in Paul Witzig's 1971 classic 'Sea of Joy' where he and Wayne Lynch surfed newly discovered Tamarin Bay on Mauritius.

A true adventurer, he claimed to have visited 130 countries, many in Africa. He surfed Jeffreys Bay in 1966. In Australia Troy ran a Sydney surf-movie-only theatre as well as a Noosa Heads motel. Peter was born in 1938 in Torquay Australia.


Contains a whole chapter on Peter.


Austalia Broadcasting Company's George Negus interviewed Peter Troy. It was broadcast on August 23, 2004:

Peter Troy was a leading figure on the international surfing circuit in the sixties. He discovered the surfing potential of countless locations, including Nias in Sumatra, Indonesia and Bell's Beach, Torquay back home.

Peter has hitchhiked from the world's southernmost township (Tierra Del Fuego) to its northernmost (Spitzbergen), sailed from Gibraltar to Antigua and driven across the Sahara Desert in a goat wagon.

GEORGE NEGUS: During the '60s, Peter Troy was a leading figure on the international surfing circuit. Have board, will travel, Peter took off to discover the world's most thrilling surfing locations. But apparently, his nomadic instincts were not prompted just by wave spotting.

Peter, good to meet you.

PETER TROY: Thank you, George.

GEORGE NEGUS: What did make you go charging off? The ultimate wave or what?

PETER TROY: Well, basically, I worked for a firm of chartered accountants in Melbourne.

GEORGE NEGUS: That's thrilling!

PETER TROY: Yeah, that was great thrilling. After five years, I decided that wasn't what I wanted. But I was too frightened to break with tradition. So I simply got on a boat and left the country.

GEORGE NEGUS: So surfing basically sent you off?

PETER TROY: Yes. I wanted to go to Hawaii and challenge the big waves. I grew up at Bells Beach. I was a big wave rider. I wanted to go to Hawaii.

GEORGE NEGUS: Any idea how many countries you've been to?

PETER TROY: Yeah, well, approximately 140.

GEORGE NEGUS: Right. There are only about 200 in the world.

PETER TROY: A couple of hundred. Yeah.

GEORGE NEGUS: So half the world. I was looking at the things you've done. Hitchhiking in the Kalahari Desert. A yacht trip from Gibraltar to Antigua. That's... that's quite a sailing exercise.

PETER TROY: Yeah, well, it was an attempt to go from Europe to Hawaii to go surfing. And, uh, the aeroplane at that stage was just so expensive, you know. A trip by plane from Australia to England was seven months of work. And today now it's maybe two weeks. If you could get on a yacht or a cargo boat, that's the way you went.

GEORGE NEGUS: Probably my favourite, I think, was that you went from the world's most southern town, right? Puerto...Puerto Williams.

PETER TROY: Puerto Williams in Isla Navareno. It's just south of Tierra del Fuego.

GEORGE NEGUS: Tierra del Fuego. To Spitsbergen.

PETER TROY: Yeah, to, uh... Actually reached 81 degrees north at the tip of Spitsbergen where in those days they were doing polar bear hunting.

GEORGE NEGUS: Alone?

PETER TROY: Yeah, by myself. It took nearly a year to hitchhike.

GEORGE NEGUS: So it was only when... The surfing kicked it off.

PETER TROY: Yeah.

GEORGE NEGUS: Then the rest of whatever you were about took over. Travelling became a way of life.

PETER TROY: Well... Surfing was interesting because being at the forefront of...of the sport and carrying a 10-foot surfboard under your arm, you were an oddity and that was your ticket to travel. It was... If you were in India with a 10-foot surfboard trying to get on a suburban train in Bombay people started asking questions.

GEORGE NEGUS: I'm getting a picture!

PETER TROY: Yeah. I often liken it to travelling around the world with a grand piano.

GEORGE NEGUS: (Laughs) Right. Not a bad comparison. These days, of course, surfing is so sophisticated. And become such a media event. When you did it, it was nothing like that.

PETER TROY: No. And I think, uh, this modern trend of surfing where it's a life-threatening sport now. It's an extreme sport. And there's big wave surfing where they're surfing 70-foot waves and being towed in 100km off the coastline is...it's very demanding. Only a few people in the world are prepared to...

GEORGE NEGUS: Is it better or worse as a result? That it's become so extreme and there's so much money involved, it's so professional, it's such a glamour sport.

PETER TROY: I think the clothing labels have taken it into a casual clothing thing where once upon a time, we looked at Yves St Laurent and Pierre Cardin. And these days now, the European and North American and those people don't want to wear those things. They want something that's created by people of their own...

GEORGE NEGUS: Hence the Rip Curls and the Billabongs, etc.

PETER TROY: Exactly.

GEORGE NEGUS: Your feats as a... as a surfer were considerable. You are in the Surfing Hall of Fame.

PETER TROY: Um, yes, I'm...I'm honoured to have been put into that. We've now got, uh, 23 living surfers that are in the Hall of Fame. And, uh, our sport is only, in the modern sense, since 1956. So most of the guys that ever started it are still all alive.

GEORGE NEGUS: We forget it's a pretty young sport.

PETER TROY: Very young in the modern sense.

GEORGE NEGUS: Yeah.

PETER TROY: The malibu came in conjunction with, uh, the Olympic Games. It was our demonstration sport at the Melbourne Olympics.

GEORGE NEGUS: Right. Right, yeah. Yep. I mean, if you, um... I guess... What's another way of putting it? If you were starting out as a traveller now, right, what recommendations would you give based on your previous experience to young travellers, potential nomads like yourself?

PETER TROY: Yep, I think...I think it's necessary to avoid the aeroplane.

GEORGE NEGUS: If you can.

PETER TROY: If you can.

GEORGE NEGUS: At all cost.

PETER TROY: Find some place - I'll just take a group of islands in the Pacific - if you fly there on Air New Zealand and you get off, then make the attempt to go by local cargo boat or inter-island canoe or whatever and then go and live with the people on that island.

GEORGE NEGUS: Get close to people. It's the difference between travelling and touring.

PETER TROY: Exactly.

GEORGE NEGUS: A traveller is a different thing from a tourist.

PETER TROY: Yep.

GEORGE NEGUS: Where do you call home?

PETER TROY: Um, home is... is on the Sunshine Coast. And, um...I live in Coolum Beach. But it's growing very quickly to be a big town now. I'm getting a little bit scared that the whole south-east corner of Queensland is going to become a Southern California, Los Angeles to San Diego. And, um, so perhaps it's, uh...

GEORGE NEGUS: Might be time to take off again.

PETER TROY: Find a second home to live in part-time.

GEORGE NEGUS: Peter, lovely to talk to you.

PETER TROY: Thank you, George.



SURFING INDONESIA By Leonard Lueras, Lorca Lueras, Jason Childs, Bernie Baker

An excerpt is available at: SURFING INDONESIA, Google Books

J-Bay Reformatted

I finally got around to reformatting Laurence Platt's contribution on J-Bay... recalling the early days of one of the planet's greatest surf zones: Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa...





To view, please go to: Jeffrey's Bay by Laurence Platt