Gordon Woods – £30 for a 9′ balsa double-ender home delivered.

by peterbowes on July 9, 2023

My old man and Gordon Woods got on handsomely which was confusing seeing that Woods was a surfer and Dad didn’t get along with surfers his eldest son in particular, being me. Leigh would have preferred if I didn’t take so many days off school to go surfing and played golf on weekends instead.

It never happened.

So, here’s GW just dropped off my new balsa board and while he’s having a few drinks with Leigh in the back room and nattering about pars and lies, greens and fairways I’m out in the backyard rubbing a candle on the new board’s deck and did I say that it was a bleached balsa board? No?

Bleached balsa overlaid with resin hardened fibreglass has the same characteristics as the romantic inclinations of your best mate’s gorgeous girlfriend, the one you wish was yours. It’s fragile. Like a relationship it can be easily fractured, especially if you work at it like I am on this board right now. Like I was working on Sue Lyon all those years ago. The problem there was I had to catch buses to get around and Yatesy had a new Goggomobile.

Meanwhile I’m learning that candle wax is rock hard and the fractures I was leaving on Gordon Wood’s just this now brand new delivery were looking like train tracks.

Gordon died a week or so ago and now the old Brookie Six is about all gone.

Bill Wallace: bought a board off him when he was working out of Bronte – Denny Keogh: his daughter was in and out of our house every weekend – Scott Dillon made me a few boards when he was working out of Wellington Lane at Bondi, Greg McDonagh‘s eldest son fancied both my daughters – Barry Bennett used to call me The Desperate I’d be on the phone so much asking when the next John Severson surfing magazine was expected.

Those were different days.

Header pic is of Gordon Woods and Mick Dooley. thanks TJ