Geoff White - pioneer Australian surfer and Vipassana teacher
Contents
- First love
- Surfing safari
- South Africa 1966
- Seychelles 1967
- More Seychelles
- London 1970
- Timeline
- References
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1. "My first love is surfing"
Geoff White is a legend - surfing, meditating and working his way through life. Born at Coledale Hospital 1943, he grew up in the adjacent seaside town of Austinmer, located approximately 50 miles south of Sydney, Australia. Living just a short walk from the beach enabled him at an early age to develop a love of the beach and, during his teen years, surfing. On 30 September 2024, at the age of 80, Geoff was recovering from a heart attack as as he sat amidst former brickworks colleagues, lunching on bistro food at the Bellambi Bowlo. Therein he quietly pronounced thoughts of donning a wetsuit and hitting the surf once more: "I need to get back into it!" he said, mindfully, Geoff looks sixty, not eighty. He is healthy and hearty, full of life and wonder, smiling and bright, even when the matter is serious. He is also a gentle soul.
Below is some information about Geoff, complied by someone who once worked with him; who, raised a Catholic, used to ignorantly and heartlessly stir him up for his spiritual beliefs; who used to make fun of him upon his return to work in the base, rough and tumble social environment of a brick making factory after spending a month alone in an ashram in India meditating. During the late 1970s and into the 1980s this return to work was an annual traumatic transformation from the quest for nirvana to the reality of a hot, dusty, sometime hellish factory, full of well-meaning demons in the form of young men hoping to make enough money to buy a car, go to the pub, score some grass and get laid. Aaaah...., those were the days..... But much had come before, and much more was to take place on the road to octogenarianism. This article, as it evolves, with present snippets of Geoff's adventures and some of the recordings by those who crossed his path along the way. It aims to bring together publish but difficult to access material which can reveal some of his adventures, for Geoff is a quiet, self-effacing chap and self-promotion is not something he naturally does. The present writer, who likes to dabble in history, sees something unique and interesting in what Geoff White has achieved, especially in regard to his travels during the 1960s around the world searching for the perfect wave, and often one of the first to discover it, or them. A true surfing pioneer.
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2. Surfing safari
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The following article was originally published as Surfing safari to road less travelled, Sydney Morning Herald, on 26 April 2008. It was written by Erin Dwyer:
Geoff White had never been out of Australia when he saw the cult surf movie The Endless Summer (1966). A few days later he packed up everything and set off in search of the perfect wave. "I got a three-month ticket and came back 5½ years later," laughs the sprightly 64-year-old surfer from Austinmer, south of Sydney. The trip was the beginning of a love affair with travel.
White, a sandy haired kid in his early 20s, fell in with a crowd of surf photographers in South Africa. They went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), to Mozambique, then across the channel to the volcanic Comoros archipelago and finally the Seychelles Islands. White surfed, they took pictures and the images were published in American Surfer magazine. It was the late 1960s and he was living the dream. But somehow it wasn't quite enough. He was in England when his younger brother took the hippie trail to India. White followed and together they did a meditation course with a young Burmese teacher called Satya Narayan Goenka (1924-2013). "I was open to it because the Beatles were doing it," he says. "They were studying under the Maharishi at the time."
It was at Bodgaya - the place of Buddha's enlightenment - that S.N. Goenka taught the ancient art of Insight Meditation. He called it Vipassana, and explained that it was a process of self-purification by self-observation. All his students had to do was observe the breath. For ten days, White observed silence, meditated six times a day and went without dinner. Far from the rush he was expecting, it was agonising. "All it brought me was a lot of misery," he says. "It was one of the most difficult things I'd done. It was like hitting a brick wall."
White's childhood might have been like any other in the idyllic seaside town of Austinmer. His mother was a non-practicing Methodist, his father was a Mason. Surfing was his only religion. Yet something clicked inside him. He describes "the pull" he felt towards Vipassana, but says really understanding it was like using a cigarette lighter. One keeps clicking until the flame ignites. He did a second course - "Nothing special" - and refused to do a third. "I'd had enough," he says chuckling again.
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| Geoff White, Cape St. Francis, South Africa, 1966. Photo: John Thornton. |
A few months later, in Burma, he and a girlfriend visited the centre where Goenka had learned from the teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin. There he meditated for seven days. "When we left the U Ba Khin centre we were as high as a kite - naturally. We had a smile from ear to ear … a permasmile. When we arrived in Bangkok we could see the misery so clearly from our happiness. It was quite profound."
Back home, somehow, the feeling dissipated. White struggled to keep up the daily meditation and went back to his first love - surfing. He surfed every day and worked odd jobs to fund his surf missions overseas. "I was going nowhere; I was just getting more lost," he says. "As a traveller you just end up drifting from nothing to nothing. Life gets harder and you get more alienated." Yet on every trip he would find himself back in India, studying again with the man he now calls Goenkaji, or teacher. Then in 1980, 10 years after his first course, the flame ignited. "Goenkaji told me I'd wasted a lot of time and I should make a bigger effort. After that, it just happened."
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| Geoff White, Cape St. Francis, South Africa, 1966. Photo: John Thornton. |
Reluctantly, White stopped travelling, got his first serious job, in the Thirroul brickworks, and a few possessions. He hoped a routine would encourage him to meditate. It did. "The meditation helped me hold that job for 13 years," he says, still proud of the record. "After a few years I decided to build a house. I didn't like that lifestyle, but the meditation gave me that equanimity."
White helped establish the first Vipassana meditation centre (Dhamma Bhumi) at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains. He was also on hand when Goenka first visited Australia in 1983. But in the early '90s, the brickworks sent him to Indonesia, and the bug was back. "I was working in a mining camp in Soweto when I got a phone call saying Goenkaji is thinking about appointing you as an assistant teacher." The appointment should have been an incredible honour. But White felt panicky. He had itchy feet and he was painfully shy. How would he teach?
"I was even shy at a union meeting, let alone sit in front of a group of people," he says. "The first course I took, I was too shy to even introduce myself, I just pushed play on the instruction tape." Since then, the retired brickworker has become a highly sought-after meditation teacher. Known for his patience and empathy, he has conducted more than 90 courses across the world. And in a happy coincidence, he travels about one-third of the year. He has taught in Russia, Romania, Turkey, Indonesia, Dubai, and New Zealand but says his favourite place to teach by far is Israel. Since 1997 he has been there four times. On the first course, White taught a young long-haired fighter pilot. Now that man only flies commercially and White believes that in some small way, Vipassana is playing a role in the Middle East peace process. "I'm sure it's changing things, it has to be," he says. "It's certainly giving people a lot more understanding."
At home, White, a bachelor, meditates in a small attic of his house for two hours each day. He lives on 30 hectares of old coal mine land, with views through the bush to the ocean. He is not Buddhist and points out that Vipassana is non-partisan. His only religion is a regular dose of travel. And a daily surf at Sandon Point. "Whenever Sandon is working and I'm home, I'm out," he says. "When you get caught up in the teaching - mixing with those guys, with their Australian nature, they quickly bring you back down to earth." Many surfers liken it to meditation. For White, "Surfing is just chasing the pleasant sensations. Vipassana is about coming out of craving and aversion. When you surf, you might feel peaceful but it's nothing like Vipassana."
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3. South Africa 1966
The following article was published in 2022 by Bruce Usher as Aussie Rock: Bruce usher uncovers an Antipodean legend along Saffa shores (Usher 2022)
Aussie Rocks
Silver Bay in Cebe, South Africa, is as wild today as it was in 1966, when it was first surfed by five Aussies who cared their note into the black igneous rock at the edge of the break. The rock has become a source of legend amongst the few local and travelling surfers who have found there way there since. Located along the Transkei's Wild Coast, the wave itself remains a low-key affair, surrounded by bush with no amenities. The only access in and out is via a twin spoor, with zero medical assistance close by if any shit hits the fan. The Transkei is a former "homeland," which was effectively a cordoned -off state created by the apartheid government in the 1950s to remove black people from South Africa. The region was neglected and undeveloped for decades, a trend that continues to this day. The backhand blessing of this is that there are no condos, high rises or concrete jungle. The wild remains divinely wild, unspoiled and spectacular. A little dangerous, even. But who were these errant Australians who found their way there all those years ago? After hearing the tale from local surfer Nick Pike and seeing the photos, my curiosity was piqued, and so the hunt to track them down began.
Finding the Famous Five
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| First Surfed 5-4-66 By 5 Aussies. |
Initially I phoned Russell Shephard, co-producer of the early 1970s surf film A Winter's Tale, and one of the Australian pilgrims who made their way to Jeffreys Bay in 1969. Sheppard had the September 1966 issue of Surfing World with him as a guide, which featured the late John Thornton's story about travelling through the Transkei a few years prior. But when I asked him, Sheppard was unsure of who the mysterious five surfers were. Thornton's 1966 article offered a few clues. According to him, there were 13 Aussie surfers on the boat to South Africa with him that year. As it later turned out, Thornton was one of the five that initiated Aussie Rock. But first, they had to get there. "The trip didn't really start until the boat was three miles off Fremantle when duty-free price applied for the first time, wrote Thornton, after departing Australia. "This was a drunkard's trip come true." At the same time that I contacted Sheppard, White Horses publisher Craig Smith contacted surf historian Bob Smith in Torquay, to see if he knew who carved the names. Bob upload a press cutting featuring the rock to the 'Vintage Surfboard Collectors' Facebook group, where former professional surfer Kim Woolridge saw the post and immediately got back to Bob with some names. Kim knew Geoffrey White, one of the five pioneers, very well. And that is how I came to interview Geoff and his old mate, Dale Owens, at Geoff's home at the northern end of the Illawarra escarpment at Austinmer.
Geoff and Dale were two of the remaining three surfers from that 1966 adventure. They both had minimal memories of travelling through the Transkei, although Dale could remember the name of a girl he met in a surf shop in Cape Town. What follows are some of their recollections from that time.
The Seed
Back in the mid-60s, Geoff was helping Bob Evans promote his surf films in the Wollongong area; doing the poster run with a glue pot in the back of his car. He got paid wit ha beer and free entry to whatever movie it was that he was helping promote. "I was heading for marriage and normal life,: Geoff told me dryly. And then he watched Mike Hyson and Robert August travelling the world in The Endless Summer and thought to himself, 'I'm outta here!' He talked to his mate Charlie O'Donovan, a fellow Thirroul local, about joining him. "I think Charlie was a bit concerned about being called up for Vietnam, so he decided to come."
"We were stuffed from the start when a couple of the guys let off the fire extinguishers," Dale told me. "The Master of Arms came down and wanted to throw us all off the boat." The boat crew later threatened to keep the surfers on board to London. "Something to do with drunkenness and throwing lounge chairs overboard," said Geoff. "But we managed to get off at Durban and got a flat, then got kicked out of that." After a few months working and surfing in Durban, they decided to travel south and bought a Kombi van between the four of them - Geoff, Dale, Charlie and Brad. When Thornton heard about the plan, he asked if he could come along to take photos.
The Wild Coast
Back then, the Transkei was completely unmapped by surfers and the young crew from Australia were more or less oblivious to the apartheid situation. They just meandered south, heading down dirt roads wherever they could, looking for surf. On one such day they found waves and decided to leave their mark at the break, but the details remain fuzzy. "There may have been a right-hand point where I carved the rock," Geoff told me. "I think I used a bit of metal from the Kombi to do it. I do remember carving the inscription on the pyramid-shaped rock." And so the five surfers who have been the subject of South African myth and legend for so long were immortalised: Geoff White, Dale Owens, Charlie O'Donovan, Richard Bradshaw and John Thornton.
Dale, feeling a little worse for wear at the time, was resting in the van when a ranger came up to him on horseback and asked for money. Dale asked why he wanted money. "You've been in the Transkei too long," the ranger told him. Dale replied they were just passing through. "So he pulled his gun out and pointed it at my head. I nearly crapped myself. He said he would be back for money in the morning. We left early." Leaving the Transkei, they continued south, heading for Bruce's Beauties at Cape St. Francis. When they got there the wave was working, but not like in the movies. Thornton took photos and they continued heading south, eventually stopping at Gansbaai, about 160km north of Cape Town. "We surfed next to a harbour wall that was in the process of being built and we wondered why the local were excited," recalled Geoff. Years later, back in Australia, Dale was looking at a National Geographic magazine in the dentist's office and saw the exact same location was a breeding ground for great white sharks, and had since become a thriving destination for shark cage diving. After arriving in Cape Town, the crew sold the Kombi and split up.
Offshore
At the end of 1966, Geoff moved to Jeffreys Bay and shared a flat with Thornton, then got a job on a bridge being built in Swakopmund in South Africa (now Namibia). Geoff's feet had hardly touched the ground back in Cape Town when, influenced by Thornton, he bought a Pentax camera, a telephoto lends, and flew to Mauritius. There, he met South African surfer Frenchy Fredericks and surfed Tamarin Bay. After that he took a boat to Singapore and across to Madras in India looking for surf. A hop over to Sri Lanka ignited an interest in Buddhism. "Not as a religion, but as an understanding of life," Geoff told me. A few months later in New Delhi he wanted to ship his board to the UK but it was costly and they were including the fin as part of the square area of the board to calculate the price. "I looked around there's a guy with a saw, so I took the fin off. "How much now?" I asked them. The board flew off to London and Geoff went overland by bus, train and truck. He eventually caught up with John Thornton in London, were he was establishing himself as a photographer.
Somehow, Geoff magically appeared back in Durban early in 1967 to depart aboard a luxurious 46-foot catamaran called the Kyalami with photographer Ron Perrott, for a Surfer magazine assignment in the Seychelles. "The captain of the trimaran was a cravat sailor who had no idea about sailing. We saved that boat quite a few times from disaster. Once, sailing up the Mozambique coast, we tacked into the surf line and the waves were huge. I grabbed the wheel and we made it out just in time. Another time he ran over a reef in the middle of the ocean. We finished up in a lagoon with waves breaking all around us and he's trying to get it out. We mutinied and said, 'You're not moving, mate." We made him put the anchor down, slept there overnight and in the morning the sea had calmed down and we got over the reefs."
In the Seychelles, Geoff and Ron found a good surf break on the other end of the island they were staying on. Geoff travelled back on the local bus to surf. Ron got involved in a relationship with a local lady and only come over to take photos for the Surfer magazine article once or twice. There was no airport in the Seychelles until 1972 and tourism was virtually non-existent. Ron's images of Geoff were published in Surfer volume 8 number 5, November 1967. After six weeks in the Seychelles, Geoff left for Durban. He caught a steamer that travelled between Mumbai in India and the African coast.
After leaving South Africa, Dale returned to Australia, then travelled to Hawaii before driving across the mainland to New York and working for a mission with the United Nations, before returning home again. Charles, who was a very stylish surfer, passed away in 2013. Geoff and a group of other locals scattered his ashes in the ocean off Thirroul beach. On returning home, Richard Bradshaw worked as a lifeguard and in the ski fields. Later, he built boats. John Thornton had a very successful photography career in London. He died in 2016 after a courageous battle with bone cancer. Geoff arrived home at Austinmer five and a half years after he left. On his way home to Australia he became involved with Vipassana meditation in India and later conducted Vipassana courses in Australia and New Zealand, then Israel, Russia, Turkey and Indonesia. He still practices meditation.
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3. Seychelles, 1967
Geoff arrived in the Seychelles during 1967, with Australian photographer Ron Perrott. Arising out of that was an article and full colour photo spread in the November issue of American magazine Surfer. Geoff was cited therein as the first person to surf the Seychelles, and he is listed as such in Matt Warshaw's The History of Surfing and The Encyclopedia of Surfing. An account of Geoff's adventures there can be also be found in Michael Kew's Eden Islands: Surf Genesis - Seychelles (Kew 2011). The following is a brief extract from Kew's recent blog posting Air Azimuth, which includes reference to his own adventures in the Seychelles, plus quotes from the 1967 article:
We anchored in a channel with surf breaking over a reef on each side, and it didn’t take long to get the board unloaded. While I clicked away with my camera, Geoff made it through several tight tubes, turning on with head dips. The whole routine really stoked a native crowd gathered on the shore… so stoked they gave Geoff a ride back to the yacht in the head man’s outrigger canoe. Upping anchor, we motored the yacht into the small settlement of Dzaoudzi over glassy water with the smell of flowers heavy in the air. — Ron Perrott, Surfer, November 1967.
Seed of Fortuity was a ‘help wanted’ note inside the smoky bar of an old Durban yacht club where two young Australians were downing beer, looking for something to do, someplace new to go. Their escape flashed on the white scrap of paper. And so August 1967 found photographer Ron Perrott and surfer Geoff White volunteering to crew on the Kyalami, a 46-foot trimaran bound for Greece via the Red Sea, Seychelles, and the East African coast.
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| Geoff surfing the Seychelles, Surfer, 1967. Photographs: Ron Perrott. |
First came the Mozambique Channel, a thousand miles of turbulent blue dotted with atolls and volcanic isles. Four of these - Grande Comore (aka Ngazidja), Mohéli (Mwali), Anjouan (Ndzuani), and Mayotte (Maore) - comprised the French colony of Comoros, a routine port of call for boats cruising the channel’s north entrance. Was off Mayotte where after a month of sailing Perrott and White became the purported first surfers to ride Comorian waves that I, one of just five passengers, decades later could clearly see through the window of a 64-seat turboprop as it descended toward Dzaoudzi–Pamandzi International Airport. From Dar es Salaam our plane soared in slow-motion over the three neighbouring and now-independent Comorian isles, eliciting memories of my explorations there with a cosmopolitan crew during another surf trip in another life. Lush little Anjouan was the trio’s gem, home to the varied reef pass and the black-sand beach break, the slabby point, the wind-sheltered cove. Raw roads wound through thick forests of breadfruit and coconut; past tangled plantations of banana, ylang ylang, coffee, nutmeg, cassava, vanilla, taro, avocado, cinnamon, jasmine, mango; alongside rocky creeks and gushing waterfalls; through villages of mud huts, chickens scrambling across the road, grass-munching goats, everyone smiling and waving at this motley truckload of mzungus bound deeply into the dream of a surf-rich Comorian coast.
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| Geoff White, Seychelles, 1967. Photo: Ron Perrott. |
Exploring a western Indian Ocean island during peak swell season is always iffy. Even if the constant onshore trades can calm for a spell, the tides can be wrong or the swell angle skewed, or it can be impossible to reach a certain spot without a boat. On Anjouan this was precisely the case. Facing our quarters were three potentially epic reef breaks if the correct elements ever coalesced (they didn’t). Each day we were forced to ring our driver/fixer for a ride elsewhere; with the wind howling stiffly and constantly from the same direction, few accessible spots were surfable. Same general theme on Grand Comore, Mohéli, and, yes, Mayotte. A fatal kink in Perrott’s ‘67 yarn was the fact that on Mayotte (now a contentious département of overseas France) there was, and is no, reef pass remotely within the eyesight of a shore bound “native crowd.” The passes are all miles out. Decades later, White admitted he wasn’t sure he’d even surfed in Comoros. “Wouldn’t have been anything special,” he told me. “If there was surf, it would’ve been just a crumbly wind swell. Nothing I can remember.”
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4. More Seychelles
The following extract is from Michael Kew's 2011 interview with Geoff, published in Eden Islands: Surf Genesis - Seychelles:
Jeff White's mother is 95. Fifty years ago she was a keen body surfer who introduced her boy to the beach break of Austinmer, a nice place outside the north Wollongong suburbs.
"As kids growing up, anywhere on the coast in Australia, you just end up in the surf," Geoff says by telephone from his place outside Austinmer. He lives on 75 acres there. His voice is friendly and agreeable, almost inquisitive. "Everyone on the beach rode some type of surf craft. You know, those rubber surf mats, pop up surf mats. Every beach would have someone hiring those out. So a lot of the young kids would hire them and that's how most kids, myself included, started surfing."
White graduates to a hollow 10 feet 6 inch Malibu, followed by a proper balsa board, and he begins combing the New South Wales coast, once cars and teen freedom appear. Lennox [Head] and Byron [Bay] are routine. In 1961, he becomes a lab technician for the New South Wales Department of Main Roads. His office is beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge. But 18 year old White hates Sydney. So he quickly transfers closer to Wollongong. On the days off, he surfs. One day he volunteers to do publicity - the poster run - for a Bob Evans surf film. "I can't remember how I made contact with Bob," White says. "But it was something to do, and it put me into contact with the surf world and some people who were quite interesting." Folks like Nat Young, Bob McTavish and Paul Witzig, for whom White also volunteers to do film poster distribution.
In 1962 Witzig captures Australian footage for Bob Brown's The Endless Summer. Witzig screens the film around Sydney in 1966. The young White, who had never left Australia, views it in a Wollongong theater. "Once I saw that movie, I thought 'That's me. That's it. I'm out of here.'" In February 1967, with a clean 9 foot 6 inch Gordon Wood surfboard, White walks onto a passenger liner to sail 14,000 miles from Sydney to Durban, South Africa. Three friends join him. White is 23. "Let's just say it was a pretty wild trip," he tells me with the laugh. "The ship's crew wasn't going to let us off in Durban."
The foursome feast on empty Durban beach breaks, and earn a few rand by shunting freight train cars in the city port. It's dangerous work, but things go well. With enough cash to buy a Kombi, they get out of town and into the South African countryside. Famed Australian surf photographer Ron Perrott is in Durban too. He has just returned from a road trip to Cape Town and has great things to say about it. Fellow photographer John Thornton, who arrived on White's boat from Sydney, hears of Perrott's jaunt and wants to replicate same. He enlists White and his three friends and they set off in their newly purchased Kombi. Naturally, their first Endless Summer inspired stop is Cape St. Francis.
"We did surf it and it was quite special," White says. "So that was a bit of a stoke for us. But by then Jeffrey's Bay was the place to hang. So we went back there and surfed some fantastic waves. Nobody was around. We just camped in the back of our car." Later. they cruise and surveyed the Garden Coast, and hit Cape Town, where they meet John Whitmore of Endless Summer Fame. He sends the boys to Elan's Bay, one of the surf spots he pioneered. "Cold, cold water, but really hot on land." White says. "we loved it." Eventually, they ditched the Kombi and drift their separate ways. White hitchhikes through the center of South Africa ("A story in itself"), up through Johannesburg and Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where he admired Victoria Falls, before reversing course and plunging through Mozambique, back down to Durban, and for a dose of serendipity.
True is the popular American men's magazine. In Late July 1967 a copy floated through the hands of the small Durban surf crew. In the magazine is an article about erotically shaped nuts and phallic inflorescence of the cocoa Demir Palm that is endemic to the Seychelles. Some of the photos reveal vague, backgrounds of white water. "Then word goes out that there is surf in the Seychelles," White tells me. "And suddenly there's this advertisement somewhere requesting deck hands. A guy in Durban wants to sail a trimaran via Mauritius up to the Seychelles and up through the Red Sea. He was going to do charters up in the Greek Islands. See?"
White doesn't like boats much - he's prone to seasickness. Yet he signs on. Same with Ron Perrott, a quiet and inconspicuous man whose 8 years older than White and known for his iconic Australian surf photography. "I'd seen Ron around Durban," White says. "Somehow we got together, and I said, 'Look, I'll go on that yacht, if you want to go and do an article.' Ron had written to John Severson and I think John said that yes, yachties had called in and he had heard there was surf in the Seychelles."
The Kyalami is a luxurious 46 foot trimaran the captain rented. He is recently divorced and wants adventure - a new Life. "He was a funny guy," White says. A mild-mannered, cravat-wearing wannabe yachtie." The captain's first mate was an American who tends to jump from yacht to yacht and has ample sea experience, but the captain has none. Nice guy though. A few others, including an economics teacher from Rhodesia, complete the eclectic crew. White is the only surfer with a board. The Kyalami leaves Duran in early August 1967, and traces the desolate Mozambique coast. The crew make a few stops in Inhambane, Beira, Angoche. It isn't smooth sailing. There are several close calls. "It was actually our knowledge of the surf that saved us several times," White says. Occasionally the captain will track too close to shore, or ground the boat on coral reef or at night he anchors in the middle of a surf zone.
White wake surfs behind the boat in the Mozambique Channel. This is a very sketchy piece of water. Tiger sharks trail the boat most days. The crew dive off for a swim, only to be chased out. "We did a few risky things," White tells me. The pretty Camorian isle of Mayotte is next. For the French. Mayotte is a perfume producer - ylang ylang flowers sent the air. White nosedives and head dips in small wind swell at a reef pass near the village of Pamandzi. Aside from wake surfing, this is White's first surf session since leaving Durban one month ago. Soon, the Indian Ocean trade winds howl, at full strength, and from Mayotte it is a straight shot northeast to the Seychelles.
"As soon as we left, we hit the trades and that was fantastic," White says. "We ended up surfing these beautiful swells. We went so fast that we ripped the sails." The Kyalami skims past the Glorieues and the Seychelles atoll group of Aldabra, Farquhar, Alphonse, Amirantes - archipelago of idyll, aliases of fantasy. Places to dream about, shimmering sands to cast minds adrift. Because once the boat snags a fortnight of doldrum, there's a lot of time to think. Each day the crew motor a few miles just for something to do.
At last the winds resume. "How we found the Seychelles, I'll never know," White says. "The captain really wasn't the navigator or sailor. But we finally got there, and all I can remember was seeing this magnificent island sticking up with a golf ball on the top of it." (laughs). The island is Mahé and the golf ball is a geodesic dome that houses a satellite tracking antenna of the US Air Force tracking station atop La Misère. Seventy Americans work there. In the heart of Mahé's central mountains, the antenna bleeps with geosynchronous satellites over the Indian Ocean. A fresh addition to the island, it is a beguiling site for the weary Kyalami crew.
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| Geoff moving between yacht and canoe, Seychelles 1967. Photo: Ron Perrott. |
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| Geoff on a Seychelles beach, 1967. Photo: Ron Perrott. |
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| Geoff at the Seychelles, 1967. Source: Kew 2011. |
September 1967. The shortboard revolution begins. Worldwide, long boards suffer. But in Seychelles Jeff White has a 9 foot 6 inch Gordon Woods and in Seychelles that's good. It's been a parched run, little surfing accomplished. Nothing memorable, nor photogenic. Unknown to Jeff White, Mahe isn't a swell magnet even now, mid winter, when the rest of the Indian Ocean is ribbed with Roaring Forties juice. He manages to ride small, thin, scraping lefts at coal reefed. And say guilts. It's not really a surf spot but sits just off the main road. Any possible ways. On the Island's East Coast is Trashed by the trade wind, which never truly eases. Yet freed from the Kyle Army whites, having a splendid time with his rented motor scooter. He explores my from his rented Beach Bungalow base at Bow valon. A lovely tropical cresant. Ron parrot reveals too. He's famous Nikon cameras, remain mostly idle. He meets a dark, Local woman and with her seems content to Wild the downtime away. She gets to know parrot as an inconspicuous 1. I quite Observer of Australian surfing as it was in the 50s and 60s living and photographing life in and around Sydney. He regales her with stories from the past 2 years, when he traveled throughout the United Kingdom, France and Spain before, reverting South and digging into the South African circuit. While the trade were in winds Russell, the palm fronds outside her rural Shack. And perhaps while consuming a 10 or 2 of evaporated milk, Parrot relives the 6 week sale on the Lux luxury yacht from Durban little details. Things like the first mate's. Peanut butter addiction. How the man disliked Australians, how white had guided the captain through terrible Seas off, Mozambique The close calls, the groundings the shaky wake surfing, the claustrophobic comfort of the men's Stern State Room. The woman is impressed with parrots wordiness with her, he becomes unconcerned with the S shells, surf Factor. From his home porch. 15 years old Gerald. Albert is a regular Observer of social surf. What little there is. Q. What do you remember about the wave white? It was great. There were quite a few coal heads, but it was just a really fun way, especially on a Malibu. And I had better days than what was shown in the surfer article. Ron might have been with me on the first day, but I went out a couple of times by myself and had better surf, then that day Then 1 day, Ron decided to come over and do a shoot and that was a day. He took the pictures. You see in the article. Q, do you remember your first encounter with the Albert family? White not really. I remember there was this family there that was really friendly and they put a the table out and offered some coke and stuff, but that's basically all I can remember. I mean, I was just surfing the wave in front of their house. Queue and you stashed your board there. So you didn't have to take it on the bus from Bo valon, right? Why I can't remember Q. Jared told me you'd left it with his father. White. Oh then I might have ya que. Do you remember showing Gerald Albert? How to serve white? I can't remember that. No. Hugh do. You remember Jared? White know. Q he remembers you laughs, white laughing Q. Didn't you leave your surfboard at the Alberts when you left SS white? I can't remember. A surfboard rests on the soft chocolate soil beneath. The coconut canopy in the side yard after his first session at owns or pool blue, Jeff white leaves his fiberglass 9 foot 6 inch Gordon woods with Mr. Joe Albert for safekeeping and convenience. Nobody their minds Joseph's is a beach house after all, but of the Albert family kids only 15 year old Jared shows signs in riding the waves at his doorstep. That 1 afternoon. I came home from school and I saw Jeff White's board. Jared tells me. Dad said do not touch the board. So as soon as my father went somewhere, I took the board and I paddled out on it. He laughs. Simone appears and takes our empty custard bowls to wash them. She is a strong sweet lady. Jared, Albert is the first say shells, Surfer. A solitary satellite of the West. Indian Ocean surf family that blooms in South Africa, where Jeff White, the ad hoc catalyst. Returned to buy Indian, cargo ship a few weeks later, Jeff and Jared will not meet again. He laughs Simona appears and takes our empty custard bowls to wash them. She is a strong sweet lady. How was the custard delicious. Thank you light Breeze, freshens a sweaty brow. Jar, Jared dabs with his t-shirts sucks on his teeth, exhales rates, his Tan bare feet across the grass. Again, he tells me about the wooden belly board, he used I had seen some yachties coming from Australia with board. I saw them, but I never met them. They never went surfing here. That's why I try and make local board. I wanted bored of my own so I could his face beams with the thought. I made it about 9 ft long. The would you see the trees there. It's very light Timber like bulsa. My father used to have a carpenter. I just told him to sharpen the piece of wood to cut it and to put a little ski in the middle. Like I had seen on the Australian surfboards on the yacht but it was a homemade board. It was Heavy you see it would absorb water every time I used it. When my father saw me on the wooden board catching Rays easily. His very happy. So, when Jeff came back later to go surfing here, my father told Jeff that his son would like to try the board but of course I already did. He Winks, 1 eye, and laughs Crossing his arms, over his chest. Jeff was very pleased to show me the tactics, you know, he said that I was a bit gifted that I could use both feet switch stance. And said to my father that I had an ability to become a good Surfer, I could go on that side or go on this side. I could change position with our problem and I could stand up on the board very fast. Jared, Albert is ...
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4. London 1970
After his travels in South Africa, the Seychelles and India, Geoff headed to London, where he met up with his brother Graham.
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| Graham and Geoff White, London, 1970. Photo: John Thornton. |
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7. Timeline
1943 - Born at Coledale Hospital
1966 - South Africa
1967 - Seychelles
1970 - London
1971 - Returns to Australia
1980s - Works at Thirroul brickworks
2022 - Retires from teaching meditation
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8. References
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Crockett, Andrew and Ron Perrott, I'm not here - the photography of Ron Perrott, The Surfer's Journal, accessed 1 October 2024.
Dwyer, Erin, Surfing safari to road less travelled, Sydney Morning Herald, 26 April 2008.
Kew, Michael H., Eden Islands: Surf Genesis - Seychelles, The ALB Literary Supplement, 2011, 16p.
-----, Air Azimuth, Wavelength [blog], 262, accessed 1 October 2024.
Perrott, Ron, Surfing the Seychelles Islands, Surfer, John Severson Publications, California, November 1967.
Thompson, Glen, Surfing, gender and politics: Identity and society in the history of South African surfing culture in the twentieth century, PhD thesis, Stellenbosch University, March 2015, 210p.
Thornton, John, Surf trek from Durban to Cape Town, Surfing World - Australia's Surfing Monthly, September 1966.
-----, Contesting the "good surfer": Neville Calenbourne, South African Surfer, 2(4), October 1966.
-----, S.A. Titles, East London, South African Surfer, 4(1), September 1967.
Usher, Bruce, Aussie Rock: Bruce usher uncovers an Antipodean legend along Saffa shores, White Horses, 10 Years / Issue 40, Autumn 2022.
Warshaw, Matt, The Encyclopedia of Surfing, Harcourt Brace International, 2003, 816p.
-----, The History of Surfing, Chronicle Books, 2010, 496p.
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Last updated: 10 October 2024
Michael Organ, Australia
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