My Tribute to Glynn Ritchie

My Tribute to Glynn Ritchie

Some sad news emerging earlier this week with the reported passing of surf pioneer and shaper, Glynn Ritchie. I worked with Glynn back in 1968 when I was 18-years old. In 1968 I was assigned to work at Peter Clarke Surfboards' newly created Brookvale factory as finish coater & pinliner.

'68 Australian Surfing Champion, Keith Paull and Glynn Ritchie were our resident shapers. Bob Newland 'the yank' was our glasser and occasionally Ross Longbottom ventured across the bridge to glass a few. Keith and I were the shoo-ins, as we were south-siders. Keith moved over to permanently reside on the northside at Cromer, but I chose to commute from Cronulla every work day to Brookvale.

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When the surf was on, we'd quickly down tools in the factory and Glynn would often take us surfing down to his beloved Manly and Fairy Bower. We would throw our boards into the back of his hotted-up Holden ute brimming with over-sized tyres. 

Glynn, who had a great sense of humour, would be laughing his head off with sheer delight as he floored it and we four-wheel drifted around corners in the back streets of Harbord along the way. Pinning us to the side of the vehicle with a positive 8 g-force, meanwhile, we'd all be hanging on for grim death.

Not only did he push the performance limits on the road, he pushed them in the surf as well. Glynn was considered the doyen of Manly's big wave location; Fairy Bower, matching style and abilities with regular performers out there like world champions Nat Young and Midget Farrelly.

Glynn won the inaugural Bells Beach Contest in 1962. But he never got to ring the bell, the iconic Bell trophy had not yet been created then. In 2011, a half a century after Glynn's Bells victory, Rip Curl invited Glynn down to Torquay to join in with other past champions celebrating fifty unbroken years of the event.

Glynn Ritchie, second from the right

At that Bells gathering in 2011, Glynn told ABC-TV: "Look where surfing has come, and no-one would have thought in our days that it would have ever, ever, ever come to this, heh? You just never. It's mind-blowing how it's turned out. 'Cause we got told that there would be no money in surfing and we must stop wagging school because, we had to get a job."

Victorian surf trailblazers and surf entrepreneurs Peter Troy and Vic Tantau who had joined forces to make surfboards together in Torquay and Melbourne's suburban Moorabbin, created the first Bells Beach surf event by placing an advertisement in the second edition of Australian Surfrider Magazine in 1961. That ad invited entries for "the first surfboard rally to be held in Victoria".

For a mere two shillings competitor's entry fee [twenty-cents], surfers were urged to compete for trophies in both junior and open divisions. There was no mention of the one-pound [two dollars] prize for the wave of the day, or the illegally gained pig that would be ceremoniously barbecued at Bells Beach after the contest.

Advertised for New Year's Eve 1961 but held on Australia Day in 1962, Glynn Ritchie was an accidental competitor in the rally. The Manly teenager had come to Victoria with his aunt Ethel for a holiday, and been spotted by self-appointed 'talent scout' Peter Troy when Glynn was surfing on the softer, rambling beach breaks in front of the Torquay surf club.

"We've got a much better place around the corner," Troy told him.
Ritchie is acknowledged as the stand-out surfer at the first rally but his contribution to the event extends well beyond his efforts in the junior and open divisions.

I've seen a photo of the finalists for that '62 event lined up on the sand at Bells, dwarfed by the scale of the Bell's sea cliffs and they are all wearing boardshorts. 

The photograph confirms that surfers in those days were very hearty indeed.
Glynn was a well traveled surfer in those early pioneer days, and was the perfect advocate for surfing's growing popularity, frequently making surf safaris up and down the coast to surf and explore new and unknown locations.

Upon his return to Manly, Ritchie encouraged his fellow surfers and beach mates to make the Victorian journey the following year, when the Bells contest was held over the Easter long weekend for the first time.

Glynn was very well respected in Sydney's northside surf community where everyone loved him. I have fantastic memories of those days working and surfing with Glynn that I will cherish forever. I'm certain that Glynn will be ringing the bell with one hand out the window as he four-wheel drifts his way into to the big adventure surf land in the sky.


© Steve Core - 2017