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manufacturers : rip curl surfboards

A major wetsuit and surf wear manufacturer, the company

Rip Curl Surfboards
42 Bell Street Torquay Vic. ph 92 3774
5 Boston Road, Torquay Victoria Phone 612 252.
101 Geelong Road, Torquay Vic (052) 61 2904
1967
Bells Beach Surfshop, Torquay.
Retailing surfboards from several Brookvale manufacturers including Keyo, Wallace and Shane.
Late 1968
First factory in Brian Singer's garage, Torquay
1969
Brian Singer, Doug Warbrick,
Andy Spangler, Wayne Lynch; B. Davis
Note impact on local surf industry of the 1970 World Contest at Bells Beach-Johanna
1971
Richard Evans.
1974
Jim Pollock, Alan Colk, Kingsley "Knackers" Kanouski (KKK), originally from California
1976
Wayne Lynch, Don Alcroft, 'Sparrow', Pat Morgan and Dennis Day ;
1977
Wayne Lynch, Pat Morgan and Randy Rarick (USA)
1979
Wayne Lynch and Warren Powell
1985
Maurice Cole, Michael Anthony, Ross Slaven.
1986
Rodgers - High Voltage
1988
Wave Jumper (sailboard) shaped by Wayne Lynch
1996
E System - Composite Epoxy

Top right : Bell's Beach Surf Shop Rip Curl Model, circa 1968.
Peter Turner Collection. Photo: Andrew Sheild ASL, June 1999. Issue 129 page 43.

Bottom: Rip Curl Research, Blue, circa 1970. Contributed, with thanks, by Jonno, April, 2013.

*Rip Curl Model, 1970.*	*Rip Curl, Boston Road,1976.*
*Rip Curl Boston Road, 1974.*	*Rip Curl: Darrell Dell, 1974.*	*Rip Curl, Richard Evans, 1976.* *Rip Curl: Darrell Dell, 1974.* Decal thanks to Snazzy, June 2019.
*Rip Curl, 5 Boston Road, Phone 252.*	*Rip Curl, 5 Boston Road* #230

Rip Curl and Rip Curl Surfboards, 1975.
Numerous decals thanks to Snazzy, January 2019.

Semi-circle graphic, circa 1975.

Semi-circle graphic, circa 1974.

KKK Designs from Rip Curl, circa 1974 (Kingsley "Knackers" Kanousk)

1973

RIPCURL
and
Designed and Shaped by
Don Allcroft, circa 1978.

Rip Curl Surfboards
Wayne Lynch Design, circa 1976.

Shaped by Wayne Lynch
Rip Curl Surfboards,
circa 1978.

Shaped by Wayne Lynch for
Rip Curl, Torquay, circa 1978.

Image contributed, with thanks, by Michael Rundell.April 2006.

Rip Curl: Rodgers Shape, 1978.

Rip Curl Blocked Decal circa 1980.
Decal image contributed with thanks by Snazzy, December 2010.

1985

1986

1988

1990

1992

1984

Doug Rodgers High Voltage, 1986

1987

1988

1994

1999

Advertising

Rip Curl Surfboards
Designs by Wayne Lynch, Don Allcroft, Jim Pollock and Ritchie West.
75 New boards in stock - custom boards within seven days.

WAYNE LYNCH :
Wayne's boards are priced from $130 and are designed for the hollow sucky waves of Bali, Hawaii and the energy spots of Southern Victoria - fine lines for fine performance for the in-tune surfer who likes the tube.
RITCHIE WEST :
Ritchie is a top surfer from California and star of Crystal Voyager is right into short boards, zappy playthings that go great in our summer beach breaks and smaller reefs.
DON ALLCROFT :
Donny is a fine experienced surfer and shaper whose boards go well in all types of waves, both here and overseas. If anything he is specialising in swallowtail flyer hot dog boards and swallow tail speed machines.
JIM POLLOCK:
Jim finished a close second in the last ASA contest.
He shapes mainly pins and Queensland style small wave basics.

Why so many shapers you may ask? Most shops have one shaper making one style of board - whether they are speed boards, hot doggers or whatever.
We try to have at least three shapers to give the customer a wider selection from our stock of 75 boards.
All different designs of small wave, medium wave and big wave boards
Some for fast waves, some for tubey waves, some reefs and some beach breaks.

Come and check out our large range of boards at our new Torquay factory,
or call at our Collaroy office, or Melbourne bayside shops.
RIP CURL : 101 Torquay Road, Torquay, Victoria - 1 Alexander Street, Collaroy, NSW.
SHOPS : 449 Hampton Street Hampton - Shop 103, Bayside Arcade, Beach Street, Frankston, Victoria.
Good range of second-hand boards of all shapes.

Wayne Lynch:
Small wave tube ship
Swallow speed design.
Don Allcroft: Swallow tail flyer.
(adjusted)

Breakway
Number 12
November 1974.
page 24.

Rip Curl Surf Mats

THE NEW RIP CURL SURF MAT Good fun in neat tubes or when the afternoon onshore wind comes. The new material we are using in them is really good, but deflate them when not in the water. RIP CURL Available from all leading surf dealers and Rip Curl Surf Shops: 5 BOSTON Rd., Torquay. Phone: 61 2252 Island Designs, Phillip Island Highway, Newhaven. Hampton Surf Shop, 449 Hampton St., Hampton. Phone: 598 9418. Tracks Number 24, September 1972, page 32
Surfing World Volume 15 Number 5 December 1971		*Tracks* June 1973, Bitza page ?.
Midget Farrelly and Hodgman Surf Mat Tracks Number 35, August 1973, page 32.		Wind Surfing October 1985

Extract from Jarratt, Phil: Salts and Suits - How a bunch of surf bums created a multi-billion dollar industry ... and almost lost it.
Hardie Grant Books
85 High Street Prahan, Victoria, 3181, Australia, 2010.

Page 92

Meanwhile, in Australia, the summer of 1967-68 proved to be the biggest in the twelve-year history of the modern surfboard.
Within weeks of the prototype Plastic Machines rolling out at the Keyo factory in Brookvale, most of the big Sydney manufacturers had their own version in production.

Doug Warbrick, who had enjoyed a box seat for the birth of the shortboard revolution, prevailed upon Keyo owner Denny Keogh to give Bells Beach Surf Shop the ...

Page 93
... Victorian agency so that they could take advantage of the summer boom.
'Claw' Warbrick managed to secure Plastic Machine #4 for his protege Wayne Lynch, commonly regarded as the most exciting young surfer in Australia, and a board numbered in the twenties for himself, but there was already a long waiting list and he had to return to Victoria and wait for delivery.
Warbrick recalls: 'When our boards finally arrived everyone was blown away.
Within two days we had a hundred orders for them but Keyo couldn't supply for months.
It was a ridiculous situation.
My partners, Brian Singer and Terry Wall, and I had a discussion and decided we'd have to go to the knock-off blokes.
Brian drove to Sydney the next day to cut a deal.'

Singer, who when he wasn't running a surf shop was teaching at Lorne High (or more likely missing class to surf with his star pupil, Wayne Lynch), contracted veteran shaper Bill Wallace to produce a version of the Plastic Machine, but Wallace was also suffering from a backlog of summer orders, and ultimately Singer was forced to go to the relatively untried Shane Surfboards.
Shane Stedman had started out a couple of years earlier in landlocked Eastwood, building decidedly uncool surfboards for the mass market.
But the affable Stedman was a competent craftsman and a great marketer, and when he finally made the move to 'surfboards central' at Brookvale, he went after the market, signing big names, playing the psychedelic game and creating a big enough production facility to take on the surfboard establishment.
Singer shook hands with him on a deal to supply boards for the Victorian market.
In Noosa in the winter of 1967, Claw Warbrick had been fascinated by one of the Hayden boards that McTavish had built as he edged closer to defining his new concept.
The board was certainly shorter and wider than most, but it was still a standard longboard, a fact that McTavish had attempted to disguise by getting a local artist to design a logo in the drug-haze style of Sydney artist Martin Sharp's Disraeli Gears album cover for the super-group Cream.
(If the shape wasn't quite there, at least the graphics would be!)
Under the logo, McTavish had placed the words 'Hot Kid Rip Board', a kind of ...

Page 94

... obscure shorthand combination of words that might be seen as the free-flowing verbiage of someone tripping on LSD... or so McTavish hoped.
In fact, the slogan went nowhere, but Warbrick remembered it, and when he took delivery of his own personal Plastic Machine, he had Torquay artist Simon Buttonshaw paint a flower power emblem on the deck.
All hippie art needed words, so Warbrick and Buttonshaw brainstormed and came up with a slogan in homage to the McTavish original- 'Rip Curl Hot Dog'.

When Brian Singer returned to Torquay with the news of his contract surfboard deal with Shane, the partners had to hurriedly decide on a graphic logo and a slogan that could be sent to the Brookvale decal guru, Jim the Printer, before the first boards were glassed.
Simon Buttonshaw came up with a mushroom cloud logo that all agreed looked great, but, recalls Warbrick: 'The original words from my board didn't fit, and we kind of felt they were too American anyway.
So we dispensed with the 'hot dog' part, and that left us with 'rip curl'.
None of us thought it was that brilliant, but you've got to remember, there was a lot of shit going around at the time, so it wasn't that bad either.'

Rip Curl Surfboards were manufactured under licence by Shane Surfboards until late 1968, when the Torquay partners went into production for themselves, using Singer's garage as their first factory.

Jarratt, Phil :
Salts and Suits
- How a bunch of surf bums created a multi-billion dollar industry ... and almost lost it.
Hardie Grant Books
85 High Street Prahan, Victoria, 3181, Australia, 2010.

This copy provided courtesy of Paul Flack.

Geoff Cater (2010-2022) : Catalogue : Manufacturer - Rip Curl Surfboards.

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