Dorothy De Rooy was interviewed for Pittwater Online News in 2019 when she was 71. This version has been shortened and slightly edited.

A city called Breda, near the border between Belguim and Holland, in 1948. I was one of the many many Europeans who came to Australia after World War II. I was three when we came here in 1951. I’m lucky that my parents chose Australia—we could have gone to South Africa or Canada, but thankfully they chose here.

Did you already have family in Australia?

Yes, mother’s parents were already here. My maternal grandfather arrived prior to WWII, he worked for British Petroleum. My family first stayed in an immigrant Camp in Bathurst, then we moved to Mona Vale.

Yes. I went to Mona Vale Public School. And it wasn’t long before I got interested in surfing and borrowed a board and had my first surf down at the Basin in Mona Vale. I was bitten. That was it. I must have been about 11 or 12.

Didn’t your parents run the tennis courts at Newport?

Yes they did, near Newport Primary school. After my grandparents passed away, my family moved to Newport and I went on to Narrabeen Ladies College, as it was called then—Narrabeen Girls High School.

Your parents were both hard workers, I’m guessing.

Yes. They were both very hard workers. All of these people who came over after the war worked hard, and those I met—aunts and uncles who were Dutch—became successful. Hard work was the key for all of them. They were builders and tradesmen; they all had that work ethic. Mum had a shop down at Mona Vale called the Copper Nook, she had that for about 25 years. Dad worked for a man who had a very successful company that did windows and such.

What was Narrabeen Girls High School like?

There was a conservative side to it, but there was also a kind of St. Trinian’s side too. I was more conservative and even managed to become a Prefect, but there was always this lure of surfing; I just could not get it out of my system. I should really have put my head down and studied, but I just threw myself into surfing.

Marilyn Bennett, who I met when I was 13. Marilyn and I are still good mates. Pearl Turton, and the Binning girls, Chris and Tanya Binning.

Marilyn and I always surfed down at Long Reef. The two of us would have to walk with a board from her place to Long Reef and would meet these guys along the way—they were known as the Collaroy group. I remember Midget Farrelly, a lovely chap, very straight up. I spent more time with his sister Jane, though; she married a chap called Bob Pike from Manly, a lovely bloke and a great big-wave rider.

Did you have to get a council sticker [a license] for your board?

Yes, I did. They would confiscate the boards of those who didn’t have one. They were also measuring the width of our bikinis too. It was prehistoric!

Was there a camaraderie between all the surfers?

There was, yes. Not just between the girls up here but also between the southside girls from Bondi and Maroubra as well. We’d all meet up at the contests.

How did you begin entering surfing competitions?

I guess I was quite competitive. I didn’t have that dainty type of style. I liked to get on waves and do what I could with them. I entered my first contests when I was 13; some local ones, at Avoca, there was one at Newcastle, another at Avalon.

Were there parts of those early women’s surfing scene that you didn’t like?

The media all wanted “the look.” Like, “put the board as close to your bosom as you can” type of thing. It didn’t matter if you could surf well, it wasn’t so much about your talents or skills, they just wanted cheesecake. We were being exploited. I didn’t like any of those photos. The girls weren’t taken seriously. We were always tacked on as an extra, to the men. And it wasn’t just the media people. Just the guys you met . . . they preferred if you sat on the beach, like an accessory, didn’t surf, didn’t talk, just sat there looking good in a bikini. We were kept around because of the way we looked. And, of course, for the men there were avenues open to make a living from the sport; they could become surfboard shapers and things like that. Those avenues didn’t exist for women.

Having said all that, I remember we were really just all friends at the beginning. We were just a group of people who loved to surf. At a reunion I went to a few years ago, with so many of us catching up, that’s what stood out. We weren’t male or female or surfing stars from years past. We were people who went surfing for the passion of it; for the waves and for the sense of freedom it gave us. And in that sense we were all just mates.

The 1964 World Championships at Manly, how was that?

That was the first-ever world championships. I had won the NSW State Titles three years in a row so I was automatically entered into the 1964 Worlds. I remember the hype of it, and being made to feel special. There were thousands of people on the beach at Manly that weekend, watching. That has stuck with me. It was a wonderful experience. Also, I was seeing people I’d only ever heard about, or read about. Linda Benson was like a mentor to me, she was a star, larger than life. I was so engrossed in surfing just for the sake of surfing itself, not so much all the competitions although I was competitive at times. I was told I came 4th but it might as well have been 29th.

At first it was a bit hard to convince my father that I wanted to go to Long Reef just to surf; he was sure I was going to meet up with the guys. Then as I began to win contests he realized it was a real passion and allowed me a bit more freedom. But it took time. There was a turbulent aspect to those days, you know. It was all so new, not just surfing, but the changes that were occurring in youth culture, in music, everything. It was an explosion of freedom, a lifestyle that hadn’t really existed before. I loved it, but also knew I didn’t want to do just that all the time—I knew I had to have some kind of grounding in a job so I trained to do that. I’m grateful that I didn’t come into contact with the drug culture that attached itself to surfing a little later on. That whole bit didn’t really belong in the sport, which was about being fit and healthy. But the 1960s brought that with it too, unfortunately.

I remember having some really nice surfs at Dee Why, and some lazy days at Long Reef that were just fabulous. It was nothing like it is now. There were plants growing over the sand dunes, and we’d lay around in the sun, go to the pie shop. There were so many good surfers at Long Reef in those days; Nat Young, Robert Kennison, Mark and Niki Dion, Tony Raper, Robert Green, Rodney Black–all that Windansea Surf Club group.

Just the two – the one I got when I turned 69 and the one I had when younger. I had a boyfriend way back then, John Cormack, who was shaping for Denny Keogh, and that’s how I got my surfboard. That board was eventually stolen from where I kept it, at Marilyn’s place.

The equipment was so different back then.

It really was. Wetsuits were just coming in. In one competition I won a wetsuit and had to go down to Brookvale for a fitting, I must have been about 15. I took Marilyn with me. What I ended up with was basically a man’s wetsuit with seams into it for the female chest, and it was like one of those exaggerated bras Madonna used to wear onstage; it was so uncomfortable and so unwieldy and so thick–nothing like the suits they have now.

My board was 8 foot 6 inches, and I’m 5 foot 2 inches. But I was fit.

I stopped after a really bad accident down at Dee Why Point. I fell and dislocated my should. It was my own fault–I was just being a bit too smart. I was sitting too far over, near the pool there, and the break came and there was just nothing in front of me except rock ledge–it’s still so vivid. I almost drowned, and I’m very grateful that one of the guys noticed what had happened and pulled me out. It was such a bad dislocation that it used to come out of the socket in my sleep. Many years later I had an operation. I still have to be careful of it though.

I worked for an advertising agency in the city, McCann Erickson. That was also a magic time, really, living that advertising agency life.

Yes. I was mixing with a group of Qantas people and so knew his son. His son had taken him to the hotel and wanted to introduce us. Vic was very handsome and quite youthful in looks. I hadn’t met anyone I’d want to get married to prior to meeting him.

Yes he did. And I had never sailed before! But I was game, so we embarked on this great adventure of building a boat, which in those days was no mean feat; there were very few places you could do it, and so many decisions to make. The number of times we walked up and down marinas, “What should we build her out of; fiberglass or wood?” The whole enchilada. We decided to build it out of steel. It took 10 years to build the boat and many of those years it was parked in the front yard of our house. It was 36′ and bright yellow–you couldn’t miss it.

But at the time you still had no sailing experience?

As the boat went further along the building process and it was obvious this was going to become a real thing, I had to go out and get qualified to sail. I did my Navigation certificate and various other qualifications. We launched and then did various side trips and then took off to go around the world in 1996. We didn’t return to Pittwater until ten and a half years later. Still married! Which is no mean feat when you’re on a small boat together for that amount of time.

Oh, too many to name just one. When we first got to Malaysia and Thailand I thought, “This is heaven.” It was cheap, warm, friendly. The we went on to India and through the Red Sea, out into the Mediterranean, over to Cyprus. We spent four years in Europe. We left the boat in Italy and stayed in London for a year,

No, we didn’t work, we just rented out the house and lived off that income. We fished a lot. We didn’t spend much. At sea for two or three weeks at a time, of course, you save a lot of money—there’s nowhere to spend it. And in port, we mostly just stayed on anchor, shopped locally, and fished.

You get out of the Panama Canal and out into the Pacific, and think you’re almost home–but of course the reality is you are not. On the way we visited the Galapagos Islands and Tahiti—oh, so beautiful, such a wonderful part of the world and one of my favorites. Then the final stretch, alert the authorities that you’re coming into home waters. It was wonderful. I loved it. You know, I think surfing and sailing are very closely linked. I always had an affinity with the ocean.

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