The Pittwater Online News' interview with Mick Dooley ran in November 2017. Dooley was 76 and living in Avalon. This version has been shortened and slightly edited.

November 1941, in Adelaide. My parents moved to Sydney when I was only a baby. I know, for instance, when the Japanese bombed Bondi we were living there. The shells landed near our house. My mother later told me she placed me under the bed or under the table when they were landing in the road.

I went to boarding schools, which I didn’t like, at Bowral. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart primary school, and then Chevalier College.

Did you like Bowral though? It’s a beautiful area.

I didn’t get to see Bowral because I was locked up all the time. On visiting days, when your parents could come and visit, which wasn’t that often, maybe once every month or six weeks, we’d go down to Bowral and have lunch, and that was about it.

(Laughs) A friend of mine, he was in a higher class; we were playing tennis here in Careel Bay recently, and this subject came up. It turns out he went to the same school. He said, "I ran away." I was impressed! Then he said, "I got as far as the train station and they caught me because I was still in my uniform."

Let’s talk about Jack ‘Bluey’ Mayes—did he introduce you to surfing?

No, he didn’t. But just after I joined South Bondi Boardriders Club he was a big influence on me and my surfing.

When did you join South Bondi Boardriders?

When I began surfing. I was busy with tennis and got a late start in surfing, I was 17 or 18, so that would be around 1957. I didn’t even go to the beach until then. When I started, the only people I knew were in the club. I liked riding boards, so I joined.

How did you end up at the Australian Invitational Championships in 1963 and winning Bells Beach in 1964? How did you improve so quickly?

I moved around a bit, which I think helped. Bondi was fairly limited as to the type of wave it had. The north side [of Sydney] had better waves, lots of different kinds of waves, places like Manly and Fairy Bower, so I came over this way.

All over; Manly and other areas–you’d spend six months at one place with one group of guys who were mates then you’d move somewhere else. It was always a bunch of guys sharing a flat and hanging around together.

How did you end up on the Australian Team for the 1964 World Championships?

I’d just won at Bells Beach, that same year, and the powers that be gave everybody that was some kind of a state champion or had done well a go.

The contest was held at Manly; what was it like on finals day?

It was packed. The atmosphere was kind of nervous, cause the event was so big. It looked a lot different to something you'd see today. People dressed differently, especially the men. They’d be in a suit and hat—not a straw hat, a proper hat. It sounds so strange now, but that was just the way it was. I remember my father mowing the lawn with a push mower, and he had his long grey pants on rolled up a couple of turns, white shirt, no tie–two minutes and he’d be ready for work! It wasn’t the right sort of gear for mowing the lawn, but that’s how people dressed.

I was nervous. I remember being a little bit apprehensive to try anything difficult because I didn't want to fall off. I tried to make it smooth, choose my waves, not drop in on people, that sort of stuff—but I wasn’t very aggressive. If I had been maybe I could have done better. [Note: Dooley placed 5th.] But no matter, I’m just happy to have been in it.

Let's talk about Bells. How did you hear about the contest to begin with?

The winner of the first Bells contest, in 1962, was Glen Ritchie. I worked with him at Scott Dillon’s shop in Brookvale. So he came back from Bells that year and told us about it. We were always looking for good-shaped waves and he was raving about how good Bells is.

What was the place itself like in those days?

It was pretty basic, just dirt roads and that kind of stuff. We didn’t mind that though, the whole thing was an adventure to us. Same with the North Coast, you'd turn off the highway and go down tracks and discover these beaches. Anyway, Glen won in '62, a guy named Doug Andrew won in '63, and I won in '64.

No. I didn’t know how I’d go, had no idea. I remember the water was cold. I’m not sure I had a wetsuit then, but if I did it was very basic, maybe just a vest or shorty.

Yes, I went to Tasmania, not long after that, with Bob Pike and a moviemaker named David Price. Bob and I took the car ferry across. I remember the swell in Bass Strait was huge–as a surfer I wasn’t prone to exaggerating–these waves were 25 foot. Nearly everyone was sick. I was sick. Bob wasn’t, I remember. When we get off the other end the ground was still shifting under our feet for ages.

Down the East Coast; Clifton Beach, maybe. The waves were good but it was early days for wetsuits, so you felt it. [Note: Dooley and Pike were featured in David Price's 1965 film 

Were you more of a soul surfer than a competitive surfer?

I was a competitive surfer in those days and did very well competitively. I won the 1962 Metropolitan Championship at Bondi, which was resident surfers from Cronulla to Palm Beach. In 1963, I was runner-up to Nat Young in the Australian Invitational. In 1964, I was runner-up to Midget in the Australian Championship and also won Bells Beach and was in the final of the World Championships at Manly–so for a short time I did well competitively.

You were competing against and hanging around with surfers that have become legends to many of us–were you aware then you were at the forefront of something so big?

No, of course not—there was no awareness of that. You did it for the enjoyment and because you really loved to do it; you loved it so much that you had a ‘sickie’ now and then, and went surfing!

Anyone that was good, which would push you to lift your game. You'd see them doing stuff and that would inspire you to do stuff. That’s what occurs in most sports; you play with people that are better than you and you improve if Before surfing I grew up in a tennis atmosphere.

That’s right—let’s talk about your tennis. I've heard you're still a championship-level player?

Long ago I played in the Australian Championships at White City–of course, I didn’t win! I think other people probably have a higher opinion of my abilities than I have.

Before I was a teenager, my parents wanted me to do a sport. I started at Wellington Street, Bondi—which was a club. I wasn’t a member but could play there as my coach at the time was Don Ferguson. He was a Davis Cup squad player in his youth. Bill Bowrey, the 1968 Australian Champion and Davis Cup player was coached by Don–and there were quite a few other good players there. For me, as a kid, the more games you had with people like that, the more you improved. It was great.

It all just fell away when I got a surfboard! One day this friend of mine, Wally Newell, was walking down the road. He said, “I’m going down for a surf–want to come?” I wasn’t totally obsessed with tennis, but I liked it because I knew I was getting better and better, which pulls you in. But that day, off I went with my and had a ride on his board, and thought, "Boy, this is fun!"

It’s funny, I didn’t have much of a problem. I just did it. I took to it naturally, stood up, and off I went.

How and where did you get starting shaping boards?

At Brookvale. When I moved to Manly I got a job with Barry Bennett Surfboards–not shaping, at first, just but I was in the factory. It just went from there. After a while, someone offers you a job to shape, and you think "yeah, I want to try that," so I left Bennett’s and went to work for Gordon Woods. I’m still friends with Gordon today, by the way, we have lunch regularly. So I started with Gordon and his shaper, Wally Edmonds, taught me how. He was a good shaper. Then when I became runner-up Australian Champion, Scott Dillon offered me a job, with better money and a better deal, so I went with him.

People did that all the time. It was easy to swap jobs–there was a high demand for boards. Everybody moved around a bit then and that was good in one way for the industry because you all started to get a better idea of quality, the level of what you expected to do–it was a surfing community developing a product.

Did you end up with a huge number of boards yourself?

No, not really. I only ever had two boards. There was a normal beachbreak board and a semi-gun, that’s all I had and it took a while to get comfortable with the semi-gun.

So going back to the beginning. You've taken off with this Newell chap, caught your very first wave—and that’s it—for decades!

I don’t know where it came from. I supposed that at some level it helped that I was never completely wrapped up in the ocean like some. I didn’t get caught up in the whole 1960s or 1970s hippie thing, never had any drugs. I just worked and surfed. I stuck at it–that’s all you have to do, stick at it and follow through.

What were your favorite waves? And you can nominate any wave anywhere;

I suppose Bells would be one. Sunset Beach in Hawaii. Point surf in general, right-hand point surf. A beautifully shaped right-hander point surf, like first point at Noosa, Crescent Head, Malibu, because I’m a natural footer, you’re able to perform like a ballet dancer–you can do what you like, go slow or fast, trim out or turn.

Yes, I surfed Byron Bay all by myself–not a soul anywhere, not even a person walking on the sand. That was fantastic, now that I think about it. Although I hated it then, I wanted someone to talk to!

How did you end up there in the first place?

I was moving around a lot then. I was on my own personal surfing safari; just looking for better surf. John ‘Wheels’ Williams, an old friend of mine, grew up in Lismore and knew about Byron, and told me it was a really nice wave. John arranged for me to sleep in the surf club, they had bunks there. The locals hardly ever used the clubhouse, but would come from near and far during the season. That original surf club is no longer there, it got washed away in a big storm and was rebuilt in a safer spot.

Feeding the sharks! I wonder if there is some kind of shark-memory that passes down through the generations. The shark problem at Byron is so bad these days.

Well, there were sharks out there where we used to pump all the blood out, and it used to be a whaling station before that—so probably! They'd have that memory of that’s where they go to get a feed, most likely. But what I remember best about my time in Byron was that it seemed so remote. I remember one of the locals coming up to me and he said, "They've just opened up Wategos, subdivided it, £600 a block." I laughed and said, "who’d want to live all the way out here?" (Laughs)

I went to Queensland, to Greenmount and southern Coolangatta, and worked around doing anything and everything just so I could surf. In 1960 I started a surf school at Kirra Beach, perhaps the first surf school in Australia. It only lasted a season.

What did you think when you saw these pristine Queensland waves and beaches turn become so crowded?

Well, it didn’t instantly become like that. It was a gradual shift. It was a bit like Avalon; when we first came here it was very quiet, now you can’t park anywhere.

In the early 1970s. It was quiet, it was affordable, and while there were a lot of people in the area, most didn’t want to live at Avalon; they didn’t want to go north of the Bilgola Bends. So that created a village atmosphere here, the Bends were a cutoff point–we’d jokingly tell people who came from the south to bring their passports to gain entry.

[Photos: Ron Perrott, John Witzig, John Pennings, Jack Eden]

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