History

The Phillip Island Boardriders Club formerly established in 1965, and lays claim to the oldest continuous running club in Australia.

From its conception, most of the clubs members were from Melbourne (120 kilometres away). As the membership grew these surfers migrated closer to the beach and now 90% of all members live on the island. We have three generations of club members surfing in club contests at present, with the oldest competing member being 76 years-of-age. In the early days after contests, beers were held at a place called Bottle Neck Beach. Our largest drinking session post contest involved 220 slabs [cases] on a long weekend in January in the late 1970s.

Over the years, PIBC has hosted many formal presentation nights, events and fundraising activities, hosting bands like Daddy Cool, Little River Band, Sky Hooks (Shirley was a member), Austin Tayshus and Kids In The Kitchen. The end result of these fundraisers allowed the club to build its very own clubrooms in 1993.

In 2022/2023 Club President Hannah Eisen, lead our clubhouse renovation which included flooring, cooling, solar panels, new windows and wifi. This opened the clubrooms up for event hire and facilitated new programs like yoga for our members and community.

As the club grew, so did the surfing divisions – now catering for Supergroms, Cadets, Juniors, Seniors, Masters, Legends, Open, and even Longboard events. Unlike our other divisions, Supergroms are organised into ability levels, not ages - it’s just about having fun and giving surfing a go. Many of our members began in our Supergroms Program and it’s been growing in popularity ever since it’s inception. We also introduced family information nights in 2023 to give non-surfing parents essential info about the beaches, water safety and how to help their kids catch some waves.

Over the years the club has made do with trailers, to caravans, to now a Toyota Hilux van to carry our contest equipment. Where it used to take 2 days to run our contests, they now only run on a Saturday. The Supergroms moved to a beginner-friendly beach on the island, while the Aggregate is usually held at a more advanced location. We all get together at the end of the day, back at the clubhouse for groms presentations and a bbq earlier in the night, and the aggregate presentation and a few drinks later on in the evening. We are lucky to have such a wealth of experience at the club, and great role models in our older divisions. PIBC has 15 Life Members and 5 Hall Of Fame members consisting of Mal Gregson, John Mason, Garry (Dozza) Dorrington, Steve Smart, Vaughn Platt.

In the early 90’s the club had its own computer judging system devised by Ian Pewtress (the only other computer system was used by the ASP for WCT events). Surfing Australia went onto use our computer system – which has become mainstream.

We’ve had two surfers make it onto the World Championship Tour, being Glyndon Ringrose and Nikki Van Dijk. Simon McShane also won the ACC in the 90’s. Over the years the club has run professional competitions, the first of which was way back in 1969. That event offered 100 dollars in prize money (and was backed up in 1970 with $200). Through the 1970’s and into the early 80’s we ran the Alan Oke Memorial, an event that, in 1976, boasted the highest prize money of any event in the world. Some winners of the event being Ian Cairns, Wayne Lynch, Glen Winton, Col Smith and Ian Cochrane. Through the late 80’s the club ran the WQS (World Qualifying Series) events and the Australian Championship Circuit (ACC) events through to the late 90’s. In the mid 90’s club legend Mal Gregson received the Duke Kahanamoku award and Craig Clark received a similar award in the late 90’s from Surfing Australia. In 1999 the club received the Hall Of Fame premier club award. In 2004 the club also received the Hall Of Fame innovation award for their super grommet program. Surfers that came through the program include Ry Craike, Luke and Brent Dorrington, Shaun Stevic and Brendon Leckie. In 2000 the club had four members (Mal Gregson, Craig Clark, Paul Cochrane and Ian (Teddy) Pewtress) receive Australian sports medals for their contribution to surfing. The awards had the Queen’s seal and were presented to the recipients by Prime Minister John Howard.

The Phillip Island Boardriders Club continues to encourage and nurture the sport that we all love, surfing.

origins of pibc - from the 60’s

Words by Life Member Malcolm Gregson

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Life Members

Jim Howard, John Quinn, Malcolm Gregson, Neil Oke, Bruce Oke, John Mason, Chris Rodgers, Craig Clarke, Mark Fairthorne, Paul Cochrane, Geoffrey Owens, Robert Matthews, David Fincher, Pal Cinninas and Bill Yusko.

Honours Board

The Honours Board on the wall at the clubrooms, is somewhere we acknowledge the hard-working committee members and celebrate the incredible talent at PIBC each year. We’ve started putting together a copy of it online for everyone to see. Although this is still in progress, please feel free to check it out here.

PIBC’S CUTBACK FESTIVAL
Celebrating 60 years 1963 - 2023

60 years of history were on display for all to see at the 2023 Cutback Festival held at the PIBC clubrooms, where we celebrated with an epic music festival and award ceremony, honouring Bill Yusko with a Life Member Award and announcing the top ten most influential surfers: