Launched on 25th February 2018, named after Garry Allman
Jim Allman at Bunnings
When you split time between Sydney and London, you inevitably miss some of life’s milestone moments, as they unfold on the other side of the world. Weddings, funerals, boat launches. I was gutted not to be able to attend the launch of the Garry Allman surfboat, on 25th February 2018. So I could not say yes quick enough when Emma asked me to pen an article about “Gaz” for the annual report. I thank the club for this opportunity.
The office kindly provided a copy of Garry’s membership record, but they needn’t have bothered; anyone who knows Garry well enough, knows that he has never been near a committee in his life. Thus, about the only thing of note on file was that Garry has now served in the capacity of Surfboat Captain and head sweep/coach, for more years than not, since he joined Cronulla back in 1997. We’ll get to his competitive record in a moment.
Garry’s love for Cronulla is partially born from the absolute disdain he holds for the other Bate Bay surf clubs. He has been heard to joke about this from time to time. “When I die, don’t scatter my ashes off Cronulla. You can wrap me up in black plastic and dump me overboard off Greenhills. I want to wash up on Wanda beach, a stinking, rotting carcass.” It’s fair to say the tempers that once flared upon mention of our northern neighbours, are now more of a warm simmer, and Garry has forged strong bonds with sweeps, coaches and rowers from not just Sydney branch but all over Australia. There must be a level of respect reciprocated, as he is even invited to stand for the boat panel on the odd occasion.
Anyone who has spent time with the boat section, will know Gaz not just as a coach or sweep, but as a great mate, probably even family. His is the face that springs to mind whenever you think of the Cronulla boaties. Short and stocky, he has biceps thicker than most rowers legs, and a chest that could rival any belt swimmer (though you will never, ever find him in the water voluntarily). He sports a mop of wavy blond hair that would befit any surfer that grew up in the 70’s, which has only just started to show signs of fading with age. Garry delights in telling people about the time he found his first grey pube, “I just picked it off the pizza and kept munching away.” He loves telling jokes (in fact, the same jokes) over and over again. When you’re onto a good thing, stick to it.
Given that his stature (and enormous upper body strength) lends itself more to holding ‘the big oar up the back’, it might come as a surprise to some, to learn that before he picked up a sweep oar, Garry cut his teeth as an actual rower, spending several years at Elouera, where he gained his Bronze Medallion and allegedly did some patrols. Eventually he realised the sand was squeakier down the south end of Bate Bay.
As you would expect from somebody who lives and breathes surfboat racing, he has a drawer full of medals, with gold in nearly every division at the Sydney Branch championships, and several accolades at a State and National level too. He seems to have a knack for drawing alleys one or six (a constant bugbear, which again is now just another running joke) and also a knack for qualifying in lifesaver relay and boat medleys, sweeping many successful teams through the qualifying rounds and into State and Australian finals. To maximise the clubs ability to include star open competitors from other disciplines, Garry has been challenged with some interesting team combinations over the years, often incorporating younger members with little-to-none experience in actual rowing, leading to some exciting… spectacles.
It is almost a statistical anomaly, given some of the talent that has come and gone through the section, that Cronulla’s long bemoaned Aussie gold medal drought hasn’t been broken under his watch. We have teetered on the cusp of glory several times, with some outstanding Junior and U23 crews in recent years, the odd women’s combination that has shown great promise, rounded out with an exceptionally experienced core of senior rowers that rotate year after year. These are guys that you can just throw into a boat and trust their surf skills which have been honed by over a decade or more in the game, and they keep coming back. Never have I seen a sport where teamwork plays a more important role – you are only ever as good as your most inexperienced rower. I’ve always said that good crews make their own luck, but the reality is, at the top end, there isn’t room to make mistakes in this sport anymore, and dumb luck never seems to be on your side. Thus, that Aussie gold continues to elude us for the time being. What doesn’t elude however, is the famous Gaz ‘bitter taste of defeat’ which manifests as a battered sav from the Dagwood Dog stall at Aussies – a mandatory stop once your crew has been eliminated. This should come as no surprise, given we once discovered that Gaz had setup a kebab shop on speed dial.
As a licensed builder, Garry has been instrumental in several bay shed working bees, and on two occasions has completely rebuilt the ramp, as well as constructing the original front steps. When I was Club Captain, he helped construct and fit-out the new club gym – the first facility of its kind that club members could truly call our own, without and commercial interests getting in the way. He did all of this for free, with materials at cost. He has towed boats to most Australian championships and to nearly every surf carnival up and down the east coast. He repairs broke oars, charges the pump batteries, helps man the BBQ’s, checks that the lights work on the trailers, bending rowlocks back into shape, mentors new sweeps, the list goes on. These are the things that aren’t ever mentioned on any membership card, but maybe they should!
One of Garry’s most brilliant traits is his ability to be able to teach a novice – who has never picked up an oar in their life – the basics of surfboat rowing, in just a single water session. Over the years, this has been incredibly useful so that we can onboard junior rowers with confidence and integrate them into the more senior crews quickly. Ironically, this efficiency in training younger members up to competitive level in such a short time, created another problem; we would then have to wait three months for these new members to gain their Bronze Medallion. So, in typical Gaz fashion, he showed that he can come up with imaginative solutions, when he has to.
Garry was instrumental in pushing for a ‘training camp’ style Bronze Medallion course, offered over two chunky weekends. Controversial at the time, because convention dictated that the Bronze was taught in small groups, over a minimum of 6 weeks, the boat section banded together to take on the organisation and instruction. In the face of what was at the time one of the largest overhauls of the surf education curriculum ever (at SLSA level) every surf club was feeling the same pressure on training and assessing, so we decided to inviting new members from the other boat sections of the Bate Bay surf clubs too. This helped us convince the District Executive to support the venture, and as a result, approximately 35 out of 37 trainees passed their Bronze over that three-week period. The success of this training camp helped change the way that people perceived the traditional squad structure and instruction techniques.
Unsurprisingly, Garry has been the recipient of several major club awards, including the Gibson Howlin award in 2013 (for his contribution to training and instruction of club members) and also the Nick Dixon Memorial Boatman’s Trophy in 2007. Given that he was the Boat Captain at the time, I should clarify that he did not award this to himself.
The biggest wave I cracked in my life, was with Garry at the helm. There will never be a bigger one. It was Friday 26th January 2001, the Australia Day long weekend (you never forget a day like this). Our reserve men were racing at Freshwater. It was a stinking hot, blue sky day and the ocean was flatter than sales of Fourex at an Inner West pub. Of course, we drew heat one, alley one and before you can say ‘the cans are out’ we were packing our bags and thinking about cold schooners of the black.
It was suggested that since we’d gone to the effort of crossing the coat hanger, it would be a shame to come all this way just for one race. And so before we hit the ‘Harbord Hilton’, we went back out for a training paddle, checking out Manly and Queenscliff, to see if there was any surf. There wasn’t, the water was so flat, you could comb your hair in the reflection. We drifted around the headland and across the Queensie bombie, when we finally noticed a few ripples beneath us, so Garry turned towards the beach to see if we could milk them for what they were worth. We were still about four hundred metres offshore when one of them looked like forming up, and before you knew it, we were rowing down its face. The oars trailed over our heads, we sat in our seats, trying to keep some weight in the nose so we didn’t fall off the back. Everything was very calm and relaxed. Then, we must have gone over the reef shallows, because the next thing I knew, Garry was up on his foot chocks, the wave nearly as tall as he was. “I think you’d better come back boys.”
Four calm, unsuspecting rowers slowly clambered over each other, plonking ourselves at the sweep’s feet. It felt like time had slowed down, for a moment there was not a worry in the world, we were enjoying this beautiful armchair ride and everything was perfect. Then everything went dark, and we looked up to see what was now an enormous cliff of water, blocking out the sun. I felt a great big arm wrap around me; Mark Treister was pulling the two bowmen in tight, and was himself packed so far back that he was suffocating the poor stroke. We were packed like sardines, now desperately trying to keep the nose up, praying to Huey that Gaz would hold it straight.
Every single person in that boat will tell you this wave was at least 16ft, no word of a lie. We’ve told this story so many times, it’s probably grown even bigger over the years, depending on how many schooners of diesel we’ve drunk. We had rowed onto this monster so far out from shore, that by the time we came upon the band of surfers who were lazing around off the headland, they were parting like the red sea to let us through, throwing ‘shakas’ our way in awe. The old blokes having a beer on the Queenscliff surf club balcony took notice, slowly put down their schooners and took in the show. The council lifeguard saw us, got out of his truck and started to unstrap his rescue board, figuring there was no way this was going to end well. But it did, and we hit the shore with enormous energy, five blokes hi-fiving, grinning ear to ear, never happier to just be alive. We turned around to see the set that had followed through, and thought “crikey, how the bloody hell are we gonna get back out??”. We had no choice obviously, and you’ve never seen a boat move off the start so quickly, the adrenaline was pumping so fast.
I’ve seen some great sweeping in my time, and this was the moment that for me, Garry went from being just the ‘new sweep from Elouera’ to gaining the respect and trust of the Cronulla boat section, where he would eventually take the reins from ‘Chesty’ Tatham, cementing himself as the top sweep. The worst part about it, was that once we got back to Freshwater, nobody believed us. It was still dead-flat back at the carnival, and everyone dismissed us, we were just telling porkies! Our vindication came the next day at the Manly open carnival. When we turned up, the sets were pumping and waves averaging twelve foot were dropping out of the sky. “Told ya so!” we all grinned, realising we must have caught the very first swells of this system the day before. The Manly carnival in 2001 was an incredible event, and has gone down in history, remembered fondly as one of the best modern surf carnivals of all time, with some spectacular shows and carnage in the boat arena. Garry, along with Chesty and Steve Tatham – and all the rowers – did the club proud that day, some of us bolstered by newly found confidence from the day before.
If you ask anybody in the surfboat scene what stands out about Cronulla’s boaties, it’s our fearlessness in the surf. We are a ‘big wave’ club, much preferring to row in large surf than on a flat millpond, any day. Gaz is one of a handful of veteran sweeps around Australia, still on the carnival circuit today, that carries huge respect in the big surf. With recent tragedies at the Aussie Championships, the new, younger generation of sweeps (and rowers) will rarely, if ever again, race in the conditions that we were allowed out in 20 years ago. Garry makes cracking waves look so easy, he could almost do it with his eyes shut. (Just ask the Elouera nippers…!)
One of the best things about the new ‘Garry Allman’ surf boat, is that it is named after a member who is still actively competing. That is a rare thing these days, and I think last time this happened, it was because Ken English came out of retirement to sweep his own namesake. This resurgence didn’t last for long thankfully, as the club was nearly sent bankrupt through the cost of repairing all of Superman’s broken oars. Gaz, on the other hand, probably holds the club record for the longest stretch of having not broken a single oar, either in training or competition, while a surfboat was under his command. It lasted well over a decade I believe, probably longer, and this alone would have saved the club a repair bill with Croker, nearly up there with the value of his new boat.
It can’t go without mention, that this surfboat is not the first ‘namesake’ to bear Garry’s name, to have made itself a part of the furniture at Cronulla SLSC. There is another, and I’m talking about that, yapping, entitled ball-of-wool that goes by the name Jim. Yes, Garry ‘James’ Allman named his prize poodle after himself. We’ve known each other for over twenty years, and I never took Garry to be a dog lover, until one day a few years back, he turned up with this black pedigree poodle (so ‘nulla these days). Gaz and Jim quickly became inseparable, from the jobsite, to coffee at Grind, to helping pull chicks at the beer garden, regular trips to Bunnings… they go everywhere together. Jim took to water like a fish, and is regularly ‘ballast’ in the boat when Cronulla crews train up and down Gunnamatta Bay. I’m not sure if Jim is the first dog to ever crack a wave in a surfboat, but he’s certainly the first to be seen doing it on Channel 7 News. Jim is also a much better swimmer than Garry ever will be, and perhaps that’s why Gaz is so at ease with Jim in the boat (he floats).
It would be remiss not to mention Linda, Garry’s wife who has to put up with her adopted surfboat ‘family’ nearly every waking hour. If ever there was a rowing widow, it was Linda, and she needs to be thanked for being so bloody tolerant over the years. There is only ever one evening every year where Garry won’t make himself available for rowing, and that is Linda’s birthday. There’s a joke there too, but I’ll let Gaz tell that one. I’m not sure when Jim was born, so it’s possible there’s now a second birthday evening permanently off the cards too. No joke.
I could go on and on about the great times I’ve shared with Gaz, his achievements and contributions over the years, and we haven’t even touched the subject of the infamous ‘C-Crew’… but we need to save something for his eulogy. So I’ll finish by saying, on behalf of all surfboat rowers that have ever had the privilege of being under his sweep oar, that we are honoured to have had Gaz ‘up the back’ and it’s fantastic that there are still future generations of rowers coming through our ranks, that will have the opportunity to be coached by Garry before he finally hangs up his club cap. There’s plenty of life in the salty dog yet. And Gaz.
Having known Gaz like family for over half my life, I can say with complete certainty that this is honour is thoroughly deserved. Let’s hope that the club can finally bring home some of that elusive surfboat ‘Aussie gold’. Keep that clown wheel turning, one day I hope we can write a song about it.
