Bill Thwaites: A stylish champion of Tasmanian surfing’s early days

A Tasmanian surfer who took on unknown breaks clad in a football jumper to ward off the chill has been remembered as a stylish pioneer of the sport’s early days in the state.

Champion surfer Bill Thwaites has died aged 79.

SURFING champion William “Bill” Thwaites has been remembered as a stylish pioneer of the sport’s early days in Tasmania.

Mr Thwaites’s death was announced in Saturday’s Mercury. He was 79.

In the days before leg ropes and wetsuits, when hardy surfers took on unknown breaks wearing football jumpers with the sleeves cut off to ward off the ocean’s chill, Bill Thwaites was the first to find and to surf many of the state’s popular surf breaks — often accompanied by his mother Cecile.

Mr Thwaites, who was the son of famed bushwalker Jack Thwaites, won the Tasmanian surfing titles at Seven Mile Beach in 1965 and was runner-up on three other occasions.

Bill Thwaites with a surfboard.

Two-time state champion Mick Lawrence, who competed with Mr Thwaites in the mid-1960s said his friend’s influence on the surfing scene in the days of Malibu longboards was profound.

“He was there at the start. Most people look at him as the founding father of surfing in southern Tasmania,” he said. “Bill was looked up to by all the young surfers in the 1960s.

“He was a very stylish surfer. He had great poise and style and was quite a stylish man. Even by today’s standards if you had a photo of him in the ’60s he always had really stylish haircuts and stylish clothes. He will be greatly missed.”

Mr Thwaites worked as a lifesaver at Clarence and Hobart Olympic pools before opening Hobart’s first surf shop, Seaworld, which traded in several locations around the city before being taken over by Red Herring.

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He made surfboards for a time, wrote a surf column for the Saturday Evening Mercury, was one of the founders of the now defunct Van Diemen Surf Club — and even turned his hand to windsurfing.

Former Mercury editor Garry Bailey remembered Bill Thwaites as someone who always had time to encourage younger surfers like himself.

“Bill was the first to discover so many surf spots back in the early ’60s, he used to go and surf the legendary points in Frederick Henry Bay by himself,” he said.

“He was a great mentor for so many young guys.”

In more recent years he was known for his distinctive home at Hobart’s Blinking Billy Point, which he designed himself.

Mr Thwaites never married. He is survived by his sister Anne.