Smorgasboarder_16_March-2013

MASTERSTROKESTROKE
Yet another passionate surfer born of the wind
swell waves of Port Phillip Bay, Buzz Thompson
lives a Peter Pan style life of music, bands and of
course - surfing. Calling the Surf Coast of Victoria
home, Buzz spent over a decade involved in the
annual Falls Festival, held in Lorne. He’s organised
shows, managed bands and driven international acts
around on national tours. Firmly entrenched in the
music industry, he’s taken the next big step in his
life and launched a cracker of an indie record label,
Masterstroke Records. In a beautiful circle of life,
it’s surfing that led him to the musical existence he
now leads. It’s funny how being friendly in the water
can take you places, isn’t it?
Buzzs fills us in on how it all came to pass...
WORDS: MARK CHAPMAN
“Williamstown itself is on the Peninsula, out on the other side
of Melbourne. You can see it across from St Kilda. When the
weather has been hot from the north you get 30 knot winds and
waves can blow up there a few times a year – it can even blow
up to a four foot, stormy wind swell. The waves would quite
often be knee, to even waist high, and when you’re a grommet of
eight years old, that’s more than big enough.
“And that’s kind of all we knew at the start. And of course,
there was a massive skateboard craze as well. Late ‘70s and
‘80s, if you couldn’t get down the coast you were surfi ng the
wind waves or you were going crazy on people’s driveways. It
was a sort of surf-skate scene.”
And a vibrant scene it was, with Buzz’s love of waves fueled by
well-attended surfing film screenings in the Williamstown Hall.
“Hundreds of us would go and see them. We’d be there and
see people surf Bells, and places in Hawaii and Indonesia... I
saw surfi ng in those fi lms before I had even seen real, proper
groundswells.
“I remember when I was in my teens, I got taken down the
coast by one of the older guys who I managed to give $5 worth
of petrol money, to get my seat in the back of the car. We went
down to Torquay. There was an offshore wind and there was like
a 2ft, solid groundswell. It was the first time I’d seen something
like that myself - apart from in a surfing magazine. It was
completely mindblowing - like you’d seen paradise.
MAR/APR 2013 | SMORGASBOARDER 147