On Sunday the 16th of December 2007, Bret Connolly suddenly passed away at a indoor hockey match in Dandenong which he was participating. Bret,Bretmo or one T was a unique individual and i knew this having only known him for 7 years or so. Firstly its very hard to talk about Bret in the past tense as he was very much a guy in the present and certainly the future. He had a keen sense of surfing and riding waves, its diverse culture and its history. Bret had an early introduction to the sea and surfing in sydney and i remember in his talks that we had in my shop called the no life lounge.

He had a dinghy or somehow acquired it and would hit the sydney harbour and just bob around fishing. He also had his dad that took him down to the surf around dee why and that was the beginning of his surf stoke that was to last nearly 35 years. My first introduction to him was when he popped into the shop and he was one strange dude, he had a hat on backwards, longshorts, runners on and a sk8 board under his arm.

He told me he was looking for two things, one was a place to have holidays and a board to go surfn and by the way my name is Bret Connolly and my mates call me one T cause Bret is spelled with one T. I thought to myself shit, is this guy for real, id thought hip hop had come to Barwon Heads though i hadn’t left town too often to know what the fashion scene was. So Bret had entered the rasta shop and sat in the no life lounge where there were seats for the local crew to sit and talk about everything from surfing and how good we used to surf. So here was Bret a ring in hangin with the boys he’d only met 5 minutes earlier, yeh he was a prime candidate to fit in

Bret over the years spent many hours with me in the shop, in the shed where we make the surfboards and at my home putting together all things from kids toys to seats, barbecues and sundry. Bret was the Barry bloke my wife Tanya had always wanted. Bret had history in Barwon Heads and the Grove from the seventies when his mum shifted down to melbourne and he was catching the train down to Geelong and busing down to the coast, sleeping in the dunes down at Raffs and generally being a beach bum which he fitted in very well with his long blonde hair and freckley face.

When he got a car the trips were made easier but like all things, girls, cars and other distractions kicked in. Bret had absences from surfing but was always a surfer that never leaves your blood. When we started making him boards he would always be involved with the design aspects, from shape to fins and finish. He was a funny bugger and would always say i made rasta do good quality boards, you guys were cowboys till i got on board. Truth is he was in some ways right , when he always went overseas he would come back with the japanese surf mags and give them to me, it was from these magazines that i realised the quality we would have to make to survive in the industry. Bret wanted to ride not just one board but the whole smorgasbord

He had us making single fins, stingers, twin fins, quad fins, mals, eggs, logs and everything in between. He just had to ride and experience the whole lot, him and Eiji had a ball. My task was to put them together and that involved him getting arty farty with tints, pigments, sprays, pin lines and the whole ducks bum and every time he wanted a new board he would say ( you know janet is gonna kill me) and then a few minutes later he would say i will tell her im gettin rid of a board, so lets do it.Bret had the abilty to make his mates surf the worst of all surf by texting and ringing them saying that the waves are good and get over here fast.

Sure enough you would arrive and it was bad, real bad and he would be out surviving 50 knot winds and chop the size of a fat cow. Yeh he,d conned us again and yeh we would end up getting sand and water blasted for the next few hours, and yeh the surf was great according to Bret. He managed to pull that scam for years. Bret not only loved surfing but also loved collecting old boards and he had a keen eye for surfboards made by Fred Pyke. If it was made by fred then he had to have it and over the years he acquired all of my collection and many more others through out Victoria.

He loved Freds boards cause he reckoned they were well made by a craftsmen and captured the essence of surfing soul. Bret also enjoyed surfing in the local surf comps both in the Soul club and the surfcoast longboard club. He was a keen competitor and relished the mateship of fellow surfers. This year Bret and i and his good friend Phil headed to Hawaii to surf the islands and attend the Randy rarick vintage surf auction, Bret not only wanted to surf hawaii he wanted to sk8 hawaii, now that was going to make life interesting. We had a great time surfing the home of surfing Waikiki and getting to the bishop museum, which housed the best Polynesian artifacts in the world.

Yeh we saw the Duke statue and went to the north shore with Bret at the helm. He was the only guy we could rely on the drive on the wrong side of the road, if you know what i mean. Over there he took myself and Bob Smith a local torquay guy with him to sk8 a bowl near makaha, we didn’t tell Bob till we were in the car so as not to scare the shiy out of him. Yeh i gotta say i was a little concerned myself, being a skinny white honky that couldn’t sk8 very well. Nah Bret said he had it covered; he had the board, the pads and the helmet.

When we arrived there it was looking pretty dodgy, heaps of local crew and a brand new ford with three dodgy dudes from Oz. Before Bret could get out of the car i said to him i hope you can fhjnbun sk8 as we are gonna get our arse kicked if you can’t.

Bob looked worried and Bret got out a scanned the bowls, the locals were checking him out and i grabbed the camera for a few shots and maybe a handy device to record a bashing if it was gonna happen. Bob disappeared somewhere keeping a real low profile and then Bret started to kit up. I said to Bret hey man these kids have no pads or helmet on, you should do the same and he said nah im not gonna risk an injury like that. Jeez i hoped he’d make the drop and plant some moves, and sure enough the man took the drop and started to grind. Within minutes he was trading off some moves with the local crew and the whole hip hop slapping of hands and comraderie of sk8ers kicked in. Yeh Bret Connolly even in some pit in Hawaii had fitted in with the locals and gained respect immediately, just like he had done 7 years earlier in my surf shop.

 Bret Connolly was a unique individual, not just as a surfer but as a human being, long may you ride  the waves that you loved so much and grind your fin on the sand once to shore. Ross rasta Harrison