Tom Blaxell Part 2 - You can’t keep a pioneer down / Tom Blaxell with a Maritimo cruiser.

Tom Blaxell is acknowledged as being one of the founders of the boating industry in Western Australia. Gregory Blaxell* asked Tom to tell his story.

“The final chapter in the Blaxell Surfrider story was in 1987 just after the America’s Cup defence. This was an incredible time for Perth. It was without doubt our time of the century akin to the Olympics in Sydney. In spite of the loss of the Cup we had become centre stage to the world and the international influx was a tidal wave of new life. It was party time and also happened to be accompanied by a massive economic boom. We were on top of the world.
Fortunes were being made on the stock market and it wasn’t just confined to Alan Bond. Brian Burke, the Western Australian Premier at the time, referred to the top money makers as ‘four on the floor entrepreneurs’.
The very first Blaxell Surfrider boat.Out of the blue, I was approached by the representative of an investment group to see if I would be interested in selling the business with the proviso that I remained involved overseeing the formation of a major watersports conglomerate. The corporate plan envisaged the business to be franchised, registered as a public company and ultimately flogged off on the stock exchange.
This was something I had never ever considered but given the economic atmosphere at the time it made good sense and in addition it was the opportunity to lift a steadily growing business onto the highest rung of the ladder. So I agreed. As did Murray Smith another major surfboard manufacturer and Tim Duff, a major event promoter and a dive shop operator. I was appointed manager of boat building based at the factory. The business was renamed simply Surfrider.
My retail premises in Scarborough Beach Road were rebuilt into something very special to become the model watersports store for world franchising. Huge inventories of retail stock were ordered, not only for the loudly heralded opening but also for the ongoing sales projections. Production at the factory was ramped up also for the greatly projected increase in demand for our self-manufactured range of product (boats, sailboards, wave skis and surfboards).
Extensive training sessions were conducted for the staff and a large team of us spent a week up the coast at Coral Bay and Kalbarri producing a TV commercial. The whole atmosphere was Hollywood. My team of 40-odd prior to the change had more than doubled and we were all participating in something exciting and new. It was an amazing time and the place was awash with money. It all seemed a little larger than life.
Blaxell Surfrider 6.4m offshore cruiser export brochure. / Hillarys Boat Harbour with some of the Martin Box Marine pens.
And alas so it proved to be. The acquisition took effect in July 1987 but three months later it was followed by the October ’87 stock market crash. Someone had popped the balloon! Sales went way below the projections, stock piled up and kept on arriving, and a major portion of the motivated and trained staff was axed as was the television promotion campaign. Morale went through the floor.
A vivid memory for me at that time was one afternoon when I was at the showroom and the Fremantle Doctor had come in. In a poignant moment the Doctor blew a gleaming new surfboard out of its display rack setting off a domino effect by knocking about twenty, beautiful new boards out of their racks onto the floor causing significant damage to them. At that moment I reflected that the dream was over.
Subsequently the operation was wound right down. Further retrenchments followed and the entire senior strata of experienced management, including myself, were thrown on the scrap heap. It was a dramatic and vitriolic ending to my life’s work at the time. The business had been my heart and soul, my obsession for twenty years and here I was out on the street. I was lost.
Surfrider, me included, was simply shut down.
After a week or so sulking at home, a friend suggested I talk to Martin Box as he had just set up a boat brokerage at Hillarys Boat Harbour. Hillarys was a brand new major marina that was also born out the optimistic wave from the America’s Cup defence and associated economic boom. I found it to be just the right niche and a lot less complicated than running a complex, multi-faceted manufacturing and retail operation.

Still muckin’ around with boats

And so now twenty-two years on, I am still mucking around with boats and loving it even though I do miss the creative side of things.
Hillarys protected swimming beach and attractions. / Marina space is in short supply throughout Perth.
Surfrider struggled on for another year or two but the heart had been cut out of it. They offered it back to me but by that time I had been through the gut wrench, had settled into my new world and had mentally had moved on.
In many ways the move to Martin Box Marine turned out to be a natural progression in my life. I had done all the hard yards starting my own business from scratch, in the garage at home and over a period of twenty years had built it up to a point where it was ready to graduate into a public company. But having being thwarted at the eleventh hour, the easy move into the brokerage business, focusing on bigger, in-water cruisers at the biggest brokerage firm in town felt right.
And it still does 22 years later because I’m still doing it. In 1988, Hillarys Boat Harbour was brand new and had a fresh new feel about it and Martin Box had the advantage of high exposure public display pens for large cruisers.
At the time it was the only marina north of Fremantle in the Perth metro area servicing the massive north of the river population of the city. When Hillarys Boat Harbour was being developed, protestors were lying down in front of the bulldozers. But very soon after completion, it became the most popular seaside destination in Perth. It is a public venue and today embraces around three million visitors a year.
Hillarys has a protected swimming beach relished by the ankle-biter brigade, cafes, restaurants, specialty shops and services, a waterslide park, the WA Aquarium, Fisheries HQ, a first class yacht club, a dive shop, comprehensive boat maintenance yard, dry stacking for boats, launching ramps, and holiday accommodation. People love it.
Holiday accommodation is provided at Hillarys Boar Harbour. / Diners enjoy a variety of excellent restaurants, this one on Sorrento Quay, Hillarys Boat Harbour.
The worst time was some years ago when a fire raged through the pier complex overnight.
The buildings were largely constructed of rustic red cedar which is like kindling to a flame. The morning after I drove to the harbour expecting the worst but by some miracle the fire had stopped right at the side wall to our office. As it turned out our wall was seemingly the only double brick fire wall in the complex. It still disrupted business during the rebuild but at least we could continue to operate. The pier owners took the opportunity to rebuild and upgrade so the end result was even better than the original.
Meanwhile I had kept my interest in surfing, and directed a lot of my energy and most of my spare time into the WA Surfriders’ Association. This had been an ongoing mission since the 1960s. In the old days the Association used to meet at the Cottesloe Hotel but in the late ’90s, it was meeting at a residence in Scarborough. This seemed like a backward step to me.
With a lot of effort, the Association managed to secure some premises on the beach at Trigg which is the prime surfing location in Perth. I had the privilege of being elected President for a number of years and seeing the Association grow.
This growth included becoming the largest surf school in Australia, building brand new premises at Trigg and assisting in the design and construction of an artificial surfing reef at Cable Stations. In addition, we were running all the major surfing events in WA. We also changed the name to Association Surfing WA.
Meanwhile the boating business continued to grow and the demand for cruisers outstripped the supply of in-water facilities to house them. This continues to be a major restriction on the growth of boating in Western Australia. You are only going to invest in a boat if you’ve got somewhere to keep it. So the pressure was on and remains to have more facilities built. There is some progress being made but it is all too slow.
Some marinas are being expanded, some are having more berths squeezed in and there are some new marinas being built and planned. At Martin Box Marine we have recently had our in-water display expanded to a total of 42 berths which makes it one of the biggest in the country.
In addition to Bavaria Yachts, we have also added the fabulous range of Maritimo luxury cruisers to our stable. The Maritimos are an exciting product that stands at the pinnacle of Australian boat building expertise.
The company is run by the grandfather of Australian boat builders, Bill Barry-Cotter. Maritimos are grounded on a familiar formula of offshore powerboat racing. Bill is constantly working on new designs, backed by massive amounts of experience gained over many years by himself and his team. Their efforts are rewarded in the production of truly world-class, award-winning products.

* Gregory Blaxell is an historian and author. A new edition of his book The River: Sydney Cove to Parramatta is now available. Trade orders can be made through the publishers, Halstead Press.