Tom Blaxell - a pioneer of WA boating by Gregory Blaxell / Tom Blaxell surfing in the Maldives 2009.

Tom Blaxell is a relative of mine. We share a common great-great-grandfather, John May Blaxell (1800-1874) who was born at Stoke Damerel a village (suburb) near Plymouth and died at Deptford. He was described as a Warrant Officer in the Navy.
John May Blaxell married Frances Chappell (1806-1872) in c.1830 and they had eight children: John (b. c.1831), Sarah (b. 1833), Henry Rous (born c.1836), Allan (b.1838), Harriet (b.1840), Mary Anne (b. 1843), Thomas William (b. c.1845/6) and Leonard (b.1849). I come from the Henry Rous Blaxell line while Tom comes from the Thomas William line. Henry Rous, Allan and Mary Anne all came to Australia and stayed. Thomas William’s son, Thomas Walter Blaxell came to Western Australia in 1905 to prospect for gold.
Henry Rouse arrived in Sydney in 1859 as an A.B. aboard Jason. He was aged 23. He married Margaret Boland from the Hunter District in 1860. They had five children, the eldest of whom was John May Blaxell (b.1864), my grandfather.
Tom Blaxell on the extreme right, with friends in a workshop at Osborne Park after Council had shut down the garage at his parents’ home.Allan Blaxell married Elizabeth Jones (born c.1846) in 1863 and they had 11 surviving children and five who died in infancy. One child, Harriet Blaxell married Georg Vilhelm Marius Halvorsen in 1890 and that family settled in Perth. Several other descendents of Allan Blaxell’s family still live in the Newcastle area or in Sydney.
Thomas Walter Blaxell married Olive Heise and settled in Perth. Thomas Walter Blaxell was Tom Blaxell’s grandfather.
I had never met Tom Blaxell until this year when I went to Perth for the graduation of my grandson, Laurence Blaxell, from the WA Police Academy. I was aware that a Tom Blaxell had been deeply involved in the boating industry as a designer and builder of surfboards and boats.
When we met over a glass of beer, a couple of glasses of Riesling and some excellent local fish at Hillarys Harbour, I became aware of just how pivotal Tom Blaxell had been to the boating industry in Western Australia.
So I asked Tom to tell his story.

Surfboards to power boats

Blaxell Surfboards was established in 1968 with help from my father Don, after being kicked out of backyard manufacturing by the local council. Someone had dobbed us in.
There was a consoling moment when the shops’ and factories’ inspector, who was dressed in a suit, came around to inspect operations in the garage of my parents’ house. When he sat down on a chair to write out the closure notice, the chair had some unhardened resin on it and this transferred itself to the seat of his trousers.
A ‘Blaxell Surfrider’ takes off during an offshore race. This marque won every offshore powerboat race in the 50hp class.I made my first board in 1964 at the age of 14. Then of course, all my mates and then all their mates wanted boards. By 1968 demand was exceeding supply so the forced move into a factory in Osborne Park was actually quite timely and I went straight from matriculation at High School into business.
Blaxell Surfboards quickly became one of the major surfboard manufacturers in Western Australia.
‘Santa Cruz’ advertising material.The surfboard business had a seasonal aspect to it and in a quiet moment I had the brilliant inspiration to get into boat building. Of course boating has exactly the same seasonal pattern and therefore boat building did nothing to fill the trough but rather amplified the extremes.
More likely the underlying reasoning was my love of boats, as I had been boating since I was a baby in a basket. My dad also built boats for the navy during WWII and following the war took on one of his products, a trawler-style mine sweeper and went into the fishing industry. He had been an avid semi-rater (skiff) sailor prior to the war and that is where he met my mum – out sailing.
A beach display complete with banner and some Blaxell boats.Following the fishing venture, he got into refrigeration as a result of looking for a way to preserve the catch in remote northern waters. But he was always building boats for family recreation so the boat building ethic was well ingrained in the family.
In order to get my boats known on the market I ventured into offshore powerboat racing which was a big thing in WA in the 1970s. Every race was widely covered in the press. I was fortunate to find rapid success and quickly established a good reputation for producing tough, sturdy sea boats that would endure the worst of conditions and come out on top.
‘Monterey’ advertising brochure.My boats still hold the record for the greatest number of wins in offshore powerboat racing in Western Australia. I changed the name of the business from Blaxell Surfboards to Blaxell Surfrider to reflect the wider span of product and soon enough we couldn’t keep up with demand for the boats.
Following on from the success in establishing our boats on the market via offshore racing, which is the toughest testing ground for any offshore craft, in 1976 I undertook an overseas study tour to check out the latest and greatest in the American and European scene. My father Don had joined me in the business at this stage and had taken on the role of design and production manager in the boat building arena.
I got quite excited on the trip, taking in a new wave of styling, particularly in superstructure design involving higher decklines. These were accommodated by leaving the gunwale or sheerline at the same level but raising the deck a good 150mm up from that level.
This provided much better headroom, freeboard and space inside the boat whilst not making the boat look top heavy or out of proportion. It also coincidentally allowed us to keep using our proven existing hull designs and moulds but introduced a whole new look and vastly improved functionality.

Developing a new range of boats

My father didn’t mess around and got straight onto the drawing board and in very quick time we had a revolutionary new-look range of boats. We also decided to venture onto the east coast market and exhibited at the Sydney and Melbourne Boat Shows.
Our boats were an instant hit and inevitably keeping production up to the demand was a nightmare. On one particular model, the Santa Cruz, we duplicated the moulds with three sets and started contracting out some of the production.
The Monterey put through its paces.We also upgraded factories several times. The zenith of our range of models and the last one to be introduced was the 26-foot Monterey. That was in 1983. Dad had hung up his hat at this stage and I drew this one up myself on my lounge room floor. It took nine months in my spare time – a bit like giving birth to a baby really! Admittedly it incorporated our well-proven hull design formula again and I had the courage to go straight into mould production from the drawing board, without the normal pre-mould test boat.
Once again it was a hit. It was even taken up by an east coast manufacturer to add to his range, in a precursor, to the now common practice in the car industry, of re-badging various models on the world market.
Around the same time we bought out a competitor boat dealership up the road and moved our retail operation there which then added the Johnson outboard and OMC Seadrive franchise including a mechanical service division to the quiver.
By that time we were also heavily into sailboard manufacture and retailing. It was a very complex affair and our company motto was ‘Serving the Seafaring Fraternity’.

Next month: The Tom Blaxell story continues.