GREG PICKS UP HIS CARABINE – OUR 107TH SUBSCRIBER BOARD WINNER!

Back in Issue 122, Greg Hunter from Fairfield in Sydney won his choice of a Carabine Piglet or a Shakey model - or if he preferred, a custom Carabine however he liked.

Greg opted for a custom and he really wanted to visit the Carabine Surfboards factory in Wollongong to pick up the board and to say thanks in person, which he did last weekend. And he is one happy chap!

“It’s 9’4” and I’m so stoked with it. This is a truly beautiful surfboard, and Shane and Jack at Carabine really looked after me, they are a class crew all round.”

WE'RE BACK!

And, Carabine Surfboards are back again for our subscriber giveaway in the current Issue 124 – and the winner will again have a three-way choice to make: The Shakey and the Piglet are their most popular modern log models, or you can design your own custom. 

EVERY NEW OR CURRENT AUSSIE PRINT SUBSCRIBER IS IN THE DRAW TO WIN A  TOP-END LONGBOARD EVERY ISSUE.

GREG HUNTER HAS QUITE A STORY BTW – CHECK THIS OUT: 

Our youngest ever board winner was 15, and at 78 Greg is now the oldest. He’s an extraordinary bloke who’s sure done a lot, and this was a most entertaining phone call, so let’s try to jam a little of his story into a nutshell. 

He’s still surfing and “still loving the paddle”, he drives a decked-out VW Multi Van, “turbocharged diesel fuel-injected that goes like a rocket”, and he’s still getting away regularly - the latest trip being down to Wollongong to check out the recent DV8s comp.

Greg started surfing “as a little tacker on surfoplanes at Bronte” before getting serious at Cronulla in the early ’60s.

“They weren’t called longboards then, they were just surfboards as that’s all there was.”

Among many, he hung out and surfed with Jack Eden, Brian Jackson, Ron Cansdell, Frank Latta, Mick Carabine, and both Bobby Browns - and recently picked up a new board from Blond Bobby at his factory at Forster on the North Coast. 

Greg got conscripted into the army and then spent a year on active duty in Vietnam in the late ’60s. “On R&R a few of us Aussies would surf Vung Tau. We had boards stashed in a gear shed and we had a lot of fun smoking dope and surfing the scrappy little windswells of the South China Sea.”

Happily home he embarked on a long-time career in the wine industry, apart from a detour for a few years in the ’80s running the marketing for Bundaberg Rum.

“Longboard comps were back in a big way and I used to surf in them and go to most of them up and down the coast. My kids loved that and my wife thought it was the life of Riley. I got Bundy sponsoring a few, and then had Nat Young and Stuart ‘Twizzle’ Entwistle signed up on the team. Blokes would be chasing me all the time wanting sponsorship but why would you want number 15 when you already had number one and two!” laughs Greg. 

He was also an accredited longboard judge, and was president of the Traditional Longboarders Association (before it got taken over by Surfing Australia), and then got into organising the Hogs Breath Longboard Series of comps that threw quite a bit of money around and were a pretty big deal in Australian longboarding for a few years in the mid 2000s.

He always remained a keen surfer himself though, and says, “I used to have all these trophies around the house from different comps, including five Snowys from various age divisions.” 

A father of four with eight grandchildren, Greg said his son Nathan surfs and loves longboards, “And he’s already got his eye on this new Carabine! I’m over the moon about this! It’s just wonderful, and I have every PLB since it started and over the years I’ve checked out the boards each issue, and I’m so stoked to have won this!”

Enjoy it mate.