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Image 1 for RIP Barry Bennett – the great Australian surfboard building trailblazer and family man

Image 2 for RIP Barry Bennett – the great Australian surfboard building trailblazer and family man

Barry with son Greg and grandson Tom at the Harbord Hotel.

Image 3 for RIP Barry Bennett – the great Australian surfboard building trailblazer and family man

Barry and his team, 1965.

RIP Barry Bennett – the great Australian surfboard building trailblazer and family man

13 July 22


From a text from his family today (Tuesday 12): “It is with great sadness to say Barry passed away in his hospital bed this morning, we have lost a friend and pioneer of our sport. Thanks to all from Greg and the Bennett family.”

Barry was 91, and since the 1950s he was the backbone of the Brookvale and broader Australian surfboard building industry.

He started building ply toothpicks, moved on to Okanuis after 1956, graduated to shaping balsa, and then pioneered foam blowing in Australia.

You cannot overstate Barry's influence on Australian surfing and surfboard building. A pivotal member of the legendary Brookvale Six with Danny Keogh, Gordon Woods, Bill Wallace, Greg McDonagh and Scott Dillon, Barry supported all the early manufacturers by supplying blanks, fiberglass and resin via the “pay-me-when-you-can” system, and all acknowledged their debt to him in the early years, and countless more over the decades since.

Barry was still hands-on in the Bennett factory at 180 Harbord Rd up until very recently. 

Here was an exceptional man by any measure. Our thoughts are with his wife Margret and the extended family, and the many who’ll be missing him now.

RIP: Barry Bennett.  1931 - 2022



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