1901 - 1976

Bondi resident Dr Ernest E. Smithers invented the iconic Surfo-Plane and the Jaffle Iron sandwich toaster.

The inflated corrugated rubber surf mat was revealed at Bondi in 1933 and patented that year. Smithers put the watercraft into manufacture with backing from his friend, the noted aviation pioneer Sir Charles Kingsford Smith.

The young Smithers left school early and began working as a court stenographer before completing the leaving certificate at night school.

In 1925, he qualified for medicine at Sydney University, finishing in Glasgow in 1931. His class year book reveals that sailing was his ‘ardent delight’: ‘[He is] universally popular.’

While overseas with his wife and two young children, and in need of money, Smithers travelled to the United States to repair and sell yachts. There, he observed canvas floatation devices used on yachts during repair. The idea for an inflatable mat for surf use was born.

Back in Australia, Smithers refined the cushion design, experimented with rubber and reused car inner-tubes from garages around Bondi. Family recalls their hallway ankle-deep in coloured rubber; yellow was best for surf visibility.

After many prototypes, he launched the four-tube Surfo-Plane in 1933. He patented it in the US a year later, describing it as like ‘riding on air in the surf’.

It came of age on February 6, 1938, during Black Sunday when five people drowned at Bondi and 250 were rescued. The device was used to save many swimmers.

Smithers later sold the manufacturing rights to (Sir) Frank Beurepaire, who founded the Advanx and Olympic Tyre and Rubber companies.

That wasn’t the end of Smithers’ surf mats: he quickly teamed up with Bondi stalwart Stan MacDonald to design one called the ‘Beacher’, with better pneumatics. MacDonald resigned as Bondi’s beach inspector in 1933 to take up the beach rental franchise in the north groyne. Both mats remained popular generations of grommets into the 1970s.

Smithers’ inventiveness continued, designing an early car fridge, a contraceptive gel for women and the Tru Slice Bread Knife.

He made little money from his inventions and retired to Sussex Inlet to run a motel. He died in 1976.

Images courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales, Getty Images and the Sydney University Medical Faculty Year Book.