1941 - present

Pioneer board rider Andy Cochran called South Bondi home during the late 1950s and ‘60s and today remains ‘so thankful that at the start of surfing I was part of it’.

Today, he lives in Hawaii, where he created the swim fin company DaFiN. ‘I try to put on paper how much that time at Bondi meant to me and the great people we had time to spend with in our earlier days. It was a great feeling.’ Cochran was raised in Curlewis Street, Bondi and went to school at Bondi Beach Public School and then Wellington St School, he was an avid swimmer, surfer and diver in his younger years.

Cochran’s career included many different hats, he worked with local health studios and was a projectionist at one of Bondi’s many cinemas. Cochran was also a fireman for a while, stationed in the Elizabeth Street station in Sydney before Randwick and eventually in Bondi. He was also one of Bondi’s pioneer surfboard riders. ‘We were so lucky to have grown up in the company of people that to this day had impact on your life. If it wasn’t for Magoo [Barry McGuigan], I would never have been a fireman. And Barry Ross, Ross Kelly, Desie Price, Bluey, Dillon! What an era!  … All I can say is, my memories of Bondi and its people will live with me for the rest of my life.’ One of Cochran’s lifelong Bondi friends is Michael “Mick” Dooley and they both took part in the inaugural World Surfboard Championship Contest held at Manly Beach in 1964.

One day, when the surf was ‘monstrous , but nothing too big to worry about’, one friend remembered: ‘Andy C was on a tandem ride with some beauty who was silly enough to accompany him out into deep water. When paddling tandem, Andy would rest his chin right on the girl’s backside … and as the wave reared up behind them he quickly got up onto his feet and brought the girl up with his hands under her arms … Masterful … Puppetry in the surf … The bloke could swim like Johnny Weissmuller.’

Cochran was also one of the founding figures of the South Bondi Boardriders club. Established at formative time when surfing was rapidly evolving, the group appears to be the first organised surfboard riding club in the country. When describing the group, Cochran says “a lot of people wanted to join us, but we were basically just a group of local  guys who were in the water all the time, respected each other and loved to surf”. Despite his humble description of the group, the South Bondi Board Riders fostered many of Australia’s leading surfers creating a network and establishing the tone for early surf competition.

Cochran made Hawaii his home in the 1970s, but returns to Bondi Beach several times each year and he says…” I will always be a proud Bondi Boy”.  In the mid-1990s, he developed a swim fin for lifeguards that was versatile enough to help keep users safer in the ocean. The original fins were produced in Australia before being tested in Hawaii.

Today, Cochran’s son Kenui works with him on refining the fins, which are used by professional surf photographers, filmmakers and world lifeguard champion Mike Trisler. They are endorsed by lifesaving organisations in the United States, Hawaii, Tahiti and French Polynesia.

Images courtesy of Andy Cochran.