1947 - present

Junior Australian champion Robert ‘Bonza’ Conneeley played a key role in the Bondi’s emergence as an important surfing hub in the early 1960s. 

His family was heavily involved in the North Bondi Surf Club and baths. ‘Dad was in the Bondi Icebergs, so every Sunday he’d be up drinking jugs of beer and eating prawns after having his winter swim,’ Bonza recalled. ‘Mum and I would be down in the south corner out of the wind with the brolly up and as a baby I would just head straight down to the water.'

Bonza began his surfing career on the famous Bondi surfoplanes. Family holidays were at Cudmirrah on the NSW South Coast, with direct access to the family-named Conneeley's Reef. As a teenager, Bonza mixed with Bondi’s emerging champion surfers including Barry ‘Magoo’ McGuigan, Tony Rule, Jack ‘Bluey’ Mayes and Kevin Brennan.

In 1958, aged 11, Bonza got his first surfboard – an eight-foot balsa wood Malibu by Gordon Wood. His first competition in 1960 was with the South Bondi Board-riders Cadets. Bonza was second in the Juniors at the Australian titles in South Bondi in 1963, before heading to Hawaii to surf. In 1964, he won the Juniors’ Australian titles event at Manly. His biggest win came in 1965, at Bells Beach in Victoria, facing unusually large waves and defeating up-and-coming Robert ‘Nat’ Young.

Bonza established Robert Conneeley’s Surf Shop at 164 Campbell Parade, Bondi, in 1966 and worked on board innovations with Hayden Surfboards and Gordon & Smith Surfboards. The 8-foot Robert Conneeley’s Spaceship model and the Expression were among his most famous surfboards. His contribution to the sport continued when he moved to Western Australia in 1975.

In 2006, at the 21st Surfing Australia Hall of Fame Casuarina Beach, he was recognised as a pioneer of the surfing world. Later, he developed a Tribal Law for surfers in collaboration with Peter Cuming and Wayne Murphy. It has evolved into the surfers’ code of conduct and has been adapted by surf clubs and beach authorities cross Australia. Waverley Council has a ‘Surfers Codes’ based on Bonza’s Tribal Law.