Ian commenced surfing at Bonbeach in Port Phillip Bay at age 8 back in 1967. Not owning a board, he would sit patiently on the shore waiting for an opportunity to borrow one from the older guys surfing at the lifesaving club. More often than not, it was usually Ian Portingale’s surfboard, and later, when they were both on our team, he was dubbed "Little Ian." His first surfboard was a short, plastic-molded Coolite that was purchased from Myer at a time when everyone was trying to cash in on the new wave of popularity that was surfing.

Phil and I had just started making a few surfboards in our backyard, and it was becoming quite a popular place to hang out. Ian’s first board from us was a 7'10" Pocket Rocket called the "5th Dimension," which he bought for $25 (he later sold it for $35 and bought another one of Phil's hand-me-downs). This particular board was shaped in the lane beside our house so Mum and Dad wouldn’t see the mess. As the sun was setting and despite my calls to quit, Phil continued to shape in the dark. The result was an ultra-thin wafer that, when launched at Pines, submerged like an Olo solid timber model. Ian, at 40 kg dripping wet, was the perfect match.

There was no green movement back then, and heaven forbid, we regularly burned off the waste until neighbors complained to the council about the ash in their swimming pool. Even at the beaches, it wasn’t uncommon to see guys burning rubber tires to help stay warm on a winter's day. By late 1969, Ian had become a regular on our surf trips, and one day, having come in from the Point, we noticed him surfing goofy at Sometimes. Because he was still so small, he had trouble turning the bigger boards from the take-off, so the easy way for him was to be a goofy-footer on lefts and a natural-foot on rights. Riding the short surfboards of the 70s, he had no excuse, so we told him to make up his mind and learn to surf backhand.

Ian’s mum, Beryl, was the head seamstress at Falcon Sportswear, and in 1976 she suggested that she could manufacture Trigger Bros. surf clothing. This kicked off with a zip-up fleece and expanded to polos, thousands of hoodies, and a cool turtleneck skivvy that ran for three or four years. She was meticulous about quality and, even when retired, wasn’t afraid to point out any flaws in our shop garments—all we had to do was have the garments screened and pay a few bills. Beryl had a heart of gold but still managed to lay down some disciplined house rules for Ian and his older brother, Paul. Ian recalls being warned about leaving his footy boots lying around or they would be thrown out with the garbage. One day, it came to pass that just before a Saturday game when he was searching under every nook and cranny, she reminded him that the garbage was collected on Wednesday! (In fact, she had given the boots to neighbor Jeff Brain.)

In his teens, Ian was a cheeky, fun-loving kid—10 years my junior but just like our little brother. I had two Christmas dinners at the Cochranes' after we had surfed the early morning session. It could be volatile in the kitchen, but I enjoyed every minute of the colorful banter between the family members. As the years passed, those traits of competitiveness and fierce determination were passed from mother and father to sons. Phil and I will always be indebted to Bill and Beryl Cochrane for their contribution to helping grow our business to what it is today.

While Ian Portingale was swooping on his second Vic Open Title, Little Ian was improving faster than anyone we had seen; he was simply a natural, making every move look so easy. Only a minuscule 14-year-old, he placed second at the Vic Junior Titles in solid 6-foot Bells Beach waves. But sometimes his sense of fun could get the better of him. On one trip to Phillip Island with Porti and his girlfriend, Polly, in the EH wagon, the cheeky Cocky slipped his delicate hand around Big Ian’s neck. Polly knew what was going on, but when Porti started kissing Ian’s hand, things got a little out of control. Porti almost wrenched Cocky’s arm from the socket. After that, the friendship was never quite the same.

At this age, Ian was also quite brilliant on a skateboard, competing in team (his future wife, Deirdre, was also in this team) and individual events, going on to hold a Victorian Junior Title both on the skateboard and surfboard in the same year. The only other person I’ve known to achieve this was John Law, one of the co-founders of Quiksilver, who is a great surfer and an even more astute businessman, I would gather. One of our favorite tricks that Ian performed on the skateboard was his impersonations of top surfers. His mimic of Mark Richards ("the wounded seagull") was amazing, as were those of M.P. and Terry Fitzgerald.

Fifteen years of age was the legal loophole for Ian to escape from the disciplines of Aspendale Tech, and after a few months of persuasion, his parents relented and let him start a career making surfboards. Approaching 18, he had all the skills to be the most popular shaper on the Peninsula; however, he could be easily distracted, and on occasions, we would find him in front of the pinball machines at the fish-and-chip shop some 40 metres from our store. He held the record on every machine, so at least we knew where to find him!

During his teens, Ian took up smoking fags and would disappear to his favorite hiding spot. On one particular occasion, Phil recalls searching for him and, from his smoke signals, locating him under the lemon tree, which was heavily draped in vines. Though he couldn’t be seen, the smoke was a dead giveaway, so Phil announced he was going to water the lemon tree and gave it a good five-minute soaking. Back in the glassing room, Cocky finally fronted, with Phil querying him as to how he’d managed to get so wet. “Been down the bay for a swim, Harry?”

Paul, Ian, and Phil at the Chelsea Store, December '73

Ian loved hanging out with the older guys, listening to our stories while perched on a wooden stool placed between the seats in my '68 Kombi (seatbelts hadn’t been invented at this stage). Ted was relating a tale of a girl he was seeing just as we were about to go through the Seaford Rd. traffic lights, when an excited Little Ian wrenched on the handbrake while exclaiming, “Like this, Ted!” The van almost pitched onto its two front wheels, and by the time I had the car back under control, I had gone through a red light. Within seconds, we heard that familiar sound of a police siren, and Sergeant Maurie Millingham was only too pleased to pass on a ticket.

Ian’s junior years were highlighted by regular invites to the Triple J, where he finished in the top 10 on most occasions. In 1976, he was the lone Victorian to compete in a surfing expression session filmed from start to finish by ABC-TV. This event featured Nick and Tom Carroll and Cheyne Horan. Just some half a dozen years back, Cheyne relayed to Phil how Cocky had stayed with him for a few weeks, and how all the guys loved him because he’d fixed all their surfboards for nothing. On most of his Sydney trips, Ian stayed with Kenny Oliver, the hot younger bro of North Narrabeen legend Grant, and he returned to Victoria with new moves and some great ideas.

Kenny, Cheyne, and Robbie Bain (members of the Coke skate team) flew down from Sydney to join Ian for comps and demos at the 1975 Surfworld on the Yarra festival. These were valuable learning years, spawning new shapes and new moves, and giving Ian a unique technical understanding of how to achieve each and every maneuver. Phil and I have always marveled at his ability to analyze correct and incorrect methods, whether it was related to surfing, kicking a football, hitting a golf shot, snowboarding, or laying a tackle. He’s the ultimate skills coach when he has the time and passion. One of his theories for more accurate goal-kicking is that by teaching the player to drop-kick, they learn the skill of guiding the ball to the foot. I ran this concept by football guru Gary Colling, who used this technique to improve the goal-scoring ability of Stewart Loewe by a considerable margin. His determination to get the best out of himself I saw close at hand when traveling together on a snow trip to Utah back in ’96. For three months prior, he rode his bike to work some 30 km a day, with the result that when we hit the backcountry at Powder Mountain, we called him "legs of steel."

Ian in an advert for Surfworld ’75

We are pretty sure he was the first surfer in Victoria to perform forehand and backhand snapbacks, though we would add that Wayne Lynch—one of the world's best surfers based at Lorne on the West Coast—should not be discounted. One year, Cocky came up with the idea of shaping a tail block and resining it onto the board approximately 6 inches up from the tail. He did this for all our team riders to help with the snapbacks, and it was obviously the forerunner to the modern-day tail block on today's tail pads, à la Gorilla Grip, etc.

Little Ian made surfing look so easy that we began to think he may have at times been under-judged when competing. However, he still went on to win the 1977 Vic Junior Title. With an outstanding year as an 18-year-old, he was a shoo-in for the Open, but weeks of cancellations saw him paddle out for the final at Bells quite ill—yet he still managed a credible third-place finish.

Cocky’s big year came in 1979 when he won the prestigious Alan Oke Memorial contest held at Woolamai on Phillip Island. Surfing against two outstanding goofy-footers in Wayne Lynch (2nd) and Terry Richardson (6th) on a left-hander was the catalyst for him to produce his radical backhand snaps under a series of hard-hitting 6-foot lips. Not even an aggressive-paddling Maurice Cole could match his brilliant wave selection.

With cash in his pocket, his next foray was a trip to Mexico with our glasser John Jolly and Stretch Bingham. The boys had great waves up to 12 feet at Puerto Escondido, but for Ian, the highlight was skating with the likes of U.S. champ Jack Waterman and Sims rider Lonnie Toft, who were pioneering a new craze (the forerunner to halfpipes) of pool skating. They were sneaking into backyards and riding disused pools all over California, plus hanging out at The Endless Wave Skatepark—the first of its kind worldwide. Upon his return, Ian cajoled Phil and me to buy a block of land in Frankston and build a skatepark. He was really excited about this prospect and offered to run it for us, but the risks of being sued by parents with injured kids would have been far greater than the costs of creating a concrete jungle, and we had to disappoint him.

From 1982, surfing started to lose its buzz for Cocky. We noticed he became less interested in small waves and began tracking Express Point to such a degree that we almost opened a shop down there for him to run. Back at Leo, he was the first to surf behind the rock where he could backdoor the barrel. Tube-riding was becoming his specialty, and then, by fluke chance, a couple of games of golf with Mick Schaffer saw him captivated, heading in a new direction and taking his handicap down under ten in just over two years.

Fad-man Cochrane had been reborn. In the coming years, he would rekindle his passion for footy (a highly skilled player at Red Hill), cricket, tennis, snowboarding, and at the moment, poker. Ian hasn’t really surfed for some 30 years but has intimated he intends to have a crack this summer. I’d like to see that!

Triggs

Here's the extracted text from the Rod Brooks article.

Magic worked for Ian

MORNINGTON Peninsula surfer Ian Cochrane took out first prize in the $3000 Alan Oke Memorial Surfing Contest at Woolami Beach, Phillip Island, on Sunday.

Ian, 19, a surfboard shaper, won the $810 first prize in 1.5 m high left hand beach break waves in a location called Magic Land close to Cape Woolamai.

Taking four of the very best waves to come through in the final, Ian turned on a good variety of snapbacks and backhand turns to take the final ahead of defending champion Wayne Lynch.

Lynch, the early favorite, surfed strongly throughout the contest and took the event right up to Cochrane in the final stages.

However, it was Ian's day with a little bit of good luck and a lot of good surfing.

Third in the event was Maurice Cole ahead of Phil Trigger, Mark Skelton and Terry Richardson.

Richardson, from Wollongong, NSW, was the highest placegeter of the interstate field.

★

ON the junior surfing scene Lorne ace Greg Brown won first place and a new surfboard in the 3DB junior contest at Torquay on Saturday.

In 1.5 m waves at Torquay shore break, Brown edged out a large group of local riders by producing a more mature style and a big combination of strong backhand turns.

Second place went to Torquay surfer Scott Abbott with Glen Casey third followed by Paul Hart, Jeff Sweeney and Grant Price.

★

THREE hundred surfers are expected to line up on Saturday for the heats of the Victorian Surfing Championships at Bells Beach.

State champion Jim Pollock is expected to provide a strong defence on his home ground if the surf has some size.

A strong challenge is expected from East Coast champion, Alan Tibballs, former state champion Maurice Cole and Ian Cochrane.

Two strong outside chances for the title could come from Mark Lloyd and Jeff King, both top exponents on twin fin surfboard and different enough in their styles to create a lot of interest with the judges.

In the junior section Greg Brown is the favorite with Malcolm Luke from Phillip Island providing the strongest challenge.

Other divisions at the championships will be cadets (under 15), senior men (28 and over), masters (35 and over), kneeboard, mats, and women.

Entries will be taken on the beach on Saturday morning before 9 o'clock and all Victorian surfers are eligible to take part.