Gillies Peter Pan, Southam Ringwood and Turville Victoria
Australia's Foundation Makers
The principal early Australian bamboo rod makers were William Southam in Sydney and J. Malcolm Gillies and JM Turville in Melbourne. All three makers began in the 1930s by repairing, disassembling, and copying rods brought to Australia from the UK, particularly rods by Hardy Bros. Other important early makers included Hartleys, Carter and Son, and Jarvis Walker.
The early rods tended to be long (9 feet or so), and heavy (over 5 oz). In 1949, ME McCausland, in Fly Fishing in Australia and New Zealand, wrote: “My suggestions for an all-round utility rod are as follows: Description – split cane of superior quality. Weight – 5½ to 6½ oz. Length – 9 feet (approx.)”.
In 1961 David Scholes, in Fly-fisher in Tasmania, wrote: “For dry-fly fishing I use a 9-foot 5.25 oz [Hardy] CC de France[1] and for wet fly an 8’9" 5.5 oz [Hardy] JJH Triumph”. In 1962 John Hedge, in Trout Fishing in New South Wales, wrote: “A split cane rod of 3 pieces, weight not more than 7 oz, and length 9-foot to 9’6” should be obtained”.
The following pages give biographical sketches of Southam, Gillies, Turville and other pioneer makers. They all had in common that they were superb casters of fly rods, competing at the highest level in Australian fly-casting distance and accuracy tournaments. They made their rods to satisfy their clients and take best advantage of the conditions in which they fished, and they were themselves the best advertisements for their rods.[2]
They grew to operate on quite a large scale, with factory/workshops employing substantial teams of artisans whom they trained in the many skilled steps involved in the creation of a bamboo rod.[3]
They were great experimenters and innovators, teaching themselves to adapt the imported rods they learnt from to make their own rods stiffer, faster for Australian conditions. When innovations reached Australia, mainly from Britain and France, they embraced them.
They were friends and collaborators as well as competitors – Gillies with Turville, Southam with them both through the casting competitions.
They sold their rods to clients based on their reputation as casters and fishermen as well as on the quality of their workmanship.
They could make big, powerful rods only because they were what their clients knew and wanted. Knowledge of the shorter, lighter US rods was slow to arrive here until well into the 1960s, though they were becoming the norm in the US well before World War II.
The first era of bamboo rod makers in Australia was ended by two main factors:
· the shortage of imported cane after World War II;
· the advent of fibreglass. It was cheaper as a material, making rods from it was not as resource intensive, and fibreglass rods reached a ready market because they were cheaper and were perceived to be just as effective for catching fish.
[1] Though the Hardy cane rods available in Australia during our foundation era were typically long and heavy, it’s worth keeping in mind that Hardy and other makers were also making some shorter, lighter rods. Though Scholes used a 9 ft CC de France, John James Hardy had a 7ft version, weighing just over 3 oz, made for him with which he won the accuracy event at the inaugural 1910 casting competition organised by the Casting Club de France, with a 75 ft cast into hoops placed under overhanging branches on a stream. The rod was named after the competition, and Hardy Bros made it on a regular basis in versions from 6’6” to 9 ft until 1961, and later on special order or in special releases like the limited edition of 25 7ft 2-tip rods for #4 line released on the 100th anniversary of the launch of the CC de France in 1911. There is a charming description of the rod and its history at http://www.fishingmuseum.org.uk/cc_de_france.html on the site of the Fishing Museum Online.
[2 ]For the rods of this era we have not attempted to identify line weights. In the pre-AFTMA era, lines were generally silk, and it is difficult to identify what line weight in today’s lines would suit a rod of this era. The conversion chart at https://www.bamboorodmaking.com/LineConversions.html may help, but the best solution will be through experimentation.
[3] Tom Edwards, in Rod, Gun and Lyne, The Story of Reg Lyne, One of Australia's Sporting Giants (2009), wrote about Lyne's close friendship with Bill Southam, forged particularly through their mutual interest and prodigious skills in tournament fly casting and deep-sea angling. He wrote that Southam and Bill Carter (discussed below) were the only major early makers who could split the bamboo for their rods. The other early makers imported their split cane blanks from the UK. We know that Gillies and Turville imported blanks made up in the UK to their taper specifications, but we could not establish if they also imported cane strips for planing-down to their taper specifications in their local workshops, before creating the blanks and finishing them into rods.