The History of shady Hollow

John Jolly

In 1975, Michael Marchant and I were making surfboards at Ian Treloar’s house in Red Hill under his label “Shivaya”.

After about a year, Ian said he was moving to the US and we not only had to find somewhere else to make boards, but we were not going to be able to continue to use his label.

Driving home to Point Leo, Michael said “there’s a place in Tasmania called Dark Hollow, what about that for a name”? I said, “it just sounds too dark, what about Shady, being in the hollow of the wave and shaded by the tube”? We both looked at each other and smiled. Shady Hollow was born!

One problem, we had boards to do and no stickers. “No problem” said Michael, “I’ll draw some up”. After doing about four or five of them he gave up. Luckily we knew a guy who was a printer and it didn’t take long to have a proper mast head and picture stickers created.

We were lucky to find a place just around the corner called Apple Dell, and moved the business with very little down time as we transitioned from Shivaya to Shady Hollow. Work began to rush in and we soon realised we needed a bigger space to accommodate everything.

Around this time I met up with Mark Loveridge, who was a really good, young shaper coming into his own. He needed someone to glass his boards so we decided to rent a factory together in Mornington and share the expenses. I would never have been able to do it if it wasn’t for Mark’s help and I’m always grateful to him for that!

Michael slipped away a bit to concentrate on the boat yards and I was lucky to have an old friend of mine, Michael Pierce to take over the shaping duties for most of my boards. Michael also did quite a lot of the fitting out to the factory, so once again, I was really lucky.

In July of ‘78, I had a call from Paul Trigger who asked me if I could go to Chelsea and glass their boards for around three months while they built a new surf shop and factory at Point Leo. I needed the money so I said yes, and around October it was all finished.

Paul and Phil Trigger were happy with my work and offered me a job, not only working for them, but I could also keep making Shady Hollow boards and have ten of my boards on display in the Trigger Bros shop.

It was too good an offer to pass up, so Mark and I left Mornington. I still glassed Mark’s boards at Point Leo for quite a while before he left to go to Queensland.

I continued to make Shady Hollow boards up until 1995.

It’s now 2020 and like everything, old has becomes new again. I made my first Shady Hollow custom order a few weeks ago and I’m really looking forward to crafting more boards that reflect the Shady Hollow heritage.