RETROSPECTIVE: Gordon Auchinachie

Why did you start skateboarding? How did you get into it?

I was into BMX racing until some friends overtook me coffining down Park Ave in Mosman. Sold the bike and started coffining. Skated with Wade and the Mozzy High skate crew and got into launch ramping too. Bought a Santa Cruz Jeff Grosso from Chatswood Cycles, Matt Davis served me. He was a pro for Bonza and customized my griptape. Dominic Gonzalez was the biggest influence back then. I used to get psyched watching him. He went BIG. He was a gnarly coffin rider too. He just had so much natural ability and he didn’t hold back none. It was always full boar with that dude.

Who did you like to skate with back in the day?

Wade, the Jones’ brothers (Eden & Jesse), dudes like Ben Svalbe, Rob Powell. Dave Belly, Ali, Dave & Reese Gardener, Nick Mueller, Dom. I was stoked to meet Mike D from Candberra and skate North Sydney with all the older lads. Mike was so good, so much style. So many other kids, everyone skated and was psyched in the late 80′s. Future Primitive and Animal Chin got us amped. There was a skate craze going on. Brad Coates aka French, was rad fun to skate with for some reason. I guess he wasn’t afraid to take on the hammers and was always stoked. Nathan Ho was great fun to hang with too. We used to shred the North Shore. Wade gave me the craps sometimes when we were real young. He was a smart Alec grommet and the fact he could rip over me on the mini ramp didn’t help. When most people were lamed out and not psyched, Wade was always keen for a roll. We ended up skating a lot together, just the two of us, a couple of groms searching for fun on our boards. He was always there, always psyched to skate, the ever faithful. He was a great friend, still is.

Who were your role models?

My big bro, Glenn. He taught me how to skate. I didn’t realise when I was growing up but I emulated him a lot. He was really creative and made video clips for bands and stuff. Actually he made a clip for the ‘Birthday Party’, the ‘deep in the woods’ track. I ended up getting into making videos and things. It was great having an older bro. He was cool never bashed me. Just gave me a ‘Dead Ass’ once. Oh yeah and he locked me in the spare room and threatened to shoot me with his air rifle if I broke out when he was babysitting me once, cause I was fighting with my sister. Haha. Actually I outsmarted him that time. I opened the windows right up, then pushed something over in the room to make a loud noise, then I hid in a cardboard box. My bro came in, saw the windows open and ran out the front looking for me. I casually strolled out the back door. I couldn’t come back till mum got home though or it would have been a “Lead Ass”. We really used to idolise the Bones brigade. A lot of people reckoned I skated a bit like Tony Hawk because of my long limbs. I learn’t Hippy Twists watching Tony over and over do the one he did in animal Chin. I always liked Tony. Christian Hosoi was gnarly. Seeing him live at Martin Place was awe inspiring. Like Jason Lee said in Christians “Rising Sun” DVD, -”He shook the ramp”. I saw him win an NSA Skate Comp in Tokyo once. After he was announced winner he went around to the other competitors and made sure it was cool with them. I thought he was a great sport and still do. He won $10,000 USD and it was 1989. Not a bad day’s pay. I used to look up to great skateboarders and stuff but now my role model is Christ. It was skateboarders, Christian Hosoi and Sid Tapia who lead me to him and I could never thank them enough. I love those guys. They are making a stand for the name of Jesus. “Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.” 2 Corinthians 1:21 (niv)

Your video PLEBS captured a time in the local skateboarding scene. Do you think we as humans can take life for granted sometimes only to look back and have a new found appreciation?

Plebs was awesome. I was trying to work out why and it’s all in the title I suppose. It was a bunch of people skateboarding, a bunch of plebs. It didn’t like have the pro section or am section, just everyone thrown in together mixing it up. It wasn’t promoting a product other than the enjoyment of rolling. I’m not knocking video’s that are selling stuff, otherwise they wouldn’t get made. I was fortunate to be able to make Plebs as a University Major Art Work. That video got me my Degree, Haha. I’ve always wanted to make Plebs 2 but it’s hard to find the time and funding etc. That was a sweet situation I was in.

I had some heckles getting the music rights but I have to give a big shout out to Simon Def Wish from the Def Wish Cast because I phoned him wanting to use a track off their “Knights of the Underground Table” album and he was so helpfull. He hadn’t heard of me or anything and he didn’t try and negotiate, he just let me use it and got the company to send me an official rights usage document and well I gotta tell ya, that was a breath of fresh air. Dealing with record company’s can be really depressing. I couldn’t believe how easy he made it for me. After I made the Video I went to a Def Wish gig and handed them a video after the concert. It was the least I could do. I think they dug it.

Daddy Yeoh used to come to Uni to watch me edit Plebs, to try and get some pointers I guess. I think it payed off, the ‘Loves Ugly Children’ Video was awesome. You rock Daddy Yeoh!

They were good times back then, it seems like yesterday but it’s 16 years ago. It’s cool though I’m not living in the past any more. I’m looking up and ahead to the New Jerusalem, God’s Eternal Kingdom on Earth. For real.

I’ve Written most of a book called “Ride Forth Victoriously”, a brief story of my life before knowing Christ and then my walk with him to date. I just felt so compelled to share the experiences, the encounters that I’ve had with the Lord. I haven’t had an alcoholic drink in years, but lately i’ve been getting drunk on ‘New Wine’ from the True Vine and it’s there for all to recieve.

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”

Luke 11:9 (niv)

Which Australian skaters have been most influential in your life to date?

Dom Gonz, Burkitt, Davo, Kaehne, Cam Goozeff, Ben Cox, Sid Tapia, Bart, Skunk, Waynos, Ho Bag, Johnny, Murph, Spin, Ti, Mullhal is an inspiration. There’s so many, Mullupawick, Billy Dowg.

Dustin was inspiring. I remember going to Tuggerah indoor skate park back in the day. We didn’t realise there was a skate comp on that day, so I entered it or I wasn’t going to get a roll. Dustin would drop in and kickflip the whole massive funbox every shot. That really stood out to me. His consistency. It’s inspiring to see how far he has taken his skating. I remember in the early days he had a lot of critics and people talking him down but he just followed his heart. No one can get in the way of a directed heart.

It was cool. I didn’t get paid or anything but all the free product helped to keep me going. It was really cool, all the people who sponsored me were great.

Cockroach was my first sponsor which was awesome till the factory mysteriously burnt down. Skateboard World helped me out heaps in the early days thanks to Mick Mullhal hooking that up after I won the ’91 Rocks Comp. Just having a shop sponsor like that can really help you so much. Then Plebs came out in ’94 and I started to get serious sponsors like Criminal Skateboards and Volcom. After I tied for first in the ’95 SDS Hordern Comp everything started to come together.

Riding for Airwalk was rad, one day I had to do a demo with Tony Hawk at Kierle Park which was so cool. My Nephews are stoked that I’ve met him because they’re obsessed with the video game. Tony was cool. Demo’s can really put you on the spot but that one went ok.

Balmoral Boards were rad.

Aha hooked me up on Censored which was totally awesome through Addlon which was a distribution company. Actually those Australian tours that he took us on were some of the best times in my life. Going on tour with Aha, Pat Duffy, Dan Drehoebl, Tony Alva, Brett Margaritis and Virginia was on of the funnest things ever. I guess that was the best thing about being sponsored in the end, going on tours, travelling around Australia and hanging out with rad people like that.

I met all the Tassie boys on a tour of Tasmania which was such an amazing place. I gorged myself on south pacific oysters on the river next to Ulverstone there which was a great experience. I guess being sponsored wasn’t anything special but it enabled me to continue skating, travel and meet people.

For the Moove ad, they were trying to track down Evo to do the Stadium rail that they had seen in Johnny Goes off Downunder. They couldn’t find him. So they called everyone and got anyone who could do a handrail to meet at the top of the Stadium rail. It was a handrail casting. If anyone did that rail, they had the job. It was gnarly. I remember Bart there seriously checking it out, we all had a good look at it. No one did it though. That thing is gnarly. Evo is a maniac.

Do you think skateboarding and creativity come hand in hand?

Yes.

You had a stint as Editor of Australian Skateboarding magazine. How did that come about?

Well someone who produced like a photocopy zine in Brisbane once wrote an article that launched into a scathing personal attack upon myself. They brought up the Moove Ad and the Level 23 show and stuff and said some not nice things and accused me of stuff. I heard the guy was at Martin Place not long after and I was tempted to bash him because I was hurt by the comments so I felt like hurting him. It sounds terrible but it’s true. Luckily I opted out of doing that and instead remembered that the pen is mightier than the sword. Nick Farris had recently started up Australian Skateboarding Magazine which was a re badged Skatin’ Life Magazine and I decided to write a letter to there because I knew Nick would publish it. I basically used the Authors words to point out his own hypocrisy.

I think Nick was impressed with the wording of that letter and took me on board as an Associate Editor. I did that for a while on a free lance basis until Nick took on the Australian Snowboarding mag. He was busy with running his Video distribution company as well so he offered the editor job to me.

I was a bit skeptical at first, I felt that it would make me a bit of a target and I had my reservations and I even voiced them to Nick. I wasn’t sure I could do the job either it was a pretty daunting task to take the helm of a national magazine at the age of 22.

It was quarterly and on a freelance basis. Then after a couple of years I proposed to make the mag bi-monthly in return for a full time position.

The first issue I ever did ended up before the Senate in Federal Parliament. Gary Hargraves, a local MP from Queensland tried to get the magazine banned because of some controversial content. I had Journo’s calling me up and the Daily Telegraph ran a story on page 9 that basically said that the magazine insighted teenagers to shoot their classmates and to smoke marijuana until they die.

They brought the Port Arthur Massacre into it and it looked a bit ugly. I got a stern warning from the Office of Film and Literature Classification. My concerns had started to become a reality.

It was a great job. I had a lot of fun producing it. Worked there for about 4 years until things went pear shaped.

You were known to party hard back in the day. Do you want to say anything about that?

Yeah I guess I was a bit of an extremist. I had been drinking since I was about 12 years old and smoking weed since I was about 13. I took a lot of hard drugs over the years to. My brother warned me to stay away from Heroin so I never went there but pretty much everything else. I never realised at the time but looking back I was always an alcoholic. It seems to be such a norm these days that you don’t really notice. I partied hard for about 22 years or something. I never saw it as a problem except when I would wake up and go “ohhh nooo” and realise the stupid things I had done. Looking back though it really did affect me negatively.

Before the first Bowl-o-rama skate comp, I was blind drunk again as usual, and I met Christian Hosoi who spoke to me about Jesus. He didn’t say I had to quit or anything like that, he just pointed to Jesus and got me to say a prayer where I took him to be my Lord and my Saviour.

Sid would take me for a coffee and point me to the holy scriptures. I started reading them and slowly I’ve been transformed and am still transforming today. The only thing I’ve done is seek the Lord and He has revealed himself to me and has been doing marvelous works in me.

I haven’t had a drink in a couple of years and I haven’t had any drugs in about a year now and I never will again. I don’t even feel tempted. Slowly things that once binded me are breaking off me and I honestly could never be happier.

I feel like I’ve won an incomprehensible prize and all I did was listen to Christian and Sid and all they did was point to Jesus. I’m glad I was down in the past, I’m glad I got depressed, I’m glad I was humbled and I praise god for it, because if that is what it took for me to have the humility to take Jesus as my Lord and to share in the glorious riches of knowing him then it was all most certainly worth it.

“To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Collossians 1:27 (niv)

What’s on the horizon for Gordon Auchinichie?

Finish writing this testimonial book and put together a DVD for it as well. Just doing some web design, attending CCC Church Central City, Surry Hills in the Belvoir Theatre every Sunday 10:00am, come down!

http://www.centralcity.org.au/

Last words:

In your majesty ride forth victoriously in behalf of truth, humility and righteousness; let your right hand display awesome deeds. Let your sharp arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s enemies; let the nations fall beneath your feet. Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom. You love righteousness and hate wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.

Psalm 45:4-7 (niv).

Gordon Auchinachie aka “Gordo” or “Gondo Man” was a well known Australian skateboarder of the 1990′s. ”The Skateboard King” was a nickname coined by the Channel 10 Level 23 show circa ’93. It annoyed Gordo at the time, but in retrospect he finds it cool. ”When the show came out I was bummed and copped a bit of flak about it, but when I look back at it now it’s classic”- Gordo.

This ad came out in 1992 and features Gordon Auchinachie aka “Gordo” skateboarding. To get the job, Gordon had to attend a, handrail casting and compete against the likes of Mick Mullhal and Brendan “Brenny” from “The Bra” in a skate out on various handrails around Sydney. Gondo Man

Parkside Killers video clip 1994. Produced and Filmed by Gordon Auchinachie. Telecined and colour graded by Dwaine Hyde. Collaboratively edited. Sydney Australia.  Featured Skateboarders: Wade Burkitt, Justin Balmain, Sid Tapia, Gordon Auchinachie, Adrian Powell, Shane Wallace, Phill Mackie, Alex Smith.