It’s a sunny summer afternoon in Torquay, Victoria as I head to a friends house to do an interview. The subject, or rather subjects are the Gilmore sisters. Bonnie, Whitney and Stephanie are three talented young ladies, who have each carved out a separate niche for themselves in the surfing industry.

I did my research before I got to the interview. All three were born and bred in Kingcliff Northern New South Wales. All surfed from a young age, brought up around the ocean, sand embedded into their hair since nippers. All three are ‘blonde beauties.’

Bonnie Gilmore, the eldest, is an accomplished DJ and Senior Designer at Roxy. Whitney has been the Girls Marketing Manager for shoe brand Kustom and now does freelance work. Their baby sister Steph has just won her third consecutive world professional surfing title. Steph also rips on the guitar. Not bad since none of them are even close to 30.

I pull up to the house and there is a group of people sitting on the balcony in the sun, sipping beers. They yell down and ask if I want one. That’s pretty much the best start to an interview I’ve ever had.

As I walk into the house the polished floor click under my shoes, so I slip them off. I take my beer from the owner of the house and get introduced to the girls. They’ve all got the same infectious smile that lights up the whole face, rather than just touching their lips. It’s an endearing trait.

The four of us settle down in a comfy corner of the house, away from the noise on the balcony. I shuffle into a beanbag and click on my Dictaphone. Finding it’s always best to get an idea of each person’s background to start off, I ask Bonnie to give me a brief rundown of her life so far. Rather than a monologue from Bonnie followed by questions, I’m treated to an hour or so of engaging conversation where I ask barely anything.

“We all went to Kingy Primary then Kingy High.” Bonnie begins.

“Bonnie and I were captains of Kingy Primary but Steph was only vice.” Whitney cuts in with a cheeky glance at Steph, like ‘suck on that world champ!’

Bonnie continues, as if nothing was said. “I worked in retail at Kingy surf, which was the cruisiest job ever. Ended up being a buyer there, which was pretty funny. Then I hassled all the reps to get a job, because I thought that was pretty cool. I was a bit of a label slut, I started out with Insight, then went to Rusty, then Rip Curl, then decided I wanted to be a designer. So I went to design school for a year and got a job at Roxy, which is where I am now, stuck in Torquay. I thought I was going to be a famous DJ, travel the world and earn heaps of coin, hanging out at palaces and on people’s private yachts, but I met my husband Hayden and fell in love, he’s so worth it. I love Torquay now.”

“She still DJ’s a mean party.” Steph adds in.

“I always liked to draw, I wanted to be a fine artist. My plan was to start DJing and earn enough money that I could go to art school in Spain or something, because that’s where most of the amazing artists have come out of, like Picasso. So I thought I’d go to art school in Spain and fund my way through DJing. I always thought it would be fun to design surf stuff too. I’d always draw fashion sketches and boardshorts and stuff when I was younger. It was cool that I fell into sales, because that gave me the stepping stone and background to go into design. I just like to create. I don’t think I could do a job where I wasn’t creating, and putting my own spin on things, whether that’s music or drawing or design. I’m not sure what my job title is now, but I think I’m Roxy Boardshort and Fleece Designer. I also do a bit of Lycra on the side as well.”

“It’s pretty funny being on tour with all the Roxy girls” Steph laughs, “because they rock up to the contests in the latest gear and go ‘yeah, your sister made this!’ and I know she just ripped it off from Rip Curl.”

Whitney Gilmore’s story starts the same as Bonnie’s; born in the same hospital around 2 years later.

“We lived in the same house all our lives. I finished high school and went to uni, because I thought it was the thing to do. I ended up getting a Bachelor of Business, double majoring in Marketing and HR. Decided that HR was definitely not the area I wanted to go into and that marketing was it. Just before I finished uni I got asked to do a season of sales with Billabong in SE Qld, just doing size fit stuff for them. I ended up having a really good relationship with Shae Waters there, who helped me learn so much from sales and Billabong. I worked in the shop for a while, which then lead to getting a job in the marketing department for Kustom under Brad Bricknell. That was a 2 year plan where we gave the brand an overhaul. I worked on the girl’s side of it and we re-invented the image of Kustom Girls. After that I started to get itchy feet again, I wanted to do some travel and different things, I was more interested in the outside world of surf. Steph was coming to the point where she was getting a lot of demands and requests and she needed sort of a filter person between that and what she was doing.

“I needed a cheap manager basically.” Steph says.

“So I resigned from Kustom and Steph and I went and spent 3 months in The States together. I’ve also been freelancing on some contracts out side of the surf marketing world to learn more about it. It’s really interesting, because all of the stuff in corporate marketing, you can see how it can be applied to surf and its very eye opening. I worked on a gig with ACP and Priceline for ‘30 days of Beauty and fashion’ in Melbourne through September last year. We did in-store events and a big event where I helped design a pod for MGL magazine. They have a big fashion and music event.”

“During that process I moved to Melbourne, finding my way there. It’s been non-stop with Steph over the last 3 months with what she’s done. Now I’m ready for 2010 to kick in and start something new again. “

“I organise all of her back end stuff. She gets lots of requests for example from all of the female fashion mags coming in to summer. So it’s like Steph’s 5 beauty tips for summer, for Girlfriend or Dolly or Comso or Cleo or whatever.”

Bonnie giggles from the corner of the room “It’s better than Pappa G (their dad) answering beauty questions for her, because he was in the beginning.”

“He’d just write ‘tea-tree oil’ on everything.” Steph grins.

“So there’s stuff that Steph doesn’t really need to worry about that I’ve been able to step in and help her with.” Whitney finishes. “It’s been good because it’s allowed me to travel and be a lady of leisure.”

“I’ve got to get on that bandwagon! What can I do?” Bonnie asks.

“You can be a towel rack.” Steph says, before beginning her mini bio.

“Born in ’88. I guess I was the tomboy of the family, but I did dancing with the girls.”

“No you couldn’t!” Whitney yells.

“I did!” Steph replies. “A little bit anyway, I was pretty unco. I’ve got the hairiest arms out of all of us. I went to Kingy primary, Kingy high. Started surfing when I was 9 or 10. Whitney and Bonnie both started s
urfing before me.”

“I just opted for the bikini on the beach way too young!” Whitney interrupts.

“I think the first contest we went to, Dad put Bonnie and I in it. Bonnie didn’t want a piece of it and I had a little go. I did a few and got into it after a while. We all played all sorts of sports, but I guess I was the one who was most competitive and wanted to take that route. Went through school, while these guys were dancing and being artists and that sort of deal. I was just surfing, wagging school to surf some more, surf, surf surf. I play a bit of guitar, so that’s started to blossom over the last few years which is really fun. When I finished school I didn’t really need to think about what I wanted to do, because it was all there. I had a 5 year contract with Rip Curl when I was 17 and it was all planned out ready to go. I’ve been on tour every year since, it’s cool. Whitney came on board the last year or so. It’s really cool to see, like I come and hang with these guys and I get a taste for the fashion twist of things, it’s an outside perspective, because the surfing world is a bit of a bubble and it can get pretty intense in there. Bonnie and Whitney have their fingers in all the pies outside the surfing world, so it’s cool to get that influence on me and my approach. It’s definitely changed a fair bit over the last few years.”

“She’s gone from comp machine to gypsy.” Whitney laughs.

“It’s cool.” Steph continues. “I’ve come from where I just wanted to compete all the time but now it’s changed a lot. When I’m travelling, I want to see all these places and there’s so much more to do with all my other passions like music and fashion. I’m now looking more at the culture of the places we go, rather than just heading down to the beach, getting sunburnt and going home a little bit more leathery. It’s changed over time, but definitely more since Whitney’s come on board. She does a bit of styling as well for me. When I won my very first ASP world title in 2007, at the banquet, Whitney hooked me up with a really hot outfit, which she probably stole about a week later. That’s her evil trick, she gets me to pay for it, then steals it. But it all means I’m a lot more excited to go to those red carpet things, when you know you’re going to look hot.”

“It was a pretty interesting year in that sense, that I wasn’t completely consumed by everything to do with surfing and trying to improve my performance it the water sort of thing, I was more interested in going to New York and Woodstock and Paris to watch PJ Harvey rock out and all these other cool things. To be able to come back and still win was cool. It’s good to know that no matter what approach you take, if your really focussed on that moment, wherever you are, at that time that you can pull it off. It was a good year.”

I ask if it gets boring winning all the time, since she’s apparently dominated the sport since she joined the ASP World Tour.

“I think it would if I hadn’t taken a different approach like I did this year.” Steph explains. “Like I think if I did this year I had the same things as I did the last two years, boat trip after boat trip and contest after contest, surf, surf, surf, I may have gotten to this point and been feeling a bit bored.”

“The mini challenge was putting in a different formula for the year and coming out with the same result.” Whitney adds in. “Compared to what she’s done in previous years, what she did in 2009 was a completely different formula. It was so different that the guys at Rip Curl where like, ‘oh my god what is she doing?’ Giving me phone calls in America, going where is she? What is she doing? Why did she get knocked out? Why did she only catch one wave in a heat in the US Open? But it all worked out.”

“It’s really exciting.” Steph says, smiling her signature smile. “I’m having way more fun travelling so much. I can see a lot of other opportunities out there, what you could do, building a brand or a company. Plus seeing all the talent these two have, it’s pretty cool to think what we could achieve it we actually focussed and didn’t rip each other’s hair out.”

“I think we got that out of our system pretty early on, the fights.” Bonnie says to me.

“They should have seen them, they were amazing before the school bell. Crazy!” Steph says excitedly. “It wasn’t me, I was like golden child, but those two used to share a room downstairs.”

“Me and Whit, one fight.” Bonnie says. “I started off in jeans and a singlet and I had to rip my jeans off so I had better kicking power. I ended up getting her bag and jumping up and down on it, and getting her lipstick and crushing it and throwing it out. Then I realised it wasn’t even Whitney’s handbag it was our friend Rachel’s. It was about Whitney not answering the phone, she was standing right next to it and wouldn’t answer it.”

“She used to freak out about me reading a night, because she’d be able to see my bedroom light was on and wouldn’t be able to sleep.” Whitney laughs. “It finally got to the point where I was like, I’ve can’t take this anymore, and I’m finally bigger than her, because I am, way bigger. So we had a massive last fight.”

“It was amazing,” Steph recalls, “I remember Bonnie jumping on top of her screaming profanities.”

“It ended where we had each other by the hair,” Bonnie continues. “I was like, OK, let’s end this on three. We’ll count to three and let go. One, two, three. I let go and just as I let go Whitney ripped my hair back. My scalp was bleeding, it was heavy.”

“And we’ve never touched each other since. But I do have full fingernail scars.” Whitney says.

What about Steph and Whitey fighting I ask.

“We rarely fought. But there was one time Whitney was living with me and she took my hair straightener one morning. She would just take stuff and not ask, because she’d just assume you’d totally let her. It was a really important morning because I had to do an ad that day. And that was it, it was all over, it was a bad day. I kicked her out, I remember bagging all of her shit up in garbage bags, like I was breaking up with a boyfriend or something and threw it all out onto the balcony. It was pretty funny.

“I didn’t know, we just hadn’t communicated the days before.” Whitney says, trying to defend herself. “She had to do an ad for energy saving light bulbs, which started really early in the morning. I was doing a shoot for Kustom the same day, so I was like, I’ll just take a straightener just in case. We both had to start at like 4 in the morning and I don’t know how we miscommunicated that. Anyway after the fight had finally settled down, I didn’t talk to Steph for a couple of weeks. Then the ad finally came out and Steph’s hair looked like she’d been electrocuted by the light bulb.”

“I looked like shit.” Steph adds.

I pull Steph back to earlier in the conversation where she suggested they might all work together one day.

“We’ve tossed it around, working together and creating our own label. Then they look to me for the fundi
ng and that’s when I run away.” She laughs.

“I’m marketing, Bonnie’s design and Steph’s ‘funding’.” Whitney explains.

“It’s just finding the right idea and developing our own skill sets in our own areas a bit more first.” Bonnie adds.

“There’s no hurry about it, because we know that one day it will happen.” Whitney continues. “It’s been good that Steph and I have been working together already. It was a question for us if we could survive it, but we’ve pretty much slept in the same bed for 6 months this year, and travelled in each other’s backpacks. So it’s alright. We can not say a word to each other for 24 hours and be in the same place and it won’t matter.”

I’d heard a few rumours last year about a photo shoot with Stab, where Steph apparently posed nude. I asked if the rumours were true and why they hadn’t seen the light of day.

“I was definitely not nude, just more risqué than usual” Steph says, confirming the rumour.

“She looks stunning.” Whitney confirms. “To be honest, it’s really hard, and anyone who has seen the photos will say the same thing, it’s really hard to get a female athlete from any field to look modelesque in a photo.”

“But she does look modelesque!” Bonnie exclaims.

“They’re very tasteful and everything, and that’s one thing I credit Sam at Stab for, he’s got great taste and knows how to pull off a fantastic shoot.” continues Whitney.

“I was keen to do something out of the Happy Gilmore mould.” Steph explains. “I just thought it would be cool and have things evolve and change and be a Madonna and reinvent myself.”

“Anyway,” Whitney continues, “at the time, it had to disappear. And that’s where it will remain”

What did your parents think? I ask.

“Our mum was all about it. She was fully keen, she’s a bit of a feminist but she was into it, she thought they were very rad. Dad, no, he loved the photos but he was looking more at the business side and the effect that that would have.”

“He’s a really savvy businessman actually.” Whitney says. “Every aspect of Steph’s career, Dad’s been puppeteering it pretty much. He’s done really well. Dad’s got a good gut instinct for that, and when I talked to him about the photos he was against it. I was like, you know what, Dad’s onto it, he knows how it should play. He’s good at sourcing information too.”

I ask if it was their Dad that got all the girls into surfing, pointing out that if it wasn’t for surf, they’d all be doing completely different things.

“I’d be a birdwatcher.” Steph says seriously.

“Dad got us into surfing.” Bonnie confirms. “Dad has to surf twice a day or he gets cranky.”

“He surfs more than anyone I know!” Steph adds.

“We used to surf before school, after school, we were always on the beach.” Whitney continues. If mum was working and Dad had us then we’d get put on the beach for a few hours while he surfed. He’d put a circle around us in the sand and say don’t leave the circle. We grew up on the beach in Kingscliff, it was just what we did.”

“We were really lucky as well,” Bonnie adds, “a lot of the girls we went to school with and hung out with were all into surfing too. There was a really good culture. Some of our best mates were all totally into surfing, before school, after school, for school sport we all did surfing.”

“Hanging out with the cute boys too,” Steph laughs. “That was a draw card. I think we just liked hanging out with Dad too, it was an adventure. We’d all pile into the combi and drive to Bryon, stop at the bakery and get a loaf of fruitloaf. Then we’d surf The Pass all day, it was always a good day.”

“We didn’t know anything different, we just lived it.” Whitney says.

Has there been any sibling rivalry in the ocean?

“I started surfing like 4 years before Steph,” Whitney answers, “and all my friends were like, how come your sister surfs so much better than you? The next day I went and got a mal, no point in bothering any more.”

So all the ‘Gilmore Girls’ specialise in different areas, but are all still bound together through similar the passions of music, surfing and art. Rather than all doing the same thing, the each have their own path.

So what’s next for these three unique ladies?

“I want to look into starting something creative on the side this year.” Bonnie says surprisingly. “I might start something, like a little business on the side, because I need something more to satisfy myself a bit more creatively.”

“I’m going to keep working with Steph and now that I’m living in Melbourne I want to get my hands on some more freelancing stuff.” Whitney says. “I’m excited to be somewhere new, there’s little projects going on left right and centre.”

“My plan is, I don’t know.” Steph shrugs. “I’m in travel mode right now, I love travelling and being wherever you are at that time. It’s nice having enough financial support to just pack up and go where you want to go in the world. Eva Warbrick my friend has been filming me and following me around the last 8 months. I think we’re going to put together a visual journey. She’s uses a lot of Super 8. I do a bit of photography, I love cameras, I actually just got a Hasselblad, cruise around take photos with that. I might make a little book or do a secret blog. I’ve got lots of interesting cool things to do and then surf contests at the same time.”

“It’s like she’s surfing in her spare time.” Whitney finishes for her.

It’s funny, because that’s what I do, surf in my spare time. Unfortunately I don’t get paid for it like Steph. I don’t get paid to design like Bonnie, and I certainly don’t get paid to be a ‘marketing lady of leisure’ like Whitney. I’m just a little bit envious of these three girls, and maybe a little attracted to them. But I shouldn’t say that, I know Bonnie’s husband, and Whitney’s boyfriend. Steph is single though, for now. Maybe she needs a man-caddy for the tour? Any takers? I’ve already been shut down.

End interview.

PS Images? The one from the ASP Banquet is via TWS. The rad B&W ones are from Empire Alumni Ryan Heywood, the rest are from the girls collections.