“Kyokushin Karate Brisbane”
Besides Phil and Ron, I also became very close with the people at the UQ Judo Club, who helped me out in many ways. Among them was another coach at the UQ Judo Club, Paul Nelson. He was the president of Judo Queensland, and he also helped me out a lot at the time, and I even stayed at his house for a while.
When I rented a room at the YMCA and started teaching S.A.W, the only students were a few students from the UQ Judo Club, and they came to learn S.A.W while continuing to do judo.
One day, while I was teaching at the YMCA, Paul came to visit me with a man.
The man spoke fluent Japanese and told me he was the branch chief of Kyokushin Karate in Brisbane.
His name was Cameron Quinn, a Kyokushin Karate teacher who had trained Australian Kyokushin powerhouses Garry O’Neill and Walter Schnaubelt.
He was a friend of Paul, and after hearing about me from him, he came to my dojo, saying that he would love to meet me.
After observing my S.A.W class, he said,
“After watching your teaching today and found that the S.A.W techniques look very practical. I would like to incorporate grappling techniques into my karate, so I was wondering if you could teach it regularly at my dojo?”
And so, I started teaching at the Kyokushin dojo as well once a week.
Cameron’s dojo was very large and wonderful, and even had a dormitory on the second floor, where several students were staying and training.
World champion Norichika Tsukamoto also came from Japan to train at the time, and in addition to my S.A.W classes, I also joined their morning training and we all trained together.
This was the trigger for several Kyokushin students to come to my dojo and start learning S.A.W while continuing karate too.
At first, there were only a few judokas from UQ Judo Club who had become my student, but then a few Kyokushin students joined us and the numbers gradually increased, and it began to feel like a proper dojo.
