Surf City, Sydney

According to Stephen Thompson, who curated Surf! Environment, Politics and Life at the Laperouse Museum in 1997 and wrote this entry on the late 40s Kivlin Balsa Mal at the ANMM, The impact (of the visiting US lifesaver’s malibu demos in 1956) was broadened when newsreel footage of the team surfing Collaroy was shown at cinemas (movietone news 28/3/56). This was followed by a colour film titled Service in the Sun (1957) that was commissioned by the sponsors Qantas and Ampol Australia. 
http://vimeo.com/9699526
This film included three and half minutes of the American team surfing at Bondi. After cinema release, the footage was shown independently in virtually every Surf Life Saving Club on the Australian coast.

Just came across this great 1967 McTavish photo by John Witzig, showing the deep ‘vee’ hull, rocker, rail and raking fin treatment of his stringerless Keyo plastic machine which included, in this version, double barreled nose scoop.

photo taken from McTavish blog

Nell Schofeild over on the Wax On exhibition blog posted this good example of an open invitation in the local press to sift out old boards and tales…

image courtesy of Wax On blog

Would be worth contacting Nell and Peter Sheil (shown here with early 70s Shane standard) to discuss potential loans.

might be worth keeping this format or feel in mind…

Hoping to include this great example of a Farrelly foamie made by Hanimex, probably around 1972. It was spotted in a Brisbane antique barn and luckily is not for sale. I’ll be aiming to negotiate a loan for the exhibition.

photo Matt Holle

Unlike the ‘Pro Champ’ version, this model appears to be finless. Who of us didn’t cut their teeth as younsters in the shore break on one of these nipple chafing, self disintegrating eco disasters…?

Thanks to Matt Holle for spotting it.

Here’s a stringerless Keyo Plastic Machine I’m hoping to put in the show. Why…? Well back in early 1967, Bob McTavish and Nat Young had been working on a board able to pivot and carve from a single standing position. They came up with a wide tailed, vee bottomed, narrow foiled, short board, around 8 foot, dubbed the Plastic Machine.

This was the beginning of the end for malibu style boards and the cruisy Californian ‘down the line’ attitude. Before heading off to Hawaii that year, Bob and Nat knocked out a couple of gunned up versions suitable for heavy winter swells. Unfortunately they were wrong. The boards bombed at Sunset Beach and there were plenty of long swims.

McTavish at Honolua ’67 photo courtesy johnwitzig.com.au

However, later at Honolua Bay, on Maui, the new shortboards ripped – with their springy Greenough fins, stubbie form and ‘v’ keeled hulls allowing Bob and Nat to slice ably along the steep walled barrels and put themselves in places no riders had ever been before. Within a few months the McTavish shortboard, sped up with a few US tail and rail treatments, had over-run the Californian coast. And surfing was never the same again.

Waiting on a call from a bloke up in Byron about the possible loan of one trippy Hot Buttered stick, pictured here in 1974 as one of Terry Fitzgerald’s latest arsenal of spacey, fuel injected speedboards. The board, outlined in red, was spotted at the recent Deus Ex Machina surfboard swap meet.

image courtesy of surfresearch board portraits

Met Ray Moran today who showed me the ‘tip of an iceberg’ of surfing and life saving club artefacts, archives and research files held in the South Steyne SLSA clubhouse.

Was pretty impressed with this particular board – a knockout early 1960s gun by Surfboards Hawaii, shaped for Manly’s own monster wave rider Bob Pike by Pat Curren, according to Geoff Cater, or possibly by Dick Brewer himself, who visited the museum recently and claimed it as his own, according to Ray.

According to surfresearch Bob Pike is photographed riding this board on the cover of Surfabout 1964 (Vol 2, No 7). The design appears to have been influential in Sydney with Scott Dillon channeling its long lean Brewer lines for all of his subsequent Point Break Models (details supplied by Scott Dillon, per Geoff Cater).

Thomas Edward Blake, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 8, 1902 and died in 1994 at the age of 92.

image: surfing heritage foundation

Here’s a roll call for starters…

1922 – set the world swimming record in the ten mile open
1926 – first person to surf Malibu, along with Sam Reid
1926 – invented the hollow surfboard
1928 – won the first Pacific Coast Surfriding Championship
1928 – invented the hollow paddleboard
1929 – invented the water-proof camera housing
1931 – invented the sailboard
1931 – patented & manufactured the first production surfboard
1932 – won the Catalina Paddleboard Race
1935 – invented the surfboard fin, aka skeg or keel
1935 – published the first book solely devoted to surfing, Hawaiian Surfboard
1937 – produced & patented the first torpedo buoy and rescue ring, both made of “dua-aluminum”
1940s – first production sailboards, leader in physical fitness, natural foods and healthy diet and virtually began the surfing lifestyle as we know it

Perhaps a cool idea would be to display stuff as if strewn helter skelter within a series of ‘period’ bedrooms, complete with mementoes, mags, music, clothes, pics, boards and footage…?