Surf City, Sydney

Kanga Cairns, Barry Kanaiaupuni and Pete Townend (top left) and Reno Abellira (top right) with 2nd gen twin fin at North Narrabeen mid 70s, photos courtesy Steve Abbott

It was great to meet Steve and Bob yesterday at Werri Beach and sift through the salty windmills of their minds stretching back to surburban Villawood in the late 60s, with long car trips and train journeys to North Narrabeen as pre-teens before becoming part of the local ‘northies’ surfing mob, with all its ratbaggery, vitality and standout surfers throughout the heady 70s. Along with plenty of boards, some saved from the local tip or hard-rubbish collections and several others well chosen as cultural or personal treasures, was a pile of fantastic photo albums and loose prints recording trips, surf action, birthdays and North Narra beach life during this amazing period.

This super cool early 70s Wayne Lynch inspired double ender by Laurie ‘Froggy’ Byrne for Jackson Surfboards was unearthed from under a house in Oatley, a good 30 years after it was last surfed. More on this treasure and its story, Byrne and Jacksons to come…

This shocker appeared in 1964, at the very tail end of Australia’s surf music craze. As Murray Walding writes in Surf-O-Rama: “Surfer Doll” was horrifyingly twee and should have sunk without a trace, but in the early 1980s [this] old clip of Helpmann surfaced…and created enough interest for Australia’s Raven Records to re-release it in 1982. If you appreciate the schlock side of surf collecting, this pressing will fascinate you.

Boeing 707-138B image from here

Continuing with the story of the V-Jet surfboard Steve Core writes…

In the sixties, South-side surfboard manufacturer Norm Casey had a second job as an International Qantas Flight Steward – or Flight Attendants as they’re known these days.

In a partnership with his employer Qantas, Norm created the V-Jet Surfboards for the exclusive use of flight crews on lay-over in Hawaii.

Qantas crews stayed at the Ilikai Hotel. That’s the one that Jack Lord stands atop of in the opening sequence of Hawaii Five-O.

Qantas crew had a 28-year run ‘in residence’ at the Ilikai using it as a crew hotel. It is directly in front of the famous Ala Moana surf break and entrance to the yacht harbour and the surf break called Kaisers.

Qantas had a ‘recreational club’ where for a small weekly contribution of around twenty five cents a week, flight crew were provided a rec-room with push-bikes, tennis racquets, boogey boards, a Hobie cat, etc – for use by all crew in most lay over ports.

Hence the V-Jet board was built especially for use by crew in Hawaii – as the Ilikai Hotel was the only Hotel we stayed at that had surf directly in front of it.

Between July and September 1959, ahead of every other airline outside the US, Qantas took delivery of seven Boeing 707-138 jet aircraft. Boeing 707 services to the United States began in July. Two months later the service was extended to London via New York. Sydney-London services via India began in October.

So great were its advantages that Qantas modified its existing 707-138 fleet with the turbo-fans. With the arrival of its first 138B series aircraft, Qantas called its Boeings V-Jets, from the Latin ‘vannus’, meaning fan. Two more were ordered in 1963.

Steve Core is an ex-Qantas Long Haul Flight attendant, ex-Norm Casey employee and Sydney based film-maker and photographer. Find out more about Steve here.

advert taken from Surfabout Vol 2 No 12 1963, courtesy Australian National Maritime Museum

This great 1963 Surfabout ad for the Norm Casey V-Jet, tailored especially for discriminating Qantas staff, in transit at Waikiki, suggests that the surfer market was still an unformed and unknown entity, or at least far from the unruly, hooligan image emerging in the tabloid press. Interestingly, 70s Film-maker Steve Core just called to say Norm Casey supplied these boards exclusively for Qantas crew on stop-overs in Hawaii, who stayed at the Ilikai Hotel at Ala Moana, where a stash of boards and the odd Hobie Cat were readily on hand. More on Steve Core’s early years spent ushering for his dad’s surf movie screenings at Bondi and his own film-making to come…in the meantime check out his web site.

cartoon by Craig Coventry

Most surfers get suspicious when they hear terms like freedom and perfection used, usually by non-surfers and industry sharks, to describe what goes on out there in the line up between people and waves. I prefer to think of it as surrender and artful involvement in something big and mindless although I will admit crowds can dog the process. Here Craig Coventry, who surfs, draws and works at the Museum of Sydney, ponders the irony of being alone in a crowd… According to Craig, he is: indeed a surfer from bondi, as you may have guessed. I ride a min-mal. I often take a drive to Curl Curl or Wanda to escape the crowds. I used to ride a short board but you can just about forget about getting any waves with all the longboards at Bondi.

Mick Mock auction item photo Gary Crockett

This early 70s Shane Standard with a smart twin-fin set up was spotted at Mick Mock’s vintage surf auction at Harbord Diggers this weekend. Racy s-deck, funky hot pink decal and a pair of apple green fins surely sets it apart from the tide of garden variety ‘standards’ shipped from the Shane factory in Brookvale from the turn of the decade. Although work had been underway on twin and triple fin ideas for some time and Sydney shapers were getting hip to progress being made in California, it wasn’t until Mark Richards fused a few Hawaiian tricks together in 1976 that they really took off on Sydney beaches.

Phyllis O’Donnell and Midget Farrelly photo Gary Crockett

Former Manly locals and ’64 world champions Phyllis O’Donnell and Midget Farrelly unveil the National Surfing Reserve statue at South Steyne today at a great beach side ceremony. I was surprised at the large show of hands in response to the question of who was at the famous world championships in 1964. The ever jovial Barton Lynch, another local champ, did a good job describing the organic, unplanned and spontaneous quality of Manly’s surf history awareness. Even Dave Jackman, who made national headlines in 1961 when he cracked the Queenscliff Bombora, put in an appearance.

photo of Peter Francis’ mid 60s Barry Bennett Mal by Gary Crockett 2010

Sydney surfer Peter Francis told me about his great Barry Bennett mal, built no doubt in the mid 1960s, going by the 3 stringer signature model styling and overall build and glass quality. Already known in the early 50s for his plywood skis and toothpicks turned out on Sydney’s southside, Bennett shifted to his new Brookvale factory around 1956 to upscale production of finned malibus after Sydney went berserk for the new california-style boards. In the early 60s, thanks to contact with visiting US surfers and a stint working with Californian big hitters Hobie and Hansen surfboards, Bennett made the shift from balsa to high quality foam and fibreglass and established himself as a leading manufacturer with board sales spanning the country for decades to come. Interestingly, Bennetts have maintained close links with the lifesaving scene to this day. [info not surprisingly sourced from surfresearch]

Mid 70s Bing Bonzer slung in the rafters of the excellent ZJ Boarding House in Santa Monica, photo Gary Crockett 2010

Its hard to know why the Bonzer never really caught on. Possibly its racy hydrodynamics, splayed channelling and tilted pectoral fins were just too plain spooky. According to Geoff Cater at surfresearch, the US brothers Duncan and Malcolm Campbell came up with the design in 1973. The delta shaped concave echoed Rogallo hang gliders of the late 1940’s, used by NASA in the recovery of returning space capsules. While the early 70s saw several attempts at multi-finned boards, it wasn’t until 1980 that all the pieces fell into place and Simon Anderson’s thruster made history.

And further paraphrasing Geoff: By the early 1970’s, hang-gliding was a sport in rapid transition with a large amount of media exposure. In late 1973, the Campbell Brothers licensed the design to Bing Surfboards for commercial development. The design then became associated with Bing’s head shaper, Mike Eaton, who had played a significant role in the development of the Twin fin 1 in 1970.  The Bing models were noted for the wedged Bonzer decal that was laminated on the side fins.

As a sign of the powerful influence of Australia in world surfing at this time, the name Bonzer (also Bonzar, Bonza) is an Australian expression for “excellent”.

Australian exponents of the design included … Peter Townend (Gordon and Smith Surfboards), Ian Cairns (Gordon and Smith Surfboards) who rode a Bonzer to first place in the 1973 Smirnoff Contest at Laniäkea, Hawaii and Terry Richardson (Skipp Surfboards). Preceded (contemporary?) by the Tri-fin of 1971, the design had some influence on Simon Anderson’s Thruster of 1981. Further adaptation in 1988, the Phazer – a Stinger/Thruster adaptation (3 similar fins with 2 small Bonzer D-Fins) initially credited to Rusty Priessendorfer for Rusty Surfboards (USA). Later identified as another original design by the Campbell Brothers.

this information (and heaps more) sourced from surfresearch

See John Wythe White :Surf Wars :The Bonzar, June 16, 1999
http://www.honoluluweekly.com/archives/coverstory%201999/6-16-99%20Boards/6-16-99%20Boards.html