Surf City, Sydney

Riley Balsawood Surfboards, Miranda, here

Colour advertisement in The Australian Women’s Weekly September 1950, courtesy Dale Egan

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.

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.

Mark Rothko, Ochre and Red on Red, 1954 © Mark Rothko / Licensed by VISCOPY 2010 www.phillipscollection.org

hide the keys
suck on a ciggie
stereos buggered
sand in the speakers
go for a surf

chip paper tumbleweeds
sun heralds and seagulls
and funny pages
wrap around railings
ring pulls and dust

beer gut roof
bulging in the sun
pitted with dents
from unsprung occies
and hail stones

hot gust from carpark
wryly unsteadies
badly leant board
slides sideways
blue metal shatter

burnt duco beach
oxidised shorebreak
red vinyl ocean
blown chrome horizon
smeared windscreen sky

…

Sam Hood’s c1930s Bondi Beach photo sourced from State Library of New South Wales catalogue

Peter Bowes glimpses latent larrikin potential in Sydney’s 1930s surfo riders… So here was the very early breeding pool of the first generation of modern surfers, not unlike the dozens of snowy haired kids who infest our beaches today; all playing out there in seas that make fools of the weather forecasters, bewilder the sports columnists and frighten their parents. [Read the full article at Kurungabaa]

John Cormack (2nd from right) with Dee Why mates on outing to North Avalon, early 1960s
photo by Ron Graham taken from article cited below

Bruce Usher’s ALB portrait* of one-time northern beaches drifter, trailblazer, board maker and cultural cross pollinator John Cormack conjures the loose and restless soul of late 50s youth, before foam and fibreglass dug in and Mick Dooley was still playing tennis, and delivers a salt stained love letter to surfing.

Read the rest of this entry »

Couldn’t possibly miss visiting the Surfing Heritage Foundation compound in San Clemente.

displayed treasures of the SHF collection [the web site here]

This is ground zero for collecting, preserving, cataloguing and celebrating surf history, as well as the beating heart of contemporary research into the ongoing evolution of surf culture and surfboard design. Key strands of surf history and culture, including characters, board designs and technology, can be drawn between post war California and Sydney in the 50s and 60s and this is the place to uncover it. I even met co-founder and benefactor Dick Metz, who ran me through the aims and objectives of the SHF as well as his own amazing story. Read the rest of this entry »

Couldn’t help thinking of Bob McTavish paddling out here in late ’67 on his newly hawaiinised pintail, gleefully announcing the arrival of short boards amidst bewildered yanks, or George Greenough gliding down that pacey, tea coloured line nearby, amidst oil tankers, rigs and derelict pylons in the early minutes of Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer a few years earlier.

Rincon video Gary Crockett 2010

George Greenough at Sandspit near Santa Barbara, screen grab from Bruce Brown’s The Endless Summer 1964

Malibu video Gary Crockett

Classic 3 foot swell wrapping around the lagoon point at Malibu looked like lots of fun. Spared a thought for Joe Quigg, Matt Kivlin, Dave Rochlen and of course Bob Simmons who together set the course for stand up board design in the late 1940s that would eventually wash up in Sydney under the arms of visiting California lifeguards Noll, Bright, Zahn and co. At a pinch, could even imagine Dora circa ’66 hassling the kooks, jiggling his Noll ‘cat’ nimbly through crowds and knee high soup, fearing the worst for the future of surfing.