Surf City, Sydney

This 1966 image showing smartly suited northern beaches board builders donating surfboards to the South Vietnam war effort comes from the amazing Surfresearch website, run by the unstoppable Geoff Cater.

Photograph courtesy of Dennis McDonagh, copied from Geoff Cater’s Surfresearch website.

According to Geoff, the photograph is also held by the Australian War Memorial along with the following press release:

[ref SMT/66/179/EC]

July 1966

Nearly $500 worth of surfboard equipment, given by seven manufacturers, was handed over to the Australian Army on behalf troops in South Vietnam, at Victoria Barracks, Paddington, on Wednesday, July 20. The equipment was received by the Acting Chief of Staff (Colonel P. Tancred).

Pictured receiving the boards, Colonel Tancred thanks Denis McDonagh (McDonagh Bros Surf Boards Pty Ltd, Harbord Road, Brookvale) , on behalf of the manufacturers.

The manufacturers with their gifts from the left are:
Messrs Lance Platt (L. and J. Platt, Surfrider Board Shorts, of Foam Street, Harbord),
Danny Keogh (Keogh Surf Boards Pty Ltd., of Sydenham Road, Brookvale) ,
Scott Dillon (Scott Dillon Surf Board Pty Ltd, of Winbourne Road, Brookvale),
Bob Brewster (Manly Surf Shop and Stor-A-Bord, Pittwater Road, Manly),
Gordon Woods (Gordon Woods Surf Boards Pty Ltd, Harbord Road, Brookvale),
Bill Wallace (Wallace Surf Boards, Winbourne Road, Brookvale),
Barry Bennett (Barry Bennett Surf Boards pty Ltd, Harbord Road, Brookvale).

A local incarnation of ‘surfer style’ tempted Sydney sportsware consumers from the early 1960s, with swell summer shirts like these featuring south seas ‘tiki’ imagery, assorted aztec-cum-mexican motifs and nautical references splashed on boxy cuts and easy wearing, easy washing woven fabrics.

Look out for duds, bikinis and beachwares by Platts, Speedo, Sutex along with rarer imports by Hang Ten, Catalina, Katin, Birdwell and Jantzen.

Unlike pre 70s California, where board maker t-shirts, jackets, pendelton checks, sporty windcheaters, striped jersey knits, ponchos and raybans leapt from surf shop shelves, the equivalent Sydney surfware scene was less self aware, less poppy, less drip-dry , less uniform. That’d come later.

Will be hoping to borrow these classic shirts and other beachware treasures from vintage fashion collector Naomi Barwick.

Relentless Sydney ‘switchfooter’  Bruce Usher has photographed surfers and the surf scene, mostly on the northern beaches, since the early 1960s. His personal scrapbooks of print collages have an evocative, organic, salt encrusted quality and must surely rate high among Sydney’s surfing treasures. Bruce has written widely on characters and surf culture and also co-produced the 1977 surf movie A Winters Talewith Phil and Russell Shepherd.

This 1969 image of Jeff Sedevic and Richard Harvey is borrowed from Bruce Usher website

This great cover sleeve shot was taken by Sydney jazz musician and photographer Ron Falson in the early 1960s and used on the Australian All Stars beach inspired album Jazz for Beachniks Vol 2. Fortunately for us his daughter Ann Louise has dug out Ron’s own copy and is happy to lend it for the exhibition.

According to Murray Walding in Surforama, the boys in the background standing beside the balsa ‘pigs’ are Sydney surfers Mick Hall and Nipper Williams, waiting no doubt to split this hodad scene and get a few waves in before dark.

Don’t forget to dig up info on the inaugural Bobby Brown Memorial held at Sandshoes in 1968 and won by Midget. Here’s a photo of the formidable Sharks (formed 1978) lifted from outdoor interp panels recently installed on the south Cronulla boardwalk.

Thanks to Ray Moran at the South Steyne Lifesavers Club and the Manly Daily for this great slideshow…

image from South Steyne SLSA picture archives

Hoping to hear three quarters of the original Sydney surf band the Atlantics at the Basement next week.

image from http://www.milesago.com/artists/atlantics.htm

Their big hit Bombora went berzerk in 1963. Read more about them here.

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

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.

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).