Surf City, Sydney

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.

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

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

…

Textbook handstand, in Russ Howell’s popular Skateboard: Techniques, Safety, Maintenance published in Sydney 1975.

Around the same time, in the mid 1970s, young Bondi surfer Cheyne Horan was getting good at skating and starting to stand out in the new contest scene taking shape in Sydney. Copying hot US skaters like Stacy Peralta, according to Horan, Sydney surfers finally had ‘something to cause havoc on when the surf was flat.’* Pretty soon sponsorship, team membership, paid performances, autographs and media stardom began to infiltrate the elite end, while surburban streets, footpaths, arcades, carparks and stormwater pipes were maddeningly disfigured in tell-tale swirling track marks.

*Australian Surfers Journal V3, N2, Autumn 2000

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

In 1974, the sloppy joe, with full length front panel surf graphic and contrasting sleeves, tied around the waist or tucked into a pair of grey levi cords, was de rigeur. I owned one with a slightly distorted purple duotone of a guy about to get killed on an insane take off at Waimea.

Wish I had’ve kept it…will be looking out for more treasures like this…

A good example of the ‘standard’  egg-shaped popout, produced in large quantities by Shane from around 1970.

Photo of Shane Standard taken at the Bondi Single Fin meet Nov 2009

Pop art, counterculture, beach pollution, unionism and the evil foreign menace are equally troublesome in this bleak 1971 cartoon originally published (so far undated) in the Australian newspaper.

‘This is the Dawning’ by Collete, from Stop Laughing this is Serious

The cartoon was spotted at Rozelle Markets in Jonathan King’s Stop Laughing this is Serious! a social history of Australia in cartoons, 1980.

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.

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