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Museum of Australian Surfing Heritage

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23.01.2022 The Golden Era of surfing films. In 1966, Bruce Brown’s 'Endless Summer' became the greatest selling surf film of all time. It still is. The success of that fil...m in the theatres of the day inspired many others to make surfing films; the allure of surfers lining up and paying a few $ to watch afforded the film-maker the funds to make the film and finance the surfing lifestyle, which let's face it, is every surfer's ambition; creating enough money to just be able to go surfing every day. When a good quality surfing film was shot on film in the 1960s, using professional equipment and shot by camera operators (pre autofocus), the end result was usually something unique and worth watching, and the only place you could watch it was in a movie cinema. There was no VHS machines, that would come later and afford the surf filmmakers the second wave of fiscal reward in the 1980s and 1990s. Then it all diedit is still dead. Back in the 1960s, the surfing media landscape was fledgling and sparse. Early on, most surfers got their fix of new imagery from John Severson’s Surfer Magazine (bless his soul), which for Australian surfers (and Americans) was the original surfer's bible, later to be met with formidable competition from Surfing World magazine and the more fringe SurfAbout Magazine by the late Jack Eden. Surfers would consume these printed magazines with vigor, at a time when surfing (particularly surfboard design) was changing on a daily basis. With the change in surfboard designs, came new approaches to how a surfer could ride the wave and of course George Greenough springs to mind with his spaceships that by 1966 were blowing peoples minds, ‘what, we can go up there and in there?’.those that have watched Bruce Brown’s Endless Summer a few times will know that a young Greenough is in the opening scenes, trimming down the line at his home break, the historical lineage complete. But this story isn’t about the Edison of surfing, this is about surfing films and that Golden Era, where a surf filmmaker could tour the world to sold-out shows week after week, months after month and in some cases, year after year with hundreds of salivating surfers lining up around the block to get inthe excitement to see the latest action, to view what surfers in California and Hawaii were getting up to was alluring to Aussie surfers and for the Americans (and others) seeing what was happening in Australia through this decade was also full of intrigue. When a new surfing film was made in America, the filmmaker would usually send a print of the film to one of the surfers in Australia; usually Bob Evans. Evo would then promote the crap out of the film via his Surfing World Magazine and in newspapers and tour the film across Australia, the profit enabling him to get busy creating his own films; and he made some rippers, sadly most of them have never made it to our modern era, aside from ‘To Ride A White Horse’ and ‘High On A Cool Wave’ and yes there are other pirated versions of some of his work, but those two are the two that made it to today somehow, mostly via the passionate restorative work of Warren Delbridge at greenroomsurfmovies. Of the two, I think ‘To Ride A White Horse’ is akin to Australia’s ‘Endless Summer’, the main difference is that in my jazz twisted opinion, and the soundtrack by Scandinavian composer Sven Libaek is exceptionally good. The fact that ‘Evo’ even knew of Sven Libaek is a testament to how steadfast Evo was at the time. Sven Libaek went on to do some brilliant soundscores; his most famous work is, of course, the mainstream successful animated cartoons; ‘Scooby Doo’, ‘The Jetsons’ and ‘Yogi Bear.’ Yes, yeah I know! So, ‘To Ride A White Horse’ is a must-have if you know your shit. A 13-year-old Midget Farrelly spinning and twirling his way down the line, even more of a magnet. In Queensland, local pioneer Mal Sutherland was the man who was sent the rolls of film to show these 1960s films, he talks about showing a Bruce Brown film in Coolangatta and the lineup of patrons being around the block every night. It was more than simply a surfing film, it was a meeting of the so-called tribe. A social gathering of salt-encrusted surfers, with the wahines/ladies all there too transfixed by the free-spirited animals that surfers truly were. Surfers in the 1960s were media-parched; they had no surfing films to watch at home and the magazines would not arrive at the local surfshop fast enough; they wanted more. I recall Dick Hoole describing a Winter in Hawaii in 1970 when he was there doing some work and Jack McCoy and Randy Rarrick came back to the house he was staying in late one night and emptied a suitcase of cashJack & Randy were akin to Bob Evans in Australia; gifted the duties to roadshow the great surfing films of the era. In Dick Hoole’s words ‘ I didn’t have to be that much of a clever dick to realise that shooting moving footage was going to pay me a lot more than sanding surfboards (San Juan), or shooting 35mm stills for magazines which basically paid no moneya career-changing moment, no question.’ Of course, we know our history and Dick Hoole became good buddies with Hawaii’s Jack McCoy and the pair of them premiered their debut film ‘In Search Of Tubular Swells’ in 1976, shooting most of the better surfers in good waves, MP at Bells springs to mind. When they showed that film, it was like other successful surfing films of the day; surfers were frothing, and lining up around the block to get in, for months.and yes we know of the success of their second film Stormriders (1982), backed by the rapidly growing RipCurl (Torquay) who threw enough money at it that Dick and Jack probably could have got Elvis to do the voice over. Premieres at the Sydney Opera House, akin to the epic Crystal Voyager; these were the times, the summit of surfing film success.but what strikes me more is, what a gathering these surfing films created. Crew getting together and sharing ideas. It wasn’t about ego, well maybe it was for some, how would I know, I wasn’t there. I popped out in 1976 and then surfing died. Blame me. The early filmmakers, like Jack McCoy went on and made dozens of great films. Much like a musician who creates a good first album, it needs to be good to afford them to make a second album. Most really good musicians, if you look back at their discography you will find their first album was really really good; Prince springs to mind, as does Elvis. Without doing a chronology of the mega-successful films of that era from 1966-1982, in my limited understanding of the changes, Endless Summer (1966) blew the doors off, post-Gidget (1959). Then Hot Generation and Paul Witzig’s other films showcased Australian surfers in a way that has never been duplicated; those epic scenes of Kevin Brennan, Bobby Brown, Peter Drouyn, Nat Young, Ted Spencer, Wayne Lynch forever etched in the surfer's mind. By 1970 Greenough (again) blew everyone’s minds with his first and only surfing film ‘The Inner Most Limits Of Pure Fun’, whose legacy will probably be the closing sequence titled ‘The Coming Of The Dawn’ which showed surfers, most of them for the first time, what the inside of a deep tube actually looked like. The crowd reaction at the premiere was so loud that it drowned out the sound from the PA and those thumping sounds of the organ-grinding blues of ‘The Farm’, and yes it is the stuff of folk lore and those that were there in 1970 know. Did Greenough get in his van and tour the film around the world, filling his suitcase with cash from the entry price to the theatre? Of course not, he was too busy creating more epic shit for us mere mortals. Greenough’s film most definitely showcased a kind of dreamy beatnik lifestyle that was possible in Australia at the time, living in an old car, camping out and eating simple, it was all about the waves and they got them. George is a classic, still one of the funniest humans I know and hugely misunderstood by most. Albe Falzon was attracted to the enigma of Greenough and they began hanging out and Albe was prolific at the time with magazines (Tracks) and films. Albe followed George Greenough (with filmmaker David Elfick) and documented Greenough leaving California in his custom-built sailing boat ‘Morning Light’ that George sailed to Australia with some friends, spending time surfing waves like Teahpoo (in Tahiti) with his friend Chris Brock (and others). See Crystal Voyager film. Talking to George about that wave, it was 1972 ish and George fixed some inner tube to the front of his high-performance lightweight ‘spoon’ surfboard, a legrope of sorts, but it was attached to his upper arm. He found the wave ‘a bit boring’ - his words. ‘Just a takeoff and giant barrel with serious consequences if you got it wrong.’ Lennox Head and the long tubing waves of Northern NSW were far more to Greenough’s liking. Me too. Albe Falzon then, in some ways, mimicked Greenough’s first film by producing his masterpiece ‘Morning Of The Earth’ a few years later 1972, the similarity was that there was no voice-over, just music, and what beautiful music it was. Morning Of The Earth is Australia’s most successful surfing film and yes the surfing is very different to what Greenough shot a few years earlier, as he loosely and unknowingly documented the fledgling attempts of Bob McTavish, Chris Brock, Ted Spencer, Baddy Treloar and others trying to get from 9 feet down to 6 with their surfboards.by 1972, surfers like Michael Peterson and Terry Fitzgerald had the shorter boards pretty dialed in; especially Michaelbut Morning Of The Earth was more than just smooth single fin surfing, it illustrated a lifestyle; the lifestyle, the one all surfers chase in their dreams, quiet country life, and perfect waves with a few friends. Much like Endless Summer before it, Albe Falzon managed to put on film something that is too hard to put into words, the music and the visuals did the talking; ironically nothing needed to be said. Did Albe Falzon tour that film relentlessly filling his suitcase with cash from surfers paying entry to the cinema? To some degree, yes, but he wasn’t and isn’t that kinda cat either, but the sheer beauty of that film has afforded his metaphorical suitcase/piggy bank to be topped up for decades with each advance in surf film technology, VHS, DVD, licensing, etc. And so it should. There are second-tier films from that era that tell a visual tale of how in-demand surfing films were at the time, surfers starved for new content. Of them, I think Mex Sumpter’s ‘On Any Morning’ (1974) paints a really clear image of how successful it was to make and roadshow surfing films back then. Starring Reno Abellira, Peter Drouyn, Midget Farrelly, Jeff Hackman, Gerry Lopez, Wayne Lynch, Paul Neilsen and Nat Young, ‘On Any Morning’ is a nice film, that afforded the filmmaker travel across the world and suitcases of cash. In Mex’s own words from the SwitchFoot 2 book; AC: When you showed ‘On Any Morning’ in theatres, and went on the road with it, how many shows did you do? Mex: ‘80 or 100. We went right around Australia twice, over three years. We showed it in New Zealand, my brother Rodney, showed it in England. We did better in Adelaide a year later than on our initial run. A lot of the shows were 400-450 people. There wasn’t the Internet, there weren’t downloads, there wasn’t even VHS. A surf movie was a meeting place. The guys went and the girls went to meet them.’ Winding forward to the modern era, when people still bought new films on DVDaround the time that Thomas Campbell was becoming more popular than Jesus with his film ‘Sprout’, my friend (American) Cyrus Sutton was coming off his Emmy award-winning ‘Riding Waves’ debut film, a film I highly recommend to surfers and much like Elvis that was Cyrus Sutton’s first ‘album’ and it afforded him more work, it still does. Backed by the uber-cool Ubiquity Records (Californian music label dedicated to the funk) Cyrus set out to document what we could all see at the time; the polarity between the sporty-jock competition side of surfing and the free-flowing ‘free’ surfer exponents that ironically were existing in two microcosms about 50klm apart; the Gold Coast and Byron Bay 2006. Shot on 16mm film, a fine production indeed. Cyrus had all the hero surfers from both sides of the surfing spectrum, a killer soundtrack and brilliant animation. At the premiere in Byron Bay, the venue held 200 people and it sold out and I think he did five other showings in Australia and perhaps five in the USA/Hawaii and then it was dust, lost into the surf media ether, replaced five seconds later by another film, then another one, cheaper and less thought-out than the lastand then up to today, where a million ‘surfing films’ are uploaded each minute for the addicted masses of social media consumers; locked in. Where does that leave independent surf filmmaking? Well, currently it is dead unless you are bankrolled or have enough passion to chase what you believe in. I doubt a modern film can capture the true essence of that free-flowing surfing (and lifestyle) even if they tried. The best surfing footage of that type of surfing has been documented and if you want to add to your stash of DVD’s now is the time to get in touch as we can offer you the classics listed below, sent from the man Dick Hoole. - In Natural Flow (1972) - To Ride A White Horse (1966) - Children Of The Sun (1966) - On Any Morning (1974) - Standing Room Only (1978) - A Sea For Yourself (1973) - High on a Cool Wave (1967) - Stormriders (1982) - In Search Of Tubular Swells (1976) - The InnerMost Limits Of Pure Fun (1970) - Morning Of The Earth (1972) - Endless Summer (1966) - Ocean Rhythms (1975) For anyone wanting 3 or more DVD's we are offering a discount at this link... https://hodaddy.com.au/collectio/stuff/products/all-3-films If you check out there, then I will email you and confirm what films you want...and yes we have others. If you simply want one DVD and you cant see it at the link, any orders we get through this we will be communicating with the customer to STOKE them out. Stay safe and stoked folks, Written by Andrew Crockett the author of the 'SwitchFoot Books'. https://hodaddy.com.au/collections/books Photo of Dick Hoole and Jack McCoy mid 1970s.

19.01.2022 Silvana Lima called by and had a look at Simon Anderson's 1971 Junior Bell. Much like her own 2009 Rip Curl Womens Pro Bell Beach trophy.

14.01.2022 Thanks heaps Simon and Layne for popping in for a chat with us at the Sydney surf pro at Manly beach.

06.01.2022 Thanks heaps to Simon and Layne for signing our business plan and wishing us the best of luck. Greatly appreciated.

05.01.2022 Where it all began: The first Surfing World Championship at Manly Beach, Australia in 1964.

03.01.2022 Hey all we have now uploaded our petition to our website. Head on over to this link https://bit.ly/2ZMkeE9 and please sign it to help make this museum possible. Thanks heaps :)

02.01.2022 Hey all we just made an Instagram account. Go over and check it out.

01.01.2022 Hey all this is out business plan if you want to have a read over it. Also make sure you head over and fill out our petition to help get this muesem up and running. http://museumaussurf.org.au/museum-of-australian-surfing-h/