Uncle Jaffa's vague wandering Aussie Surf History.

[jaffa1949]

A bit like wooden canoes and kayaks if the frame was good they could be recovered with marine ply, but a good wipeout on a big wave or a rocky point would reduce them to matchwood!. They were finished with varnish and later resin , but a common failure was the frame which got rot with the rider noticing!

The snake was a non venomous carpet python, good snakes to have around.

Bigger than your board!
Also known as a diamond python!

[IanCaio]

Very pretty one! I came across some small non-venomous snakes from my region, this one in the picture I believe is a younger "Caninana". I tried to help it getting to the grass because there were some southern lapwings a bit aggressive because of their children. I didn't go as far as handling it with my hands though, if there was someone nearby that had experience with snakes I'd probably give it a try, but this time I only guided it with a stick

[Naeco78]

This is awesome thanks Jaffa! Great pictures.. that one with the snake looks like it's straight out of Morning of the Earth. Good stuff! Looking forward to reading more

Was in the MOTE time frame which certainly inspired my love affair with Indonesia and other island.
Research topic for all of you look up Peter Troy, his story is something to be marvelled at.
“To the four Corners of the World by Peter Troy” from Drifter Surf.
You can also look at “Stoked’ by Bob McTavish but that part of history comes a little later.

That was a really interesting read about Peter Troy.. I didn't know he was one of the pioneers of Nias. "We don't tell anyone about this place".. famous last words for a secret spot lol. That was always one of my fav surf spots back in the early 90's.. when it was still a mystery how those massive waves formed straight out of the palm trees in the background
Thanks for the lead!

[BaNZ]

Hmm, the photos with Duke and his friends is incredible. They look like they were in great shape! I'm assuming due to how heavy the board is and no leash, means you really need to be very capable of swimming?

[jaffa1949]

That was a really interesting read about Peter Troy.. I didn't know he was one of the pioneers of Nias. "We don't tell anyone about this place".. famous last words for a secret spot lol. That was always one of my fav surf spots back in the early 90's.. when it was still a mystery how those massive waves formed straight out of the palm trees in the background
Thanks for the lead!

Have you been to Nias,?
that’s the island, but the wave is Teluk Lagundri, the famous right hander is across the bay from the Palm trees, telephoto foreshortening is the answer !

[jaffa1949]

Of course the duke and friends were in great shape . Duke himself was an Olympic gold medalist
A movie star, and absolute ambassador of Aloha, if you go to Hawaii, place a lei around the neck of his statue at Waikiki as thanks for what he gave to the world in surfing!
Stand on the beach and look out to the shipping lanes far out and recognise he rode one of those boards from there to shore on one wave

[oldmansurfer]

Hmm, the photos with Duke and his friends is incredible. They look like they were in great shape! I'm assuming due to how heavy the board is and no leash, means you really need to be very capable of swimming?

I’m sure that factors in to why he was in shape but more than that it was his lifestyle and the amount of time he spent swimming and surfing which kept him fit

[Naeco78]

That was a really interesting read about Peter Troy.. I didn't know he was one of the pioneers of Nias. "We don't tell anyone about this place".. famous last words for a secret spot lol. That was always one of my fav surf spots back in the early 90's.. when it was still a mystery how those massive waves formed straight out of the palm trees in the background
Thanks for the lead!

Have you been to Nias,?
that’s the island, but the wave is Teluk Lagundri, the famous right hander is across the bay from the Palm trees, telephoto foreshortening is the answer !

Nah I just surf those spots vicariously through the stories I guess i did kinda word it that way without realizing.. I just read about him discovering with another Ausie, Lance Knight. I wish I had been there before the crowds... or even at all lol

[jaffa1949]

More about Indo Island hopping later in our history!

[jaffa1949]

Now I begin to come to a more challenging part, because the movement of people between WWI and WWII allow people to discover surfing as a pastime beyond just swimming, Hawaiian Princes had been to the coast of the USA And Britain prior to WWI and had demonstrated surfing, , in Britains’ who caught the bug began by surfing on coffin lids and hastily nailed together floor boards.
I have link too the Museum of British Surf as their record of this is copyrighted
https://www.museumofbritishsurfing.org.uk/

Sad to say Britain was ahead of Oz in this
Some of the surfers around the world accessed the popular Popular Mechanism Magazine and copied plans of the Tom Blake board, which as I mentioned previously was a race and paddle contest winning design which you could make at home.
They were taken up by the surf club members and many of the great Aussie surfboard brand came from backyard builders who continued on even to today!

There were other developments, the Surfoplane an dense rubber inflatable cylinder ed raft with vulcanised skin and handles.

So many Aussies started out on these.

Meanwhile at the home/backyard builders, strange USO were being made, cut out you own shape from plywood, varnish and screw on two cupboard handles or a v shaped piece of wood across the front as a grip kick you way out the back , one arm stroke yourself into a wave and bingo you were surfing

or go like a rocket

[jaffa1949]

An important note Surf Research has been catalogued by the National Library of Australia and is part of their collections.There is so much more than briefly offer, have a look and see!.

[BoMan]

The wooden hand grip on the Rocket belly board looks dangerous especially in shore dump! I'd rather ride the Surf-O-Plane.

[jaffa1949]

After the Wars the final dinosaurs were left as fossils
The years after 1945 the surf ski/ paddle board reached lengths of sixteen feet, but they were a doomed species that would linger in evolutionary dead ends in Australia until the mid sixties .
They had to go transporting them to beaches was ridiculous

The riders were getting hernias just unloading them.
Doc Ball and other photographers in California showed a similar scene in Palo Verdes and San Onfre and other California beaches.

https://vimeo.com/291452424

A Leroy Grannis link to that time follow this up,you will,also,see the redwood boards hot curls and the rising new surf critters that would soon cross the Pacific and bring extinction to the sixteenfootersaurs!
Almost Jaffa time

[oldmansurfer]

The big heavy Koa wood boards the Hawaiians surfed were mostly left at the beach. Even once lighter boards were available many Hawaiians kept their boards at the beach. It was a kind of honor system. The regulars at the beach knew everyone's hiding spots because we would see them go get their boards or put the away at some time. I had a friend who has his board made the same color as the weeds by a tree at the beach to help camouflage it. It was just too much hassle to get the board to the beach without owning a car.

[jaffa1949]

The big heavy Koa wood boards the Hawaiians surfed were mostly left at the beach. Even once lighter boards were available many Hawaiians kept their boards at the beach. It was a kind of honor system. The regulars at the beach knew everyone's hiding spots because we would see them go get their boards or put the away at some time. I had a friend who has his board made the same color as the weeds by a tree at the beach to help camouflage it. It was just too much hassle to get the board to the beach without owning a car.

BTW if you have any photos or stuff to,add to this from your shores, everyone is welcome!

[oldmansurfer]

It seems that many surfers go through life getting photographs of everything but I am not in that group. Did Australians leave their boards at the beach?

[jaffa1949]

I grew up in Dee Why a suburban beach of Sydney, you had options there was always a friend’s house near the beach or you were a surf club member and could leave your board there. On the beach was just a set of grassed areas and then the sand.Then the water.
The name guys had a beach shelter to hang together in 4 picnic table in quarters under a round roof .
boards under the shade of the norfolk pines

The Grommets or gremlins they were called then guarded boards

This was the roof of the swimming club before the second story went on, where we would hang out and watch the surfing on the point.

E17DD442-BED2-436A-8EFE-AE77FFC30485.jpeg (101.58 KiB) Viewed 647 times

This is what summer looked like the point is in the background just out of shot to the left. and the swimming club above the ocean water pool on the headland.
This next photo is well known by Bob Weeks taken in 1964 on a big swell,at the point, you timed your run across. the rocks from beside the pool , this option only worked for boards or body surfers, a ski launch here would reduce back end of the ski to splinter ( slivers for Americans)

But this is a little after the changing era after sixteenfootosaurs

[jaffa1949]

Now is the time to tell the history of the extinction event, when the sixteenfootasaurs and the racingsurfpaddlasaurs died!
The Second Olympic Games after WWII in Melbourne Australia caused it!
There was a fringe Festival and International Livesaving Carnival and competition, the Hawaiian and Californian Lifeguards brought the fairly new Balsa Malibu Chip Surfboards with them.
The wave/paddle ski had been the dominant surfcraft and the riding technique was standing and straight to the beach on the wave standing much like the figurehead of the Titanic, arms straight out and heroically down with the ship, or step onto the sand.

I witnessed the demise at Avalon on November 19 1956.
Greg Noll, Tommy Zahn , Mike Bright and Bob Burnside came to our beach for a display..... Local ski riders passed derogatory comments about surf toys and worse!
The display extinguished all thought of the ski riding forever ( although that took a number of years to happen).
Across the wave, up down, 180 degree turns nothing had ever been seen like it:

Local ski manufacturers became board manufacturers overnight!
Read " Stoked" by Bob McTavish
The rush was now to find Balsa, the other way was to copy Malibu shapes in a hollow board form = 'the Okanui' board.
Some Balsa was imported but not easily.
There was however a readily available supply.

Post WWII mothballed Navy Ships!

Moore in Sydney Harbour , their liferafts were Balsa planking covered in Navy Grey tin sheeting, night time Raids and dodgy deals liberated much to the new market for boards. FOAM had not even entered the Industry but it soon would and interestingly enough EPS came before PU.

EPS proved harder to shape, PU when it came was able to be blown to a shape close to the required size and shape in clamped together concrete moulds. The Gidget movie hit, Bruce Brown and Bud Brown movies hit in the early sixties , the craze was on, board making went gangbusters

.

[BoMan]

Thanks for researching and posting this thread. I'm really enjoying it!

[jaffa1949]

Takes a little digging there are good sources and a brain probe to stimulate my memory, because we enter my time zone now!