Here is the first in my selection of the most important photographs in Australian sporting history. The images are not ranked or presented in any particular order. Ranking is a subjective notion that I don’t want to buy into. Each image presents a frozen moment in time that has historical significance in the Australian world of sport. Even more importantly, each image opens the door to a back story that resonates deeply within Australian culture and society. In other words, the photos have more guts than they may appear to have on the surface. With some images, you will have a good idea of what is going on in the shot and may have some understanding of the back story. With others, the importance of the image and story may be a complete surprise.
This is the cutback that changed the surfing world forever! Sounds like an exaggeration, doesn’t it. It’s not. The photograph has multiple levels of meaning.
The photo is well-known among older people who surf (and among folk who have an interest in beach culture and beach history) but millions of Australians would have little idea of the significance of this moment in time.
At its most superficial level, the image could be seen as one of the highlights of the first ever World Surfing Championship that was held at Manly Beach in 1964. The surfer is a young Bernard “Midget” Farrelly who only minutes later, in front of thirty thousand on-lookers gathered on the sand, was declared the inaugural world champion.
A more in-depth analysis of this picture might be, (as many surfing experts would argue), that it was this very maneuver… this elegant cutback… that convinced the judges that Farrelly was the premier performer on the day. This was the very moment that Australian surfers rose to world prominence.
Experts had their money on Cabell
Some of the greatest surfers in the world had been invited to this first World Championship event sponsored by the Australian petroleum company Ampol. It was those greats of competitive world surfing… along with a few determined Australians… that battled their way through the preliminary rounds into the final. Who would be the winner? Would it be the stylish and innovative Californian Joey Cabell who was setting the surfing world on fire back in 1964? Would it be Cabell’s fellow Californian, the big wave powerhouse and all-round athlete, Mike Doyle who would win the day? Would it be the smaller, less well-known Aussie upstart, “Midget” Farrelly, who had shocked the surfing world by winning the “unofficial” world championship, the Makaha Invitational, only twelve months earlier?
World surfing experts had their money on Cabell. Most Australians, never shy about believing that a good Australian can beat a “yank” at anything, had their money on Farrelly.
Here’s how, surfing historian, Matt Warshaw described the unfolding final.
“Farrelly wasn’t quite as sharp here as he’d been in the quarters and semis, but he kept the other two in range, and with just three seconds left on the clock he picked up the last wave of the event, a clean shoulder-high right. The ride looked almost as if it had been diagrammed. Farrelly snapped to his feet, cross-stepped to the nose and hung-five, back-pedaled for a tricky bit through the whitewater, returned to the open face, zipped up the nose and back, grimaced his way through an exaggerated arms-up cutback—really playing to the back rows now—then finished with a long bow-legged cruise all the way into the wet sand.”
Farrelly was mobbed by adoring new fans as he stepped off his board and strolled up the beach to the podium where he and his fellow finalists would wait for the decision of the judges. Farrelly was declared World Champ. Doyle was scored runner-up. Cabell, who had surfed well, but had been penalized points for his ignoring the newly instituted “anti-drop-in” rule, was placed third.
So, this was the cutback that rocketed Farrelly, and Australian surfing along with it, to the forefront of world surfing. The photograph that captures that moment is significant for that reason alone. But, in truth, the story goes deeper. Another eight years deeper.
Best surfboard riders visit in 1956
In 1956 the Olympic Games were to be held In Melbourne. As part of the celebrations for that great event… and perhaps to demonstrate to the rest of the world that Australia led the world in all matters relating to the surf… the Australian Surf Life Saving Association invited lifeguards from all around the world to participate in a series of surf carnivals and competitions that would loosely be regarded as demonstration sports for the Olympics.
Three of the visiting lifeguards, Mike Bright, and Greg Noll (officially representing the U.S. mainland), and Tommy Zahn (officially representing the State of Hawaii) were not only professional lifesavers (with expertise in a range of rescue techniques, swimming, and board-paddling) but were also among the best surfboard riders in the world. No doubt the Aussie lifesavers thought that they were pretty hot surfers too, but when the “yanks” turned up at the organized events in Torquay and Avalon with their tiny, ultra-light, balsa-wood surfboards, the bronzed Australian life savers didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Their initial reaction was to say that “real men don’t surf silly little things like those malibu boards”. But when Bright, Noll and Zahn started ripping the waves apart with their massive turns and high-speed trims across the green sections of waves most began to think again. Most were embarrassed. Without having seen how U.S. and Hawaiian surfing had been evolving since the end of the second world war (surfing movies had not yet come to the shores of Australia) Australian life-saver surfers had been stuck in a pre-war era of riding sixteen foot long, hollow, plywood, “toothpick” boards that limited a surfers stock of moves to getting to their feet and then riding the huge canoe-like structures straight into the beach.
Tommy puts in the boot
Tommy Zahn was not polite in his assessment of Australian surfing.
Surfing in Australia “was, like, nowhere man,” he said. “They were still going off on 16’ paddle boards. The big trick was standing on one foot or putting their hands behind their backs.”
Wow. Thanks, Tommy. Put the boot in!
So, back in 1956 the “yanks” made Australian surfing look bad. Some of the “he-man” lifesavers from the surf clubs, (often an assortment of rugby league and rugby union players), didn’t care. The ones that didn’t want to surf on maneuverable and light surfboards still thought that the “yanks” were sissies. But many young people did care. Many were thrilled by what they had seen the “yanks” do at Avalon and Torquay.
As Bright, Noll and Zahn walked up the beach after each of their surfing demonstrations, with their balsa malibu boards under their arms, these U.S. surfers were mobbed by adoring kids (in much the same way that “Midget” would be mobbed at Manly only eight years later) who wanted boards just like the Americans were riding and wanted to learn to ride just like them.
One of the young surf rats who mobbed the American surfers and desperately wanted a similar board… and wanted to learn to surf just like them… was a young Bernard “Midget” Farrelly. So closely did Farrelly and his mates watch those “yanks” and so hard did they work to lift their surfing performance that in just seven years Farrelly would do what no Californian had ever done. He won the Makaha Invitational event in Hawaii. This unofficial world championship had always been won by Hawaiians before 1963. Then just one year later he beat the two great Californians to become the first official World Champion and launch Australia into decades of being at the forefront of surfing performance and innovation.
This beautiful photograph is not just an image of a great surfer doing a great turn. This image shows the moment that Australia emerged from “nowhere, man” to becoming one of the world’s leaders in an emerging major international sport.
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