Surf City, Sydney

A nice take on Little Pattie’s debut single He’s My Blonde-Headed, Stompie-Wompie, Real Gone Surfer Boy, co-written according to wikipedia by Jay Justin and Joe Halford that surfaced in the final months of Sydney’s surf-music craze at the tail end of 1963, just as Beatlemania was starting to stir.

Great photo of Maroubra surfers Barry and Wayne Dixon… at home (as Barry writes) around 1968. That board wasn’t mine as I wasn’t allowed to surf on fibreglass boards then as Dad thought they were going to kill us. Nothing could stop me though and before long I was out there – them were the days… photo courtesy of Barry Dixon

Neat little story by Henry Budd and pic by Nic Gibson in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, with Peter and Lachlan Francis at Bondi, including a call out for photos and material. Response has been overwhelming with great offers of boards, mags, family snaps and plenty of salty treasures.

Queenscliff youngster Tyler Bell reminds us that the best surf movie makers are surfers…great stuff eh…!

Can’t wait for the re-release of this great surf-doc, complete with deadpan narration, smoking soundtrack and on-the-money content.

Gary Crockett on the job at Pekutatan Bali, April 1980

I know its off-track, but couldn’t help posting this scrap from the Herald (dated as shown), almost 2 years before Duke Kahanamoku lit a spark with well publicised surfboard demos around Sydney. We all know board riding was well under way here when the Duke hit the waves but its interesting to see that at least 2 summers earlier surfers were stirring up beach goers and getting ‘among the thick of the bathers’.

No one knows where the word ‘ockanui’ comes from or exactly what kind of board it refers to. Probably Australian, and therefore likely to be either a mangled and misspelt ‘foreign’ term or a willfully bastardised throw-away creation that stuck. Ether way, the name ‘ockanui’ has probably survived because its easy to say and has a catchy opening syllable. It appeared at a time of escalating interest in Hawaiian culture and custom as the islands were preparing to become a bona fide state of America in 1959 and refers generally to a finned timber board, either hollow or solid, though mostly hollow. Bruce Channon tells me that it could well relate to the small laneway called Ke Nui Road, running parallel to the Kamehameha Highway at Pupukea on the north shore of Oahu, overlooking the famed Pipeline and Sunset Beach breaks. Adding the traditional “O” (meaning “this”) at the beginning gives us O’Ke Nui… could this be the answer…?

Bruce Channon reveals the finer points of ‘ockanui’ rail, rocker and ribbing to Gary Crockett in this photo by Michael Power, February 2011.

Bruce Channon recalls being gob-smacked at the crowds and buzz surrounding the 1964 world championships at Manly, where he competed as a youngster in the juniors rounds alongside Nat Young and Robert Conneely. Leaning forward recently on the kombi bench seat in his Sydney office, where Australian Longboarding Magazine comes together, Bruce reckoned “it was just such a big day for surfing”. Ever since, Bruce has remained in the thick of an ever-expanding surfing scene, as a competitor, board maker, photographer, film-maker, magazine owner, writer and editor. He also makes and rides beautiful timber sticks – the one shown here is a refined take on a late 50s hollow ‘ockanui’. These were local clones of Californian balsa malibus, crafted by Sydney board builders who’d been blown away by the performances of visiting US and Hawaiian lifesavers at various Sydney beaches in the early summer of 1956.

video Gary Crockett

Currently thinking about image delivery systems for the exhibition. There’s obviously a range of options. Here’s a few already in place at the Museum of Sydney.