Gidget the All-Powerful

The Rebel Next Door

Hobie vs Velzy vs the IRS

Better Surfing Through Chemistry

Summer on the Inside

Surf Fashion, Lightly Salted

Surfing the Newsstand

Process of Elimination

Oil City Showdown

The Jazz Stylings of Phil Edwards

Technicolor Surf Boom

Heroes and Villains

Blackball Blues

Dick Dale, Destroyer of Amps

Surfing in Five-Part Harmony

Tokyo to Tel Aviv

Flight of the Larrikin

Bob Evans Means Business

Midget Wins It All

But Will it Play in New York?

Houses of the Holy

We Own the Sidewalks

Beautiful from any Angle

Duke's Big Contest

Can You Handle the Penetrator?

Girls, Don't Panic!

David Nuuhiwa Walks on Water

An Invincible Summer

Ten-Year Boom

There were moments during the boom when it appeared as if Australian surfing in its entirety was hitched to the shoulders of Bob Evans, a rangy middle-aged black-haired impresario from Queenscliff, Sydney. He was smart and well-dressed, knew his way around a wine list, and could order with aplomb off a French menu. In 1963, he was married with three children—and a well-practiced womanizer despite the fact that bowel surgery as a young adult left him wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. A champion club-era surfer, he used special high-waisted trunks that kept the medical gear strapped in pace.

In 1956, Evans followed the American lifeguard team around from beach to beach and finally made arrangements to buy Greg Noll’s board upon the team’s departure. He moved just as quickly the following year, inviting California moviemaker Bud Browne over to screen his latest surf film, 

—the first movie of its kind to play in Australia—and then contracting to be Browne’s national distributor. By 1960, Evans himself was filming top Sydney riders like Mick Dooley, Nipper Williams, and schoolboy sensation Midget Farrelly, and screening the results in club halls.

Evans soon gave up his job as an insurance salesman to devote all his time to surfing. He shot film during exploratory trips up and down the coast, and organized surf contests. When Australia made its first real push in Hawaii, with several boardmen sailing off to Honolulu on the 

 in late 1961, the whole trip was arranged up by Evans—or “Mr. Surf,” as the local press called him. Two of the surfers Evans brought along, Dave Jackman and Bob Pike, were about to earn international distinction as big-wave riders; Jackman had already done so in Australia, as the first man to charge the Queenscliff Bombora, a fearsome reef break on Sydney’s northside.

, the first of Evans’ twelve full-length movies, toured Australia beach towns in 1962, the same year he launched 

, the country’s most successful first-generation surf magazine. Evans was a clumsy filmmaker and just marginally better as a magazine writer-editor—but technical merit wasn’t much of a concern. The important thing was, Australian riders were getting some well-deserved recognition, and the “new” surfing Evans was presenting was homegrown, rather than imported.

Then there were all those incredible Australian surf breaks. Sydney was home to a huge majority of Australia’s wave-riders, most of whom hadn’t yet ventured beyond the greater metropolitan area, much less out of state, and what Evans presented to them was overwhelming: the long aqua-blue point waves at Kirra, Burleigh, and Snapper Rocks on Queensland’s Gold Coast, and the Malibu-like perfection of Noosa, further to the north; the thick walls at Victoria’s Bells Beach; even a glimpse or two of the distant reef waves of Western Australia. Some of the best breaks were closer to home: Angourie, Lennox Head, Byron Bay, Crescent Head—A-grade pointbreaks, every one, strung together in close proximity along the north coast of New South Wales.

All this and more was revealed in Evans’ movies and magazines. No wonder 

 played to screaming full-capacity houses. Aussie surf pride—celebrated and reviled in years to come—was perhaps Evans' greatest achievement.

Media, however, wasn’t Evans’ strong suit. Organization and salesmanship were. Having created a bigger, more unified domestic surfing population through film and publishing, he consolidated in 1963 by forming the Australian Surfriders Association—the first nationwide group of its kind in the country—and by presenting the debut Australian National Titles. Then Evans immediately went to work on what would be his signature triumph: the debut World Surfing Championships, to be hosted by Sydney the following year.

A lot of Australians were still prepared to write off the surfie as a layabout yobbo, but the sport was nonetheless inching its way into the mainstream. Gas stations sold packaged surfboard wax. Bob Evans himself did morning and afternoon surf reports for a Catholic Church-owned radio station. Duke Kahanamoku, revered in this sports-mad country, arrived from Hawaii to hand out awards for the 1963 Australian Surfing Championships.

Then there was Bernard "Midget" Farrelly, Australia’s finest and most presentable surfer. Not only was Farrelly articulate and neatly groomed—short blond hair, tucked-in shirts, preppy V-neck sweaters—his view of the sport was unfailingly conservative. “We don’t regard ‘surfies’ as surfers,” Farrelly explained to the 

 six months before the 1964 World Championships, describing the former as a “cult that has rubbed off on us.” The goal of any right-thinking surfer, Farrelly continued, was to “develop [our] public image, and prove that surfboard riding is a youthful, healthy activity.”

Farrelly became a surf hero in Australia when he won the Makaha International in 1962 at the age of eighteen—the only non-Hawaiian male to do so between 1954 and 1970—thus bringing home to a grateful nation yet another international sporting crown. He’d picked up the “Midget” nickname as a Sydney preteen, and on the beach at Makaha in 1962, posing next to his board and new trophy, Farrelly still didn’t look old enough to shave. But surfer no alive was his match for resolve and diligence. Having determined early on that Phil Edwards was the world’s best surfer, Farrelly became a student from afar. He mastered the better part of Edwards’ gestures and body language, except where the older California surfer was spontaneous and quirky, Farrelly was precise, calculating, and hypnotically smooth.

Australian beaches had previously generated talented boardmen, including Jack “Bluey” Mayes of Bondi Beach, a puff-chested carryover from the "racing 16" days who flew across the quick-breaking Bondi surf with his arms and legs pumping like an accordion band. Another was Mayes’ protégé Mick Dooley, who didn’t have quite the same flair but was younger, quicker, and rode in the modern style. Still, even as late as 1961, the Aussie talent level remained raw enough, Bob Evans pointed out, that “an aggressive wipeout carried almost as much prestige as a well-ridden wave.”

 and the rest of the Australian surf magazines, one journalist recalled, became “Midget Monthlies.” Bob Evans’ movies were loaded with Farrelly sequences, and a short film, 

, documented his big win at Makaha in 1962. Furthermore, Aussie surfers from Perth to Port Macquarie now had a star of their own to emulate, and it made a tremendous difference—an entire nation of wave-riders was now improving by the month.

Farrelly proved to be an atypical Australian champion. He was bright and at times wickedly funny, but never wallowed in mateship and all its attendant vices. Bob Cooper, the first American surfer to move permanently to Australia, recalled that for all the extreme partying his friends had done back in California, the Aussies were a staggering leap beyond. “I couldn’t believe how decadent these people were. The cigarettes and the power drinking, [and] the casual, almost wanton sex . . . it was a big shock.” But Farrelly, Cooper noted, “was off on a different wavelength.” By the end of 1963, Farrelly, just 20 years old, was already removing himself from the beach-life swirl.

In part, this was no doubt a reaction to an unimaginable double-tragedy he suffered that year. His taxi-driving father was hit by a car and killed, and his mother, inconsolable, took her own life a week later. Farrelly was still living at home. He continued to surf and was elected founding president of the Australian Surfriders Association. But he didn’t enter the National Titles, or the Australian Invitational Championships, the year’s two biggest domestic events. Defending his crown at Makaha that December, he placed a disappointing eighth.

Meanwhile, two other Australian surfers had emerged who were performing nearly at Farrelly’s level. One was Nat Young, a lean curly-haired regularfooter from Collaroy. Young hadn’t yet turned sixteen when he powered his way to victory in the 1963 Australian Invitational Championships. First prize was a trip to Hawaii. Young and Farrelly flew over together, and pitched in $150 each to buy a used North Shore surf wagon. They were an odd pair—Young towered over the older surfer, and was as spontaneous as Farrelly was reserved—but they developed a casual mentor-student friendship. Further, Young was still a juniors’ division competitor, and so the two hadn’t yet faced off in competition.

With Bobby Brown of Cronulla it was a different story. In the 1964 New South Wales championships, Farrelly and Brown tied in the finals, and contest officials sent them back out for a twenty-minute surf-off—the sport’s first man-on-man heat. Farrelly had learned to shape boards and was riding a sleek new three-stringer model of his own design. Brown, a barely-pubescent seventeen-year-old with a sweet disposition and an attacking surf style, owned a battered red board that looked as if he’d dragged it to the beach behind his car. When the contest-winning wave approached, Brown was in position and had right-of-way, but hesitated for a moment when he saw the great Farrelly, just a few feet to the right, turn and show interest. But Farrelly backed off, Brown caught the wave and rode it beautifully, signing off with a flashy spinner, and won the contest.

A single defeat wasn’t enough to knock Farrelly from his throne, but he was no longer invincible. He remained the local favorite going into the 1964 World Championships. His edge, though, was now razor thin.

Surfer promotor Bob Evans was smart and well-dressed, could order with aplomb off a French menu, and was a well-practiced womanizer—despite the fact that bowel surgery as a young adult left him wearing a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.

Chapter: 4

Ten-Year Boom

Bob Evans Means Business

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