Surf City, Sydney

PAUL CLARKE ON SURF MUSIC
Sunday 5 February 2012
2pm – 3pm

Museum of Sydney
Cnr Bridge and Phillip Street, Sydney

FREE with museum entry

event details here

Surfing, unlike any other sport, religion or lifestyle, comes complete with its own soundtrack. This Sunday afternoon, pop culture buff Paul Clarke – who wrote and produced the surf doco Bombora – the Story of Australian Surfing and car doco Wide Open Road, is talking about surf music and its deep and narly roots in surf culture – from the shrieking reverb and cowboy cool of Dick Dale and the jangling psychedelia of The Easybeats in the 60s through to the salty grunge of Midnight Oil and the Go Betweens in the late 1970s and beyond.

Former Bondi boy Allan Levick called recently to talk about his 1950s Gordon Woods ‘Okanui’ surfboard. I asked him to send in some pics and pen a few memories.

photos courtesy Allan Levick

I had only used this brilliant surfboard for around 3 months………(it was fantastic to ride a board which you could take where YOU wanted to go, not just where the wave dictated)…….when I was invited to join a group of “Bondi Boys” to go water ski-ing, which was still in it’s infancy here in Australia. I immediately became addicted to this “new” exciting water sport, and, rather reluctantly, stored my board away.

Here’s a few words on the origin of my nickname “IKE”. As a young Bondi kid, of around 12 years of age, I decided to try my hand at being a “paper-boy”, selling newspapers on the Bondi trams, to earn some “pocket money”, in order to fund my regular trips to the “flicks” (movies) and my growing addiction to “Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate” (which remains with me today ! ) The owner of the Newsagency Shop, Alex Griffin, grew a moustache and I “christened him “IKEY-MO”. However, HE turned it back on ME and instructed the rest of the team of “paper-boys” to ALWAYS, in future, refer to me as “IKE” and the name has stuck to this day!!

I am also sending pics of the “high-jinks” we young “Turks” used to get up to on the Beach, in those Halcyon Days!

Bondi Beach c1950s, photos courtesy Allan Levick

Just one more anecdote……when I was around 15, I bought my first 16ft long “toothpick” surf board and put together a 2 wheel trolley using old Bike wheels to walk the board down to Bondi Beach (about a mile from the family home in Denham Street).

Bondi Tram photo sourced from lindsaybridge on flickr

On countless occasions, I would “scale” on the rear of a tramcar, and trail the board and trailer all the way down to the beach behind the tram! (Quite a remarkable sight!) The conductors thought it was a great “lark” and, only once, did the local “cops” grab me and gave me a “strict talking to”!

photo courtesy Allan Levick

In conclusion, (not really anything to do with surfing, but you may be interested), water-ski-ing became my passion and I used to get up to all kinds of tricks, eg. barefoot ski-ing, ramp jumping, and the most spectacular and unique, of all, was my own invention…..”ski-ing” atop a 6ft tall stool (ladder) on a 3ft diameter, plywood disc and executing 360 degree turns and backwards ski-ing.

photo courtesy Allan Levick

The “stool” was not attached to the disc which made the exercise even more demanding. Sounds unbelievable but, fortunately, I have photos to prove it, some of which I will attach. I am retired now and still ski occasionally, but haven’t been “up the ladder” for 5 years (I reckon I could though!).

With kind regards, Allan Levick

Entrance to Museum of Sydney’s Surf City, © Bruce Usher 2011

Here’s a recent ‘museum sector’ review on Surf City by Richard Waterhouse in reCollections Volume 7 number 1

According to Richard … Surf City is organised in a multidimensional way that is original, creative and challenging. Along three sides of the gallery the artefacts are arranged in three layers. Standing against the rear walls are surfboards arranged chronologically, beginning with the long boards or ‘toothpicks’ of the 1940s and early 50s, followed by the early, imported Malibus; the later, locally produced (shorter and shorter) short boards; and ending with the three fin thruster. Interspersed among the boards along these walls are photos, posters and the surf fashions, including swimwear, of particular eras. In front of these artefacts are display cabinets holding more clothes and smaller photos as well as books, magazine stories relating to surfing, skateboards and even a few LP covers featuring such artists as Little Patti and the Atlantics.

READ THE REVIEW HERE

Another great photo by Charles Bill Moseley showing a pair of slick cats cooling off along the Bondi boardwalk. This and several other scenic treasures on display at Surf City, courtesy Marilyn Moseley.

Get down to the Concord Bowling Club tomorrow for the launch of surf music writer/historian Stephen McParland’s latest book on the Beach Boys.

SATURDAY 2 DECEMBER 2011
2PM
CONCORD BOWLING CLUB
CLERMONT AVENUE
CONCORD

By the way, its the first of three Beach Boys related books he’s got coming out ….so stay tuned.

‘We used to get out kicks reading surfing magazines / good looking people wearing Lee Cooper jeans / gonna get a Kombi and go from beach to beach / be the kind of people the authorities can’t reach’
The Go-Betweens, Surfing Magazines 2001

Tracks magazine courtesy Australian National Maritime Museum

SURF MAGS OF THE 60s & 70s
with surfer, writer and academic Paul Scott
Museum of Sydney
Sunday 4 December 2pm – 3pm
[free with museum entry]
check out event in HHT calendar 

Australian surfing magazines first appeared in Sydney in the early 1960s, stoking the phenomenal craze of boardriding by celebrating and defining surf culture. Along with surf movies, music, language and fashion, the magazines charted social and cultural shifts in the post-war economic boom and became iconic symbols of youth, mobility and hedonistic individualism. The magazines were also terrific sources of information on board design, where to surf, the rising stars of the sport and the latest moves both in-and-out of the water.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bryan Hughes takes us back on an early 60s road trip to Crescent Head with a mob of Manly surfers …

Breakdown shot…

…..this was at the old petrol station at Cowan, (near Berowra) on the way back from Crescent…..I don’t remember what was wrong with the car but there was plenty of advice, probably boiled on the long climb up from Brooklyn……yeah, check out the radio…and this was before cassettes and even 8 track cartridges……also if you look back in the line of traffic I reckon that’s a Roll’s, pretty rare even then…..

Camping shot…

…..at Norah Head….the bloke on the roof was Jeff Fergus, it’s Ray Joyce on the right and I honestly can’t work out all the others except Chris Johnson in the middle….he was from the USA and didn’t surf but was the best skateboarder around back then (we had old skates on bits of board and he had the first real trucks with composite wheels I think I’d ever seen)…..the tarp tied to the front of the car was our sleeping shelter and belonged to my dad, we used it on plenty of trips and I still have it…..out of interest the board I had then, (Jeff’s standing on it on the car) was an 8′6″ balsa “Crow Surfboards” from the USA…never found out how it got to Australia but I bought it with my paper route money in the summer of 1959….

Crescent shot…..

……taken about where the first cabin in the campground is now……Jeff being harassed by a local dog……I wonder what he was eating…..

All words and photos courtesy Bryan Hughes

Huge thanks to Channel Ten News, Tim Bailey and the crew

Come along to the launch of John Ogden’s latest book…

Manly Art Gallery
26 November 2011
2.30pm
To be launched by Jack Thompson and Jeff McMullen

Saltwater People of the Broken Bays explores the incredible history and natural beauty of the coastline between North Head and Barrenjoey. The scalloped beaches found here were home to the coastal clans of the Eora people for at least 20,000 years before the arrival of Europeans. Their water skills and ability in the surf underscore the northern beaches as the birthplace of Australian beach culture, where beach bathing, body surfing, surf life saving and board-riding all began in this country. But it is not just surfers who are drawn to the surf zone, that ever changing interface between ocean and shore that can in turn be calming, thrilling, or threatening. Poets, artists, photographers, architects, and dreamers are inspired by the beauty and drama of this coastline.

John Ogden is a photographer, photojournalist, filmmaker, writer and artist based in Avalon, Sydney. Ogden’s career began in Southeast Asia during the last days of the Vietnam War, later extending his practice to cinematography in multiple genres of filmmaking. His photographs are often direct yet quietly subversive, choosing not to shy away from political commentary, provocation or occasional dark humour.

John Ogden started Cyclops Press and published his first book Australienation in 2000. Through Ogden’s black and white humanist photography Australienation explores the reconciliation process between Australia’s Indigenous peoples and the various tribes and many races that subsequently settled in this Great Southern Land. An equally emotive record of the first Australians, Portraits from a Land Without People, published in 2009, is an anthology of photography that is now acknowledged as the most comprehensive pictorial history honouring Aboriginal culture yet produced.

Students, teachers and elders from Elcho Island at Surf City, Museum of Sydney, November 2011, photo Inara Walden

Got a note today from Inara Walden at the Museum of Sydney about [in her words] … a visit from 28 teenagers from Elcho Island (off the coast of Arnhem Land in the Arafura Sea, where Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and the Chooky dancers are from). The group are visiting Sydney for 5 days on a special tour with their teachers and elders. The majority of the group have never left the island before. For many of the students English is a 2nd or 3rd language (in fact there are 22 different dialects used in the community), but this didn’t daunt our professional MOS Guides who managed to adapt their delivery and fully engage the students who seemed enthralled and interested in absolutely everything. Highlights for the students were the story of Bennelong and Governor Phillip’s spearing, the Michael Riley video ‘Eora’ in Gadigal Place, and touch screens in Surf City. The cardboard surfer craft activity also went down a treat.

Students from Elcho Island, getting radical at Surf City, Museum of Sydney, November 2011, photo Inara Walden

Students from Elcho Island, in the curl at Surf City, Museum of Sydney, November 2011, photo Inara Walden