Interview by Bridget Reedman

'Surf City' tracks Sydney's evolution through amazing period of social upheaval, post war optimism, prosperity and kaleidoscopic cultural frontiers that shaped prominent surf culture.

Curator Gary Crockett takes retrospective look at Sydney's surf culture, conceiving the idea for the exhibition after a friend showed him the iconic surf film, Morning of the Earth. As a surfer of late 70's himself it struck Crockett as an important time in Sydney's life and a story that had never been told.

Crockett illustrates the period from the arrival of the first American Malibu's in 1956 that set the new culture alight, and the explosion of surf culture becoming the look and feel of Sydney in the early 60's through to the 70's.

"You can encapsulate the period in a really discrete way," he says describing the arrival of performance focussed surfing and the exponential growth through design innovations and big money surf contests, and the arrival of the Thruster in 1981.

How does Surf City interpret the evolution of surfing and surf culture?
"I framed the exhibition between the arrival of the Malibus and the arrival of the Thruster, because I think in that period there was still an innocence, a rebelliousness. Surfing could really be described as an amateur pastime rather than a profession, and after 1981 there was thousands of people surfing and it took on a much more high profile, visible, glamorous dimension."

"I focussed on five sections. In the grey days after World War II Sydneysiders were returning to the beaches and surfing long hollow wooden boards called toothpicks. Generally ridden by lifesavers, it was a very conservative, macho, rule ridden world of the beach. Gradually there was breakaway from the old guard in the lifesaving scene, coinciding with the arrival of the Malibu's in 1956. In the few years after 1956 there was a trickling in of American surf culture images, giving surfers an idea of what they could actually do on these boards."

"In 1960, polyurethane foam fibreglass manufacturing processes became available. Board makers from Bondi and Bronte, who were making timber boards, moved to Brookvale to set up new factories building fibreglass and polyurethane surfboards."

"In 1961 an Australian started producing a surfing magazine and a year after that Surfing World and Surfabout hit the streets."

"Lifesavers were cranky about the amount of Malibus clogging up the beaches and hurting swimmers so they implemented a system of board registration. You paid five shillings and put a sticker on your board and if your board didn't have a sticker it was impounded. The lifesavers cut themselves off from surfing culture and the rift between surfers and lifesavers didn't really heal until the end of the 70's."

"1964-68 saw an explosion in commercial interest in surfing and at the same time Sydney surfers were starting to surf differently, being a lot more expressive. The term was 'involvement'. They wanted to ride 'in' a wave not 'on' a wave, to be involved in the experience of surfing."

How was this expressed?
"The board design in Sydney during that time led to the development of the first vee bottom shortboards. Nat Young, Bob McTavish, Midget Farrelly, Gordon Merchant who was working with Jackson surfboards, were all working independently but there was obviously a zeitgeist of design that was sweeping through the board making shops of Sydney. This was not happening in California or anywhere else."

Crockett asserts the evolution of surf culture aligned with currents of social awareness and politics.

"In the background was the whole psychedelic flower-power movement that was sweeping through student politics and youth consciousness. Kids were questioning the Government and were fearful of being drafted to Vietnam."

"There was a whole different attitude sweeping through surf culture, which in part was being driven by a different type of surfing…there was this new ethic of wanting to push the cultural boundaries. There was a very staunchly anti-contest, anti-commerce thread running through surf culture at the time."

"The 70's started to produce some really hot surfers and some really good designers. Ted Spencer was designing a surfboard for Shane Stedman called the White Kite and interestingly it was a pop out, a mass produced board. Shane Stedman, the industrial engineer with an eye for factory line production, flooded the market with the Shane Standard which was despised by everyone, but obviously incredibly popular and a lot of the younger surfers that blossomed in the late 70's started out on a Shane Standards, like Tom Carroll."

"1974 was the turning point, it was the end of this hippie drug foiled era and the arrival of big money in a big surfing contest in Sydney, the Coke Surfabout. It seemed to signal the end of a reclusive period in surfing."

"The Northern Beaches were a huge test pilot area for board makers…which in turn seemed to ignite a new interest in the surfing press. Surfing World had a re-invigoration under Hugh McCleod and Bruce Channon from 1973-74 and Tracks was taken over by Phil Jarratt, who took the politics and spiritualism out of Tracks and focused it back on surfing. Anyone surfing throughout the late 70's would definitely see Surfing World and Tracks as the megaphones of surf culture."

"It was no surprise that in the last few years of the decade the boards were getting faster, more radical, more interesting. Simon Anderson's Thruster appeared in 1980, he formed up his three finned fat bottomed surfboard and rode it to victory in three big contests in 1981; Bells, Surfabout and Pipe Masters."

How do you perceive the resurgence of retro surf culture?
"People are remembering a time when surfing had an innocence. I think they're remembering those ideas of rebellion, adventure and that kind of tribal nature of surfing in the 60's and 70's. Mainstream society didn't really 'get' surf culture until after the 80's."

"Its also a bit of a reaction to the huge commercial clutter that surrounds surfing today, I think people are harking back to a time when surfing was much more about the experience of surfing. When surfing was not about performance, it was about being in the water and enjoying that interaction…I guess they are kind of honouring the spirit of the late 60's and early 70's when surfers were detaching themselves from society and really exploring what's going on in your mind when you surf and why you surf, not how you surf."

"The present resurgence in soul surfing is very much about finding out what it is about surfing that makes it so special, so unique."

Surf City is showing at the Museum of Sydney until March 17, 2012. Coastalwatch have six double passes to Surf City to give away, to get your hands on one upload a snap of your surfboard from the Surf City era and tag Coastalwatch in the status line on facebook...