Surf Travel 60

A little over 100 years ago, there were no speed cameras in New South Wales, but it was illegal to bathe in the surf during daylight hours. Why? Surf bathing was seen as both dangerous and immoral. Eventually, an act of public defiance by William Gocher, in 1902 at Manly Beach, led to a relaxing of the laws. Gocher went swimming in a neck-to-knee number at high noon. Consider him the Rosa Parks of Australian surfing.

However, before Duke introduced stand-up surfing in 1915, the chaos of surf bathing demanded new order: Surf Lifesaving clubs. Drownings led to the organization of volunteer groups who patrolled the beaches, imposing rules and saving lives.

Competition was part of the ethos. Again, to the ignorant outsider, competition seems to be an intrinsic part of Australian culture, just as regulation is. The original Surf Lifesaving clubs quickly began competing against each other in carnivals. When surfing came along, local boardrider club contests were a logical extension. Now, driving through rural shires, you notice other little cultural anomalies: for instance, a random cul-de-sac will bear a sign declaring it the “2006 Street of the Year.” In California, small-town streets, and small-town surfers, are less demonstratively competitive.

It’s little wonder that in the 1970s, when global surf culture began to fade into soulful, non-competitive yet xenophobic localism, Australians imposed order on the chaos, thwarting entropy with the rise of the world tour.