In 1975, my father bought my older brothers, John, Greg and I a Toyota HiAce campervan. We were the envy of all our friends. Dad also gave me a 35mm Kodak Retinette for my birthday. He likely experienced a successful year with one of his various small enterprises. Our first forays were early morning drives from Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs over the Harbour Bridge to Manly’s Fairy Bower. Out in the surf, Greg and I would surf the Bower through Surge Rock and catch glimpses of John getting barreled on the ledge of cunjevoi reef further out known as Winki Pop.
Early one morning, just before sunrise, as we drove along Sydney Road toward the coast and Manly Beach, passed the tower of old car black tires to the left and the first McDonalds we ever visited on the right, we looked out from the top of the high hill and saw eight to ten foot clean swells pulsing in and fanning around the headland. We squealed with excitement as the smooth, straight, corduroy lines marched in formation from as far out as we could see on the horizon and tubed down the entire length of reef. It was the first time we had seen the Bower firing on all eight cylinders.
When we pulled up in the car park on top of the headland, I snapped a photo from inside the campervan, with the sink in the foreground. I was a fan of the Tracks surfing magazine photographers, particularly John Witzig and Stephen Cooney, and wanted to make my first surf shots with my new camera as interesting as possible, in the hope that one might be published by the magazine.
The surf was so big and powerful no-one paddled out until after the sun came up. I observed the white plume of enormous rooster tails trailing behind sets hitting Queenscliff Bombie to the north and noticed a few individuals paddling into the massive waves. Greg and I scurried about the cliff-face, with me taking photos, and noticed another surf break further out from Winki Pop. As John prepared himself to go surfing, the first one to paddle out, Greg inquired from a local known as ‘The Candyman’ about the name of the new break we had spotted. “Bluefin.” He nodded seriously.
After I had run out of film, though terrified, I followed John out into the surf. Very quickly I was nearly drowned by a massive wave; my leg rope broke and my surfboard was sucked out to sea. I swam in and all the way into Shelly Beach cove and after rushing back to the lookout watched John surfing the biggest waves I’d ever seen him ride. Then I saw two surfers break from the small pack at Winki and paddle out to Bluefin. Upon taking off on a perfect, glassy set I immediately recognised the style of one of the surfers as Rusty Miller; one of the stars of our favourite surfing movie Morning of the Earth. Those two guys only caught a few waves each but to the hundreds gathered watching from the headland they were like super-heroes. At the time it was the biggest and best waves we’d ever attempted to surf or seen people ride.
After the wind picked up from the north east, before heading home, we checked with the Queenscliff Surf Lifesaving Club to see if the breeze had blown my board ashore. “You bloody idiot!” The Clubby I asked about my surfboard chastised me. “Your board washed in three hours ago, we’ve been searching for you ever since, we thought you’d drowned!” He retrieved my board from the Surf Club and shook his head as he handed it back to me. “I should give you a clip over the ear ya little bastard. Where are ya from?” I answered him with the pride us Southside surfers inherited from our elders: “Bondi.” “Hmph! A bloody Bondi boy. I should have known.” He banished me.
I was thankful to get my board back, but unfortunately, lost that roll of film, and it wasn’t developed or processed, until a few months ago. Somehow, that little 35mm Kodak film canister survived the dozens of times I had moved house and lost or abandoned all my stuff. Things lost and abandoned to answer the call of the wild inspired in part by the excitement we experienced that morning all those years ago.
Then, last month, unexpectedly, my younger brother Dan sent me a Dropbox link to some negatives he had digitized from a random roll of undeveloped film he had found in some of my old stuff. He labelled the link as “Fairy Bower and Winki 1975,” as indicated on the canister. He asked me the name of the other break in the photos. “We used to call it Bluefin, but now they call it Deadmans.” I am so grateful Dan found the old roll of 35mm film and finally brought those images into the world. I had always wondered what had happened to that missing roll of film. And at long last, 50 years later, they have finally been published by Tracks.
