The year 1966 saw the release of the most loved surfing film of all time, ‘Endless Summer’.

The film was produced, directed, photographed, edited, and narrated by Californian, Bruce Brown. Ten years earlier Brown had enlisted in the US Navy right out of school and served as a submariner. He shot his first home movie of surfers from California with an 8mm camera while stationed in Honolulu in 1955. After being discharged, Brown returned to California and enrolled in Long Beach City College but soon dropped out to work as a lifeguard at Long Beach.

‘Endless Summer’, Brown’s seventh surfing film, follows surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, on a surfing trip worldwide and was tag-lined, ‘The Search for the Perfect Wave’. Despite comfortably warm water in California, without modern wetsuits, cold ocean currents made local beaches inhospitable during the winter. The intrepid duo travels the coasts of Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, Hawaii, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa in their quest for new surf spots while introducing locals to the sport.

Brown’s easy-going voiceover contrasted the stiff, formal documentaries of the 1950s and early 60s. It was more casual, fun-loving, and humorous, honed from six years of live narration. The Long Beach band The Sandals provided the soundtrack, and the title track , ‘Theme from Endless Summer’, has since become one of the best-known film themes in the surf movie genre.

At the end of the film, in the credits, Paul Witzig is attributed with having shot much of the Australian surfing footage. Witzig and his brother, journalist and photographer, John, went on to play an enormous role in documenting Australian surfing over the next decade. One of their muses was the legendary Robert ‘Nat’ Young. Nat’s journey through surfing over the next 10 years reflects the passage many ...