I figure that most of us can remember the excitement of the first time we saw a big swell sweeping onto that coast around Bells. For me it’s the same for a few other places in the world… those sights are indelibly lodged in my head.

This picture was shot at Easter while the annual contest was on in 1977. I have a feeling that the swell was still rising, and it was a pretty good year. Simon Anderson and Margo Oberg would each win their first bell.

While the contest was the cause for the whole surfing clan to come together each year on this wonderful bit of coastline, that was almost an excuse. Bells at Easter was one of the great gatherings in Australian surfing, and that was reason enough.

JOHN WITZIG

A Golden Age, an exhibition of John Witzig’s photographs of the 1960s and ’70s, will open at the Bondi Pavilion Gallery on 11 September and run for two weeks.