The defining moment in Australian big wave riding happened almost a decade before Tracks had become a twinkling in John Witzig’s eye. And it even preceded any form of Australian surf media, and may not have been documented and remembered at all, were it not for Joe Larkin and Bob Evans.
June 6, 1961 dawned as one of those crisp, cold, clear, offshore Sydney winter mornings that made some people dread the alarm clock, and others, like Sydney’s tiny hard core surfing fraternity, bound out of bed to check the waves. Pacific storms over the first week of June had been threatening to produce the biggest easterly ground swell of the season, but when Joe Larkin checked Queenscliff around 7.30am on his way to bundy on as the beach inspector at South Steyne, the surf was solid but not spectacular. Conditions, however, were perfect, and thinking there was potential for later on – when the infamous Queensie Bombie might even break – he phoned his mate Bob Evans when he got to work and advised him to be on standby with the Bolex.
Evo was already onto the possibility of a peaking swell. “Find a couple of blokes with serious balls,” he told Larkin. “If it’s as big as it looks on the charts, they might need them.”
Although there were several offshore reefs around Sydney that could hold a huge swell and offer rideable waves, Queenscliff bombora at the northern end of Manly Beach was the place that had developed legendary status as the “ground zero” of local big wave riding. First conquered by Harold “Rastus” Evans and the North Steyne boat crew in 1927, it had been successfully ridden on smaller days by several solid and toothpick surfboard riders, including Claude West, but no one had ever successfully made the mighty drop on one of those gut-wrenching winter days when a Pacific ground swell meets an offshore breeze to create big wave perfection.
At the end of his shift on the beach, Joe Larkin drove past Queenscliff on his way to his other job at Barry Bennett’s new surfboard factory on Harbord Road, and noted that the swell had come up even more. As he changed into his glassing clothes, he was called to the boss’s office to take a phone call. It was an excited Bob Evans. “Joey, the bommie is bloody huge. I’ve got the camera and there’s already a crowd here watching it. Grab Jacko and get down here.” Twenty-one-year old Dave Jackman, recognised as one of the gutsiest surfers on the north side (alongside Bob Pike) was standing right beside him in the office, but he didn’t look convinced when Joe relayed the message. “Who else is up for it?”
“Not me,” said Larkin, I’ve got to help Evo with the camera. Maybe Midget?”
Teenager Bernard “Midget” Farrelly, the ding fixer at Bennetts, had a growing reputation for his hot dogging repertoire, but was as yet untried in big waves. He grabbed a balsa gun and tied it on the car next to Jacko’s, but he looked apprehensive.
Half an hour later Jackman parked his car under the Norfolk pines and watched as massive waves exploded over the reef. Around 1pm, he took his balsa gun from the roof of the car, waxed it carefully with a block of hardware shop paraffin, and stripped down to his Speedos. The crowd on Queenscliff headland murmured as the surfer carried his board across the sand, peering seawards in search of a deep channel. Among them, photographer Ron Perrott kept adjusting his position to ensure he had the best angle, while Evans and Larkin worked out their filming strategy, eventually deciding that Larkin would point the Bolex from a vantage point on the headland while Evans “spotted” for him.
As Jacko knee-paddled towards the reef, three police patrol cars sped towards the beach, alerted by local residents to an imminent suicide attempt. The crowd of ghoulish onlookers continued to grow. Three other surfers appeared out the back, sitting well wide of the impact zone. One of them was Midget Farrelly.
Jackman’s head bobbed between the swells as he waited for the right wave, then finally there were gasps from the crowd as he stroked into a huge wave, made the drop, leaned precariously into a bottom turn then sped towards the shoulder in safe, deeper water. Dave Jackman had conquered the bommie! Perrott and Larkin had the shot. Dave could come in now, but that was not likely. He rode another huge wave to the safety of the deep water, but on his third he mistimed the drop down the face and was swatted from his board by the mountain of white water. Joe Larkin later told the Pacific Times that his young friend had come close to drowning on impact, but had recovered, swum half a kilometre to retrieve his board, then paddled back out for one last wave.
The afternoon fading, Larkin and Evans made a fast trip from the beach to the ABC studios at Gore Hill, where they delivered the footage to leading sportscaster Norman “Nugget” May, a member of the Freshwater Surf Club. The two-pound cheque they would receive in a few days for the use of the footage would help pay the next payment on the Bolex and buy some more film.
Dave Jackman was an overnight hero, seen on the ABC news, celebrated by the Sydney newspapers and the subject of adoring magazine profiles. Australia’s first real surfing magazine, The Australian Surfer, published two months later, featured a spread on “Jacko and the Bombora” and Ron Perrott’s photos subsequently appeared in California’s Surfer magazine.
Australia had shown the global surfing community that we had big waves and we were not afraid to tackle them, and for a brief moment, Dave Jackman was the most famous surfer in the country. •
