TRUCE IN BATTLE FOR THE WAVES
How beers with Mayor in 1970s played no small part in brokering a ...
Phil Jarratt memoir recalls turbulent era in surfing.
WHEN Australian surfers rode waves through a purple haze of psychedelics and ran from Hawaiian “Black Shorts” hell bent on punching them out, journalist Phil Jarratt was there – and he documented it all as editor of Tracks magazine.
The assaults and death threats made by Hawaiian surfers in the 1970s, who felt Australian and South African board riders had come to take over their islands, are well documented in surf history.
But in Jarratt’s new memoir The Life of Brine: A Surfer’s Journey the 65-year-old recalls an unlikely, albeit momentary, truce between the two warring tribes which took place after a meeting in the office of former Gold Coast Mayor Sir Bruce Small.
“It was a pretty strange thing in a number of ways,” Jarratt said of the meeting, which happened just months after surfer Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew was savagely bashed on Oahu.
“That was March in 1977 and only three or four months before that these Hawaiians had been at our throats.”
The $5000 cash prize for the first Stubbies contests at Burleigh Heads had attracted surfers from around the world, including Hawaiian legends Eddie and Clyde Aikau and Reno Abellira.
The meeting started with beers at City Hall before enough wind was put into the group’s spinnakers to carry them along to the Southport Yacht Club and the night turned into a singalong.
“There had been an incredible backlash against the Australians that season (late 1976), and the Aikau brothers were trying to be the peacemakers but they were also pretty heavy with us,” Jarratt said.
THE HAWAIIAN WINTER
JARRATT, the former editor of Australian Playboy, Penthouse and one-time colleague of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott at The Bulletin magazine described seeing Bartholomew just days after he was first beaten in the surf.
“Rabbit feared for his life, and quite legitimately so,” Jarratt said of the 1978 world champion.
“He was beaten up in the water and then he paddled in and he got beaten up on land – then he went underground.
“You know, obviously he was extremely frightened and ended up out at the hotel, which is now known at the Turtle Bay Resort, in a condominium behind a security screen.
“Bugs (Bartholomew) had a tennis racquet or something under the bed every night in case someone got in. How he would defend himself with a tennis racquet I’m not sure.
“It sounds pretty funny now but we were all taking it pretty seriously.”
Bartholomew’s punishment was administered by the “Black Shorts” or “Da Hui”, the group who took it upon themselves to regulate the waves on the North Shore and enforce “respect”, something Hawaiians continue to do today.
According to Jarratt, on some level the aggression was justified.
“They’d seen a lot of their culture taken away from them, you’ve got to remember American statehood only happened in 1959 which is just a handful of years before all this happened,” he said.
“As a proud nation the Hawaiians were losing their culture and becoming homogenised Americans which they didn’t like so to see surfing being taken away from them (was too much).
“Before the advent of professional surfing they’d always been held up as the kings of the sport, but then all these Aussies, particularly, and South Africans, were arriving and winning contests and doing better than the Hawaiians.”
THE HAIL-FELLOWWELL-MET
AUSTRALIAN surfers had been travelling to the Hawaiian Islands chasing pounding winter swells for decades before the big dust-up.
Gold Coast surfer Paul Neilsen, of Brothers Neilsen fame, began making the annual pilgrimage in the early 1970s where he formed a close relationship with the wellrespected Aikau family before tensions boiled over.
“Paul was quite different from a lot of surfers, he was a hail-fellow-well-met, as they used to say,” Jarratt said.
“He’d get along with people, he was well liked and respected and he’d been taken in by the Aikau family on his first couple of trips to Hawaii.
“So he was the leader of our group and the Aikaus were the leaders of their group.”
In part, Jarratt said, Paul Neilsen helped keep things on an even keel during the meeting at Town Hall.
THE MAYOR IN BERMUDA SOCKS
“IT was pretty amazing that it happened back then,” Jarratt said, musing about the meeting and whether recent mayors would invite a bunch of boardriders around for beers.
“The whole thing started at Sir Bruce Small’s office. Drinks were had, but not too many, just enough everyone a taste.”
Jarratt was part of the media entourage assembled for the biggest surfing event to be held in Australia at the time.
“I think guys from the parent company of Stubbies were there, this was this fairly stitched up crew of people – but they really did like a drink and so did all the surfers.”
He said the meeting was at Sir Bruce’s invitation.
“It was right after the official welcome for the Stubbies competition and it was in the office of the Mayor Sir Bruce Small, small in name and small in stature, a tiny little guy in Bermuda socks and shorts,” he said. “He didn’t really understand the culture or who these guys were but he knew the (Stubbies competition) was a big deal.
“I think the managing director to give
THE SINGALONG
STEPPING out of the cab at the Southport Yacht Club the party ran afoul of the dress code.
“Basically, as surfers, as a pack, we wouldn’t have been invited into those kinds of places, it was the 1970s, dress codes were enforced more heavily,” Jarratt said.
He said members of the committee were called and the formal dress rules were dropped for the group.
“They had to bypass normal rules of the yacht club to allow these guys wearing singlets and thongs, I don’t think that would happen today,” Jarratt said.
He said the courtesy shown by dropping the rules wasn’t lost on the Hawaiians, who returned the favour in spades.
Jarratt said after a few libations the club transformed and joined together in singing old Hawaiian folk songs.
“It just ended up being a magical night,” he said.
“Because all the barriers were down, the Aikau brothers and Abellira started singing the old Hawaiian songs and suddenly the whole club was cheering along.
“It was incredible. After (what happened on) the north shore there they all are three months later in Australia singing and drinking beer.”