LEGENDARY SURFERS: Duke Not The First in Oz: “Duke Kahanamoku, the ‘Father of Modern Surfing’ is generally considered to have been the first stand-up surfer in Australia. New research indicates Duke was probably NOT the first:
[ Excerpt from 'The Duke dethroned as our surfing history is rewritten,' Matthew Benns, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, December 30, 2007 ]
… Historian Mark Maddox argues Kahanamoku chose to give his famous 1914 surfing exhibition at Freshwater Beach because at nearby Manly too many surfers were dropping in on his waves.”
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In the book written to celebrate the centenary of the North Steyne surf club, Mark Maddox claims to have debunked the myth that Duke Kahanamoku was the first person to ride a surfboard in Australia.
Rather than “debunking” the Duke myth, however, Mark Maddox has simply plagiarised the research of other people who have been debunking the Duke myth since 1997.
I am a journalist and historian with the Manly Daily newspaper and in March 1997 I wrote a feature story debunking the Duke myth. I don’t claim credit for debunking the Duke myth – I simply compiled the numerous reports of what elderly local residents of Sydney’s northern beaches had been saying for years.
In 2000 local historians Shelagh and George Champion published “Bathing, Drowning and Life Saving in Manly, Warringah and Pittwater to 1915”, which included proof that at least one local surfer was as good a surfer as Duke – if not better. His name was Tommy Walker and at a surf carnival at Manly on January 26, 1912, he displayed his skills to thousands of people by riding a surfboard all the way to the shore while standing on his head, as cited in the posting by Malcolm on Saturday December 29, 2007.
There is an excellent photograph of Tommy Walker riding a surfboard while standing on his head at Yamba, a coastal town about 670km north of Sydney. The photograph, taken about 1910, is held by the Port of Yamba Historical Museum.
This doesn’t mean Tommy Walker was the first Australian to ride a surfboard, only that he was good enough to be invited to demonstrate his skill at a surf carnival almost three years before Duke Kahanamoku visited Australia in December 1914. Residents of Sydney’s northern beaches are thought to have been riding surfboards as early as 1907. Malcolm’s posting mentions some of the names mentioned when the question of Australia’s earliest surfboard riders arises – Steve McKelvey, Jack Reynolds, Fred Notting, Basil Kirke, Norman Roberts, Geoff Wyld and Tommy Walker‘s brother William. Other local surfers included Harry Taylor, Frank Bell, Charlie Bell and Stan Exton. Local builder Les Hinds and carpenter Bernard Kieran are understood to have been making surfboards separately long before the first Hawaiian surfboard reached Australia’s shores.
The debunking of the Duke myth was taken a step further in 2006, when University of Queensland academic Dr Gary Osmond wrote a thesis on myths involving Polynesians and their involvement in the early days of Australian sport. Dr Osmond devoted 44 pages of his thesis to the Duke myth.
Although it might be true, there is no evidence to back Mark Maddox’s claim that Charles Paterson introduced the first Hawaiian surfboard to Australia. It has been suggested that the first Hawaiian surfboards were brought to Australia by American sailors in 1908, when the Great White Fleet visited Sydney, having sailed from Honolulu via Auckland. Charles Paterson was the first president of the North Steyne surf club and it is hard to escape the suspicion that Mark Maddox is promoting Paterson’s role in order to promote the club, of which he is a member and in whose centenary book his “research” is published.
The only reason Mark Maddox’s claim to have debunked the Duke myth was given prominence in the Sun-Herald (not the Sydney Morning Herald) story on December 30, 2007, was because the overall author of “100 Years – A Celebration Of Surf Life Saving At North Steyne”, Matthew Benns, is a journalist at that newspaper – the same Matthew Benns who wrote the Sun-Herald story announcing to the world that Mark Maddox had debunked the Duke myth. By promoting Mark Maddox’s claim to have debunked the Duke myth, Matthew Benns was simply promoting his own book.
John Morcombe
Manly Daily
Manly
February 16, 2008
Thank you for this insight. It further manifests the issue.