surfresearch.com.au  source documents : olmypic surf carnival 1956

Yesterday's results:-
Board: B. Keane (Aust.). 1: T Zahn (Hawaii). 2; M. Brlght (U.S.A.).3.
Belt: T. Devine (U.S.A.). 1: J JarvIs (N.Z.). 2; 1. Edwards (S. Africa). 3.
March past: South Africa. 15. 1; Australia. 17. 2: New Zealand. 22. 3.
R. and R.: Australia. 8.2. 1; New Zealand. 9.9. 2; South Africa. 9.92. 3
Beach relay: Hawaii. 1; Australia. 2; U.S.A.. 3.
Beach sprint: P. Mannina (Aust.). 1; L. Hanagca. (Hawaii). 2: C. Mcllroy (U.S.A.) 3.
Single ski: T. Schroeder (Hawaii); 2: K. Ryan (N.Z.). 2: L. Cullenbourne (S. AfrIca). 3.
Surf: B. Lumsdaine (Aust.) 1; B. Hutchings (Aust.) 1; L. Hawker (N.Z.). 3.
Surf teams: New Zealand. 26, 1; Australia. 30, 2; South Africa. 39, 3
Marathon surf: B. Lumsdaine (Aust.), 1; L. Coetzee (S. Afrlca), 2: T. More (Hawaii), 3.
PoInts score: Australia. 44 1/2; New Zealand. 35; South Africa. 26 1/2; Hawaii, U.S.A., 24.

Australian surfers will have to pass a stiff swimminig test at Footscray baths, Melbourne on Monday next week to make the team to oppose overseas stars at carnivals at Maroubra and Collaroy next month.
A team of eight will be chosen and the swimmers may have to do 2.30 or better for the 220 yards to make the grade.
They will also have to be efficient beltmen and R and R men.
Costumes
Overseas (sic) and Australians to compete at the Victorian and Sydney carnivals will swim in costumes donated by Speedo.
They will be full length with their Australian colors on the badges.
The American team, which arrived yesterday, has colorful outfits. Don Lucas and an assistant will drill them in R and R.

Ceylon surfer Rod Ingleton hitchhiked part of the way to Sydney to compete at the Olympic surf carnival at Torquay on Sunday week.
He fluked a plane ride to Singapore and then managed to get here on another plane.
Jack Anderson, a director of a tea plantation will be Ceylon's other representative.
Color
US and Hawaiian surfers will wear colorful costumes for their first Australian appearance at Cronulla on Saturday and at Avalon on Sunday.
The Americans are coastguards from Miami Beach, Florida.
They will not be allowed to contest individual events, as they are paid professionals.
Their costumes have been specifically designed to include the USA colors.
...
Apostle
Former Australian surf champion Max Riddington hope to introduce SLSC work in (the) US.
Max, ranked next to Bob Newbiggen, as one of the best surfers in the past 20 years, is in America working for an insurance firm.
Max has amazed Americans with his body shooting in a small surf.
If the big waves start rolling in he should give a typical Australian display.

The California lifeguards organized themselves under the banner of the Surf Life Saving Association of America (SLSA), although they were solely from the Los Angeles County and Los Angeles City lifeguard agencies.
This was the first American lifeguard association of its kind, even if its name was a bit grand considering its narrow scope.

Team members from the SLSA included Team Captain Rusty Williams of Los Angeles County (LACO), Team Coach Kirby Temple (LACO), Team Manager Herb Barthels, Sr. of Los Angeles City (LACity) , Tad Devine (Santa Monica City), Bob Burnside (LACO), Mike Bright (LACO), Gregg Knoll (LACO), Dave Ballinger (LACO), Chick Mcilroy (LACO), Paul Mcilroy (LACO), Sheridan Byerly (LACO), and Roger Jensen (LACO).
The Hawaiian lifeguard team included Dr. Don Gustuson, Team Manager Harry Shaeffer, Team Coach Tom Shaeffer, Tom Moore, Tom Zahn, Dan Durego, Tim Guard, L. Honka, Peter Balding, and Shaky Felez.

The event was held on November 26, 1956 and drew an immense crowd of 115,000 spectators.
The legendary "Duke" Paoa Kahanamoku of Hawaii served as the honorary event Chairman.
In addition to the American and Australian teams, lifeguard teams from South Africa, Great Britain, Ceylon, and New Zealand participated.

As for the Americans, the Hawaiian Territory placed first in the Beach Relay.
Tad Devine of California placed second in the swim.
Bob Burnside of California placed third in the belt race.

Perhaps more importantly than the competition itself, lifelong relationships were built around this historic event and both countries were to benefit tremendously.
The American rescue tube and rescue buoy were first introduced to Australia on this tour, later to become staples of Australian lifesaving gear as they were in the US.
Tom Zahn, Tom Moore, and Bob Burnside brought Malibu Bolsa Surfboards with them, the first total Australian exposure to the Malibu Surfboard.
When they departed Australia, the boards were left behind, which revolutionized surfing in Australia.

After the event, LA County Lifeguard Chief Bud Stevenson decided to use SLSA in his efforts to upgrade professional lifeguarding. Chief Stevenson appointed Bob Burnside as President of the nascent organization and Lt. Don Hill as Secretary. Despite the broadly embracing name of Surf Life Saving Association of America, the early focus was to remain on Los Angeles County issues.
Bob Burnside called for representatives from as many Southern California lifeguard agencies as possible to attend a concept meeting at Santa Monica Lifeguard Headquarters in the winter of 1963. In attendance were Vince Moorhouse (Huntington Beach), Max Bowman (Huntington Beach), Don Rohrer (LA City), Dick Heineman (LA City), Tim Dorsey (Seal Beach), host Jim Richards (Santa Monica), and a representative from Long Beach.
The group agreed that they should establish a truly national organization, based on the structure of the Australian association, to be called the Surf Life Saving Association of America.
The early organization established Southern and Northern Chairmen of the State of California, and a temporary Executive Board was formed to establish a constitution, bylaws, and method of equal representation for the association. This put in place all the necessary criteria for affiliation with the organization by local chapters, allowing each chapter to participate equally in the first election of officers, which took place in 1965. In the meantime, temporary chairmen took charge.
In 1964, Huntington Beach's newly dedicated lifeguard headquarters was adopted as the center for SLSA activities. In that same year, Howard Lee of LA County designed the national logo, which is still in use today. His design was influenced by a similar design that Tad Devine of the 1956 Australia team had created for the team uniform. Both are strikingly similar to the logo of the United States Life-Saving
Service, an arm of the United States government, which had rescued shipwrecked sailors during the 1800s and 1900s, before being merged with the Revenue Cutter Service to form the US Coast Guard.

Presidents and terms of office of USLA and its predecessors have included:
Bob Burnside -- 1963 - 1967

http://www.cslsa.org/about/history.asp

"We were riding sixteen and seventeen foot long boards. We knelt on them in general, we didn't have fins on the bottom of the board. Here's a guy walking down the beach with this strange little thing, and jumps on it and lies down, and everyone who was watching was thinking 'this guy isn't very good he can't even kneel!' Fifty meters out from the beach he spun it around, caught a wave, walked up and down, hung toes over the nose, and did things we'd never seen before! That, basically was the reason we walked away from surf lifesaving, we wanted to learn to shape one of these things. The boards were taken with them after that weekend, we had nothing to copy. We all started from scratch."

At the same time, two of us, and I'm talking about another fellow called Vic Tantau, and myself, we were asked to give a demonstration of the early surfboard riding because of what we'd developed. So I was very fortunate to have been selected to give a demonstration of surfboard riding.

We basically went out on the 16-foot toothpicks, and Torquay beach is a very special beach for this because there's a large exposed rock off the beach called Haystack Rock, and the way it's come in on an angle on there, and they go off breaking towards the right, down into the middle of Torquay back beach, and it allows maybe a 300-metre ride on one of these surfboards.

I distinctly remember being under the Torquay surf club, which was an elevated building up on lamp-posts, and they had all of the surf craft underneath, and I went under there to get something, and there was one of these American guys, and he was kneeling in the sand, and he was wrapping around a fin that he'd taken out of a little handbag that had his towel and bathers and everything in it, and he was wrapping newspaper around the edge, and putting it into a slot in the surfboard. And he picked up a piece of rock that was in the sand and he was hammering this fin into the surfboard. And of course I had no awareness of what this was about, so I was interested.

I hadn't had the opportunity of ever talking to the guy, so I was just looking at him, and followed him down the beach and there was probably 8 or 10 other people on the beach that followed this guy down, carrying the surfboard under his arm, and he got into the water, (maybe it was 4 o'clock in the afternoon, I'm not quite sure) and lay on it, and of course we looked at that and thought, Well he's not very proficient because he can't even kneel on the surfboard, he's lying on it. And then we thought he wasn't very good either, because he only went 40 or 50 metres off the beach, and that was the last time we thought like that, because immediately he turned around, caught a wave in about three paddles, stood up, and crossed the wave, and then hot-dogged backwards and forwards, walking up and down the board, and we were all just - (Mick O'Regan: Gobsmacked?) Exactly.

Well a couple of us went up to him, and we asked him, 'Can I have a go?' and I distinctly remember having a go on this board, but I couldn't really paddle the thing, and when I did try to stand up on it, it was so responsive, that it flipped out from underneath me, and so that was our only contact, because by that night, those guys had gone back to Geelong into their hotels, they'd packed their belongings and they were gone to Sydney. So the people who were on the beach that night had virtually two hours to think about it, and then they were going home to Melbourne, or to Ballarat, or Geelong, or somewhere, and within one or two weeks, those guys that were fairly competent with their hands had gone into their yards and tried to make one themselves. But they didn't have the material, so they had to make them out of marine ply with hardwood rails and they had bulkheads in the board rather like a small craft, and holes through those so that -

The four surfboards that we knew those guys had, had gone that particular night, they'd gone to Sydney, and we now know that those four surfboards were bought by individuals in Sydney, and so Gordon Woods and Bob Evans and Bob Pike, other people in Sydney that acquired those boards, had the opportunity then of being able to copy them. But we in Victoria didn't, so we had to start off with just pure memory."

Peter Troy further commented on the repercussions of the event by noting ...
The development of boardriding activity as a challenge to SLSC dominance,
A conflict in the choice between a best beach or home beach,
The formation of the Bells Beach Boardriders Club and the opening of the access road in 1958.
Troy and Tantau's organisation of the first Bells Beach Contest in 1961.

---

surfresearch.com.au

---