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Introduction
Bob Evans recalls his first visit to Queensland's Burleigh Heads with a team of surf lifesavers for the 1948 National championships.
Evans' recollections may not be completely accurate, the 1948 National championships were held in Sydney and on the Gold Coast two years later in April 1950.

Reported to be riding a 14 foot board in 1948-1950, John Windshuttle later found fame riding large waves at Manly's Fairy Bower as the captain of the Palm Beach surfboat.

A page devoted to surf music includes a report on the most recent import from California,The Stomp, a new rock-n-roll dance craze.
Evans(?) predicted that the shapely wave of surf songs and sounds looks like running a long way before it hits the rocks.
The impact on rock-n-roll music on social dancing was radical, breaking the long convention in western society where the partners maintained physical contact, however minimal.
Similar to traditional tribal dance, these non-contact dances could also be performed solo.
At first, these were invariably linked to a recording with simple dance instructions, most famously Chubby Checker's the Twist.
Following in it's wake, the Stomp was just one of a plethora of dance crazes including the Mashed-Potato, the Swim, the Monkey and the Batusi, as performed on television by Batman and based on the Watusi.
In November 1963, Australian recording artist Little Pattie had a top 2 hit with He's My Blonde Headed, Stompie Wompie, Real Gone Surfer Boy backed with Stompin' at Maroubra.
Following the negative publicity following a Stomp (at Avalon?) several Sydney councils rejected applications for similar events citing potential damage to their building's foundations.

By the mid-1960s, social dancing broke free from any sense of order, the only rule requiring the dancers to avoid collisions, and became a virtually unregulated form of self-expression.
Some attributed this trend to the popularity of more sophisticated dance music, others suggested the increasing use of psychotropic intoxicants.
At the time, some historians of the art noted the influence of Isodora Duncan, who imagined she had traced dance to its roots as a sacred art.
Her life was depicted in the 1968 film Isadora starring Vanessa Redgrave.

The requirement for dancers to avoid collisions was overturned around 1980 with the development of moshing or slam dancing.

Also see:
ABC: 'The Stomp' dance banned to protect buildings (1963)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZF-NVQZ034
Clint: Sixties City- Dances
https://sixtiescity.net/Culture/dance.htm
Corky Carroll: The Stomp
OCR, 2014.

The selection of World Surf photographs features Hawaii's Lani Kealoha at Sunset Beach, huge waves at Sydney's Bronte Beach, and a rare water-shot at The Pass, Byron Bay.

On page 37, an article titled Manly Pioneers Surfing followed a request in the June issue for information on the history of body surfing in Australia by Doug Grainger of Terrigal.

Claiming that surfing started in Victoria, Doug's letter nearly caused a riot prompting a well documented reply from Vivienne Mclnnes of Newtown, Sydney, essentially based on C.B. Maxwell's Surf, published in 1949.

Also in this edition:
Bob Evans: The Bombora, Surfing World, Volume 2 Number 6, August, 1963.

In addition, there are several shots from Surfing World, Volume 3 Number 2, October, 1963.

Page 25

Burleigh Heads

S.W. Editor Bob Evans recalls the days when 500 N.S.W. surfers invaded the border beaches
and voted Burleigh Heads Number One.
Photos by "Wheels" Williams
Story by Bob Evans

What a fabulous time we had on that first trip to Queensland for the Australian Surf Championships in April '48.
Those were the wonderful days when almost every able-bodied youngster was a proud member of a life saving club and it was a privilege indeed.
Looking back on that surfing era it's hard to explain the anticipation of almost every club member to see if he was selected in the club team.
The club spirit and the great feeling between members was an indefinable manly quality that perhaps has slipped a bit.
But let's get back to that riotous trip.

The Gold Coast as a holiday resort was just beginning to really swing and the thought that 500 N.S.W. surfers were going to make that dreadful night and day train trip in box carriages didn't faze anybody.
Conditions on that train were the living end, but some of the acts and pranks that were played between rival clubs are now legendary, and to say the least I don't know anybody that didn't have a good time one way or another.

As usual Queensland had been suffering from a seasonal cyclone and the last 100 miles of our train journey was mostly over rail tracks which were under water.
The road from Murwillumbah, our disembarking point, to Tweed Heads was mostly flooded and the dozens of buses filled with surfers sent up great sheets of spray as they drove all the way along the banks of the swollen Tweed River.

We crossed the border into Queensland and turned in toward Greenmount Beach.
I will never forget my first sight of the beach, the surf was ten to twelve feet, breaking 200 yards outside Snapper Rocks and lining up over a mile deep all the way across Rainbow Bay and into Greenmount.
Without doubt the best I have ever seen at Greenmount in dozens of trips.

Surf-ski riders, body riders, and hollow board riders virtually went out of their heads for our four-day stay.
From Greenmount to Southport there were only two beaches from which it was possible to get out from.
One was Currumbin, where magnificent 14 to 15 foot waves rolled in towards the creek mouth in spectacu-

Page 26

lar smooth lines, and the other was Burleigh Heads.
What waves they were at Burleigh.
Lining up from the far point, really big waves with a hefty throwing crest leapt clear of the sea until they bounced off the oily face of the swell fifteen or so feet from nearer the trough.

It was Easter holiday time and the place was teeming with holiday makers who got their full measure of thrills as the Manly surfboat captained by famous sweep Frank Davis slipped into several mountains for a gripping mixture of wipe-outs and successful rides.
The local Burleigh boat was also out performing and so were several of the top boardmen of that time.

One particular ride I remember was by John Windshuttle, who took a big wave turned his 14 foot, 70-pound board left started to slide and in the convex top of the wave, his board broke out of the swell and he free fell about 10 feet.

Today they would have been considered strictly gun board material.

Subsequent to that memorable trip, we never caught Burleigh in such action until 1961 when at about 4 feet in May it was small, hollow and very fast with nearly every wipe-out meaning a smashed board.
The shots you see here now are of fairly similar conditions, just a little larger but with the same drastic results for loose boards.

A top competitor in the '48 titles "Bluey" Mayes
swings through a traditional bottom turn on a glassy Burleigh Heads seven-footer.

Page 31

THE STOMP

Australian surfers returning from Hawaii have introduced a surfing dance craze
that has swept the country with its avante garde beat.

The biggest thing to hit the dance floors since the introduction of the Twist is most certainly the Stomp.
As a dance it is the acme of simplicity, necessitating very few basic step motions, but needing, man, lots and lots of animal energy.
It's a hearty kind of dance, slightly humorous in its action, very, very rhythmic and a "gas" way of warming up on a winter night and what's more, they use girls as partners.

What more could you want from a dance, but a solid beat, guitars, driving, gasping baritone, sax solos, drums and amplified bass plus the usual variety of supporting avant-garde type instruments to support the beat with unlimited new sounds.
Believe me the guitar is the heart and soul of a stomp band.

The Beach Boys
pictured aboard a crazy surfing jalopy.

The dance was introduced to Australia by Sydney surfers returning from Hawaii and U.S.A. and at its introduction at the Avalon Surf Club its sensational acceptance has so over-packed the club Saturday Dance that its success has almost proved an embarrassment.

Paralleling the success of the Stomp and of course providing the incentive are a host of new L.P. recordings of new type sounds, known and accepted far and wide as surf music.
Currently numbered in hit parades throughout the world and revelling in such names as Moon-dawg, The Gremmie, Pipeline, Surfer Joe, Wipe-out and countless others the shapely wave of surf songs and sounds is riding a crest of popularity which looks like running a long way before it hits the rocks.

Page 32

The World of Surf

Hawaii: Lani Kealoha screams down this sunset boomer in October '62.

Page 33

Byron Bay: Ross "Willie" Ovington hangs five with ease at Byron Bay.

Bronte: With its pounding waves presents a formidable target for the brave.

Palm Beach Surf Life Saving Boat Cabbage Tree 1,
Fairy Bower, 27th March, 1966.
Captain : John Windshuttle

Brawley, page 148.

The boat was destroyed two waves later,
and an inquiry was held by the club into the actions of the crew.

**Surfing World, Volume 3 Number 2, October, 1963. Denny Keyo, North** Narrabeen.	*Photographs of North Narrabeen shot in the last week of August, 1963.* *Maroubra's Wayne Burton,* *North* Narrabeen.
*Russell Hughes, North Narrabeen.* Kevin Brennan, a natural goofy-foot, switches feet, Bondi.

Surfing World
Volume 2 Number 6
August, 1963.

Also from this edition:
Bob Evans: The Bombora

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