Duke
Kahanamoku : Foreword to The Surfrider, 1965.
Extract from
Pollard, Jack
(compileror):
The
Australian Surfrider - The Complete Book on Board and
Body Surfing.
K.G.Murray
Publishing Co.P/L,142 Clarence Street ,
Sydney
Australia 1963.
Introduction
First
published in November 1963, The Australian
Surfrider - The Complete Book on Board and Body
Surfing, was a compilation of articles
covering surfboards, body surfing, surfskis, and
surfboats.
Duke Kahanamoku contributed a brief foreward under the
subtitle "first man to ride a surfboard in
Australia."
In the text, he slightly modififed that
claim to "I had the honour of making the first demonstration
of surfboard
riding in Australia."
- Pollard: The Austrailian
Surfrider (1963) page 7.
In December 1965, a
Third Impression was published, retitled
The Surfrider - The
Complete Book on Board and
Body Surfing,
There were some
slight additions to the text and a
significant number of the
photographs are different, for
example the cover
photograph of Dee Why Point was replaced
with one of Sunset Beach, Oahu.
Duke's Foreward was substantially
revised with more detailed recollections
of his visit in the summer of 1914-1915.
There was also a change in the
accompanying portrait.
Some of Duke's recollections are
probably modified by time and and
circumstance, for example "I gave my board to the most promising of the
local riders ... Claude West."
West certainly had the board for a long time and in donating
it to the Freshwater SLSC he firmly established his connection
to the board.
In 1915, West was ...
Certainly the claim "it was known as
the Sport of (the Hawai'ian) Kings, since they were the only
ones permitted to surf," is incorrect, if not a gross
mis-representation.
