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Surfing. Today it's a worldwide
sensation, but who invented it? Where
did it come from? And how did it
ultimately end up the extreme sport
that is loved so dearly today in
Australia? Let's find out in today's
Aussie fact episode.

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Today, when you visit any beach with
decently sized waves, you're more
than likely to come across a surfer
or two. Since time immemorial, humans
have pitted themselves against the
oceans. We waded, we swam, and we
dove in the pursuit of food. We
learnt to build boats to get into
deeper water and catch bigger fish.
We crossed oceans in search of new
and unknown lands, and eventually we
worked out how to harness the ocean's
energy in conjunction with the
Earth's gravity in order to propel
ourselves atop a surfboard, perhaps
for no other reason than because we
could.

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So, who were the first surfers? While
we'll never know for sure who were
the first people to discover how to
ride waves, the earliest group of
people we know of doing just that
were the Polynesians. These seafaring
warrior people colonized many Pacific
islands over a period of about 2000
years. By 800 B.C., they had settled
in Samoa, moving to the Society
Islands between the years 1025 and
1120 A.D. and then onto islands like
New Zealand, Rapa Nui, and Hawaii,
between 1190 and 1290 A.D.

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In their continuous expansion, the
Polynesians had created large vessels
that harness the wind with two or
more sails, and it's not hard to
imagine they harnessed the energy of
waves when arriving at shore. At some
point, some imaginative Polynesian
innovator realized he or she could
trade the ship or even canoe for a
plank of wood and ride the waves
solo, maybe in their downtime, maybe
to impress onlookers. Who knows?

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What we do know is that when
Europeans first saw someone surfing,
the activity had already become a
deeply rooted custom throughout
Polynesia, maybe for hundreds or even
thousands of years. The first group
of Europeans came across the thriving
sport of surfing more than 250 years
ago, when the crew of a ship named
the Dolphin sailed to Tahiti. In the
following decades, other European
explorers shared this jaw dropping
experience of seeing men seamlessly
float on water, including the famous
Joseph Banks and Captain James Cook.

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Cook gave us the first written
account of surfing, albeit
posthumously, during his third and
final expedition to the Pacific with
his ships, the HMS Discovery and
Resolution in 1779. The expedition
had been sent to locate a Northwest
Passage around the American continent
and ended up discovering Hawaii,
where Cook was the first European to
begin formal contact with the
Hawaiians. In a nutshell, the locals
thought Cook and his crew to be gods
as they'd arrived during religious
celebrations. As you'd imagine, Cook
and the crew didn't want to spoil
things by correcting their welcoming
hosts, and they exploited the
Hawaiians goodwill for the following
month.

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After a crewman died exposing the
Europeans as mere mortals, relations
became strained. Cook and his men
left, but one of their boats was
damaged and they were forced to
return to the shore in Kealakekua
Bay, where they were met by men
hurling rocks, some of whom stole a
small vessel from the Discovery.
Negotiations for the boat's return
failed. Cook wanted to avoid
bloodshed, but one of his men fired a
shot that killed a Hawaiian chief,
leading to an enraged mob of
Hawaiians descending upon Cook and
his crewmen in ankle deep water as he
tried to retreat and stabbing and
stoning him and most of his men to
death.

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Fortunately, Lieutenant James King
survived and was made the First
Lieutenant of the Discovery, and
thus, given the task of finishing the
narrative portion of Cook's journals.
King wrote the following about
surfboard riding in Kealakekua Bay,
which is the earliest written account
of the sport.

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But a diversion the most common is
upon the water, where there is a very
great sea and surf breaking on the
shore. The men, sometimes 20 or 30,
go without the swell of the surf and
lay themselves flat upon an oval
piece of plank about their size and
breadth. They keep their legs close
on top of it, and their arms are used
to guide the plank.

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They wait the time of the greatest
swell that sets on shore and together
push forward with their arms to keep
on its top. It sends them in with the
most astonishing velocity, and the
great art is to guide the plank so,
as always, to keep it in a proper
direction on the top of the swell and
as it alters its direct. If the swell
drives him close to the rocks before
he has overtaken by its break, his
much praised.

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On first seeing this very dangerous
diversion. I did not conceive it
possible, but that some of the must
be dash to mummy against the sharp
rocks. But just before they reached
the shore, if they are very near,
they quit their plank and dive under
till the surf is broke.

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When the piece of plank is sent many
yards by the force of the surf from
the beach. The greatest number are
generally overtaken by the break of
the swell, the force which they
avoid, diving and swimming under the
water of its impulse. By such like
exercises, these men may be said to
be almost amphibious.

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The women could swim off to the ship
and continue half a day in the water
and afterwards return. The above
diversion is only intended as an
amusement, not a trial of skill, and
in a gentle swell that sets on, must,
I conceive, be very pleasant. At
least they seem to feel a great
pleasure in the motion, which this
exercise gives.

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Thus, the new commander of the
Discovery recorded the very first
account of Hawaiian surfing in the
ship's logs in 1779.

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Surfing wasn't a mere hobby, though.
In Tahitian culture, the chief of the
tribe was the man who was the best
surfer. In other words, the top dog
had to be the top wave rider of his
community, which says a lot about the
cultural importance of surfing.

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In Hawaii, surfing also has a rich
tradition where the ancient Hawaiians
considered surfing to be an integral
part of their lives. In order to
surf, you obviously had to have a
surfboard, the construction of which
was a spiritual process.

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Being a skilled surfer earns you more
than just bragging rights too, as you
also earned prestige and respect
within society. Over time, upper
class Hawaiians developed their
entire society around the sport of
surfing, for the next hundred years
or so, following Cook's death and
James's first written account of
surfing, the activity remained in
places like Hawaii, although it began
to receive more written attention.

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In the year 1866, nearly a 100 years
later, whilst on a trip to Hawaii as
a travel correspondent, famous author
Mark Twain wrote the following.

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In one place, we came upon a large
company of naked natives of both
sexes and all ages, amusing
themselves with the national pastime
of surf bathing. Each heathen would
paddle three or four hundred yards
out to sea, taking a shortboard with
him and then face the shore and wait
for a particularly prodigious billow
to come along. At the right moment,
he would fling his board upon its
foamy crest, and himself upon the
board, and here he would come
whizzing by like a bombshell. It did
not seem that a lightning express
train could shoot along at a more
hair-lifting speed. I tried surf
bathing once subsequently, but made a
failure of it. I got the board placed
right and at the right moment too,
but missed the connection myself. The
board struck the shore in three
quarters of a second without any
cargo, and I struck the bottom at
about the same time with a couple of
barrels of water in me. None, but the
natives, ever master the art of surf
bathing thoroughly.

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Note: words like 'natives' and
especially 'heathen' as descriptions
of indigenous people would today be
considered racist.

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Ultimately, it was unavoidable that
such an impressive extreme sport
would catch on like wildfire across
the globe. A man named James Mathias
Jordan Junior was the first Westerner
to take what he'd learnt from the
ancient ways of the Polynesians and
apply it to the waves crashing onto
the shores of the East Coast of the
U.S.

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In 1912, he climbed onto a redwood
surfboard at Virginia Beach, which
from then on became a main surfing
centre in the country. Word spread
fast and surfing jumped across to the
West Coast of the U.S. and then
across the rest of the world. From
this moment onwards, the sport of
surfing exploded across the globe as
people fell in love with the most
recent way of man taming the ocean.
With the public exposure, came thirst
for innovation as new boards were
designed for different purposes, and
so surfing culture began to develop.

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Australia, California and Hawaii
became the first surfing havens for
those wanting to pursue the new sport
and adopt the relaxed and carefree
lifestyle that came along with it. It
was in the 1960s when the surfing
culture really began to ramp up, and
this was due to the production of the
first surfing movies, as well as surf
music like that of the Beach Boys,
which garnered attention everywhere
in the world. As the surfing
lifestyle spread and surf breaks at
beaches began to team with board
riders, competitions began to pop up
and a professional surfing community
quickly emerged and took hold.

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Surfing culture has only continued to
grow up until the present, and there
are now heaps of surf beaches,
competitions and surf shops fuelled
by an entire subculture revolving
around the sport.

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So, how did surfing get to Australia?

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The general accepted story of how
surfing got to Australia is that a
Hawaiian named Duke Kahanamoku, was
the first person to bring surfing to
Australian shores. In 1915, Duke was
invited to Australia by swimming
officials after his impressive 100
metre freestyle gold medal
performance at the Stockholm Olympics
three years prior. Whilst Duke was
touring Australian beaches in order
to promote swimming carnivals, he
brought with him his longboard, more
than twice his height, as well as his
talents as a surfer, which he first
showed off for the public and press
alike at Freshwater Beach, near
Sydney in New South Wales.

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The Sydney Morning Herald reported
'Kahana Moko came out with his
surfboard, plunged into the water and
continued to swim out until those
watching from the beach wondered when
he would stop. After covering nearly
half a mile, Kahana Moko turned and
prepared for a roller, which came
along a moment after. He caught it.
And as the wave carried him
shorewards, he performed all kinds of
acrobatic feats on the board and
finally dived into the water as the
roller broke.

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His longboard can still be seen today
on display at the Freshwater Surf
Lifesaving Club in Sydney.

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This story has been retold so many
times, it's now generally accepted as
the first arrival of surfing to
Australia. However, the truth is that
historians dug up photos and news
articles of a man named Tommy Walker.
Now, Tommy Walker had appeared in
news stories showing off his talent
of riding waves into shore on his
surfboard, whilst doing a handstand
at Nambour Beach in the year 1911 or
1912, several years before Duke even
set foot in Australia.

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When, where and how surfing got to
Australia will likely never know for
sure. Whatever the case, by the early
1900s surfing had arrived Down Under
and made headlines in national
newspapers. People's curiosity was
now piqued at how someone could ride
a wave, and surfing culture in
Australia had begun. Surfboards of
all shapes and sizes, today, there's
dozens of surfboard designs the
Malibu, the 2+1, the mini tanker, the
Olo, the Alaia, the hybrid, the fish,
the fun board and the gun just to
name a few.

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Board styles can be largely separated
into two categories, though:
shortboards and longboards. The names
of which are pretty self-explanatory.

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Shortboards tend to be shorter and
more nimble rides for carving up
waves. Whereas longboards are longer
and sturdier boards for cruising
along at a slower pace.

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Board innovation was relatively slow
in the beginning, surfers mostly use
longboards like that of Duke, which
were long, thick planks of wood. It
was only in the 1950s that Malibu
surfboards were first brought to
Australia by a team of U.S.
lifeguards. They were named Malibu's
after the place Malibu, in
California, and the Malibu was a
narrower board with slightly pulled
in nose and tail sections that
improved manoeuvrability due to its
shorter shape.

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By the 1960s, the V-bottom surfboard
was invented by Australian surfboard
designer Bob McTavish, which was the
first instrumental step towards the
modern shortboard. Shortboards are
characterised by sharp, pointed nose
between two and five fins and are
usually around six to seven feet in
length.

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What they lack in buoyancy, they make
up for in manoeuvrability and speed,
and these are the ones you'll always
see in surf competitions.

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Australia's champions:
unsurprisingly, with all these
pristine beaches, with great surf
breaks and loads of kids growing up
with salt in their sun bleached hair,
Australia has produced numerous world
champion surfers, both male and
female. These champions include
surfers such as Wayne Bartholomew,
Tom Carroll, Barton Lynch, Damien
Hardman, Mark Occhilupo, Mick
Fanning, Joel Parkinson, Stephanie
Gilmore, Layne Beachley, Wendy Boffa,
and more.

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The World Surf League, the governing
body for professional surfers,
incorporates three major championship
titles held in Australia every year.
The Quiksilver Pro on the Gold Coast,
the Rip Curl Pro in Victoria, at
Bells Beach, and the Drug Aware
Margaret River Pro. Mick Fanning is
arguably Australia's most famous and
most successful surfers and has won
four titles at Bells Beach and been
ranked number one in the world
multiple times.

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More than just fun.

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Since surfing developed from being a
relaxed way of life to a mainstream
sport, its progression has led to
research on its health benefits,
which are numerous. It has numerous
physical benefits, including
cardiovascular fitness, muscular
strength and balanced development,
which come from the constant paddling
through the water, which develops arm
and back strength while
simultaneously increasing the heart
rate and whilst carving up waves on
top of your board. Surfing also gives
its participants a chance to think
and relax in an environment that
decreases stress and relaxes the
muscles.

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Today, there are approximately 2.5
million recreational surfers in
Australia, 420 annual surf
participants, 107 surf schools and
2.292 accredited surfing coaches. So,
over one in 10 Australians surf as a
recreational activity.

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So, there you go, guys. Hopefully
that's helped you understand a little
bit more about surfing history, where
it started, when it started and how
it got to Australia, as well as how
it developed into an amazing
subculture and an amazing sport in
Australia. If you guys get the chance
to come to Australia and learn how to
surf, I thoroughly recommend that you
give it a go. Anyway, guys, thanks so
much for joining me and I'll see you
in the next episode. Peace!