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Clip description
As a bigger swell hits Noosa Heads in the winter of 1966, Nat Young, Bob McTavish and George Greenough try out their new boards, getting playful on the waves.
Curator’s notes
This idyllic footage from the winter of 1966 shows how good Nat Young had become, just before he went to the US to win the World Championships. Bob McTavish, 45 years later, described this footage as about as good as longboard riding could get. The playfulness with which these three innovators perform tricks for the camera gives a good sense of how complete was their mastery of these boards and conditions.
When this film was shot, surfing had already become a lifestyle, not simply a sport. The combination of elements here – the music, the light, the gracefulness of the technique, and the final narration – are all about giving a sense of the desirability of that lifestyle. McTavish was living a precarious existence at the time, shaping boards on the Sunshine Coast, trying anything he could think of to get more power, speed and manoeuvrability. Bob Evans was older and more entrenched in the business world. He was a lingerie salesman, then an insurance salesman, while making his first surfing films in the late 1950s and early ‘60s. By 1966, he was Australia’s first surfing entrepreneur, publisher of Surfing World magazine, as well as a leading filmmaker.
In a sense, what we see here is actually the marketing of a lifestyle, even if that lifestyle was ostensibly against the idea of marketing. There has always been a tension in surfing between commerce and art. There is no question that what Nat Young is able to do on these waves is a form of artistic expression, not just a physical one. American surfers were not riding like this in 1966. Young is trying to use the full face of the wave, but with elegance and drive in his style. McTavish and Greenough were trying to invent the boards that would allow them all to do that.
No-one was doing it solely for the money. Indeed, McTavish was not paid to appear in this film. There was a trade-off. Bob Evans made them famous, and that helped McTavish to sell the surfboard designs he was creating. It would also have helped Nat Young to arrange the sponsorships and support he needed to go to the World Championships in San Diego. For Bob Evans, the returns on the film would allow him to make another film the next year. This was before the era of professionalism had begun in surfing.
