Albert Falzon’s landmark 1972 surf film Morning of the Earth still stands the test of time, almost half a century on. It’s all wonderful stuff, but for me, and I’m sure for a great many surfers, there are two stand-out moments.
The first is 28-year-old big wave rider Rusty Miller and 14-year-old Narrabeen grommet Stephen Cooney standing on the low tide reef at Uluwatu, waiting for a break in the mountainous sets so that they can paddle out and surf the iconic left for the first time. (Well, first time for the cameras, anyway.) The second is a rough-headed ranga seen sanding the rails of a new board outside a north coast farmhouse, then running down the familiar track to Angourie Point to rip the bag out of those bowling rights to the rocking soundtrack of John J Francis’s “Simple Ben”. Who among us hasn’t run down a track to the surf mind-singing those great lyrics, “Just give me sunshine through the autumn, sweet snow to the spring / Corn by the water of an old mill stream, and you give me all, you give me all.”
Well, the real Simple Ben ran down that track to the point last Thursday and never came back. David “Baddy” Treloar, 67, suffered a massive heart attack while surfing the break he had dominated for longer than anyone, and couldn’t be revived. The surfing world lost a man who could have been a world champion but was such a revered figure because he chose a different path in life, the peaceful one that runs by the old mill stream, in fact.
Baddy was a city kid from Manly, and when Albe filmed that famous sequence in the autumn of 1971, he’d only just discovered Angourie country soul after a stint shaping on the Gold Coast with the Brothers Neilsen. But country soul was to become his life, and although he continued to compete selectively through the 1970s, his heart wasn’t really in it. He’d given it to Angourie.
I first met Baddy in the late ‘60s when he thrashed my sorry butt in the heats of the NSW Schoolboys at North Steyne. Although by then we were on prototype trackers, he brought to shortboard surfing the style and grace of a Midget Farrelly or a Ted Spencer, both big influences on him, even though he had the imposing build of a Nat Young. I loved his relaxed style, but he was a ferocious competitor.
That ferocity had all but disappeared when I got to know him at Angourie in the mid-‘70s. He sat up the point a bit and waited for sets, letting the wide ones roll through for the pack inside. But when Baddy paddled in, he owned the wave with the kind of authority that only comes with complete confidence in your ability.
My friend John Witzig was studying architecture and had built an interesting minimalist bush shack about 200 metres back from the point. Whenever I came to stay we’d surf the point with Baddy and a crew of new residents who’d come from the Warilla/Shellharbour area south of Wollongong, guys I’d grown up surfing with. Those sessions were so much fun, long before localism. I remember a couple of times Baddy turning up at the shack at sunset with a six-pack and a couple of good-sized fish he’d caught off the rocks at Spooky. Fishing was a passion and in later years it became his profession.
Although they’re fuzzy now, after decades of only very occasional contact, I have only good memories of Baddy Treloar, and as I flipped through the social media threads in the hours and days after his passing, I found that in this I was not alone. He was a much-loved figure, not just in Angourie but wherever he surfed and travelled.
And I bet in that tough little surf town he called home, the tears and the stories are still flowing. Vale Baddy Treloar, who actually lived the life we all once aspired to.
Kanga hops into Annie’s
Another iconic figure from Australian surfing in the 1970s will be in town on Saturday. Ian “Kanga” Cairns went on to become a polarizing figure in the administration of world tour surfing (he founded the Association of Surfing Professionals in 1982), but surfers of a certain age will remember him most for his no-holds-barred attack on the biggest, meanest waves he could find. The Kanga snap at big Sunset defied gravity, and logic.
A skinny kid who grew up surfing waves of consequence at Margaret River, Kanga became a big, imposing man, absolutely fearless in and out of the surf, and with a deserved reputation for not suffering fools gladly. Needless to say, when he was arguably the best surfer in the world to never win a world title, and I was fooling around as the editor of surf mag Tracks, he did not suffer me gladly.
But we’re mates now, and he and co-author Wayne Patrick Murphy allowed me a preview of the second volume of “Kanga – the Trials and Triumphs of Ian Cairns”, the book he’ll be signing at Annie’s Books in Peregian this Saturday between 10am and noon. It’s a great book and Kanga doesn’t hold back – I cop a couple of well-deserved jabs here and there, but it’s not an exclusive club, I can tell you.
Kanga and Murph are great surfers and great blokes, and this second collaboration is well worth a read. Plus Kanga’s lived in California for decades, and Murph in Ireland, so they’ve come a long way for this. Make them feel welcome.
