It should have come as no great surprise when Gold Coast surfing legend and 1978 world champion Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew was announced as the Labor candidate for the state seat of Burleigh last Sunday.
My old mate Bugs was born to rule. I’m just not quite sure how he’ll go sitting on the back bench, so I hope that our surf-loving premier – assuming that she gets back in – has a grander plan in mind. Minister for Surfing, perhaps? Sorry Mick de Brenni, but how many world titles have you won?
You could dismiss this as idle speculation, of course, but Bugs, now 65, has a pretty good chance of winning the seat, which requires a bit more than half a percent swing. I don’t know much about the sitting LNP member Michael Hart, but Burleigh was a Labor stronghold until 2012, and Rabbit Bartholomew is a Gold Coast sporting legend.
As my surf writer colleague Tim Baker pointed out on social media this week, the LNP is no doubt digging deep in search of mud to sling at the bunny, but they won’t find much, other than the fact that he is and always was one of surfing’s most loveable larrikins, and one of its greatest advocates and leaders.
Rabbit had just emerged as one of the “Coolie Kids”, setting the pace for Australian surfing alongside Michael Peterson and Peter Townend, when I first met him at the Bells Beach Rip Curl Pro in 1975. We got along like a house on fire, and on the long drive back to Queensland, Rabbit, his Burleigh buddy Guy Ormerod (now a pastor) and driver the late Keith Paull came to stay with Steve Cooney and me at our rented house in Whale Beach, Sydney.
Rabbit spent most of that time explaining to me that Keith’s increasingly weird behavior (like sitting in the shower drinking my entire collection of Brem Bali rice wine) was not meant to be offensive. He was a young man of uncommon commonsense, but the following year I convinced him that it would be a good career move to be photographed surfing nude for the cover of Tracks, Australia’s leading surfing magazine. It was just a laugh, but Rab’s mum Betty didn’t forgive me for 30 years.
And a bit of near-full frontal exposure didn’t stop him from becoming the rock star of surfing and its third world pro champion.
When Rabbit’s spectacular pro surfing career came to an end, he moved into surfing administration, and headed up the Association of Surfing Professionals through some of its most progressive and turbulent years. Always a big picture kind of guy, Bugs managed to surround himself with able and loyal lieutenants, but when it came to inspiring the troops, there was never anyone better at it than Rabbit Bartholomew.
Rabbit has never lost that ability – last seen by this writer at the Global Wave Conference on the Gold Coast in February – and although seen in the water less frequently these days, he can still run rings around most surfers half his age. A doting dad, a loyal friend, a born leader, I think he would be an asset to the Queensland Parliament, and I hope he gets the chance to prove it come October. Golden Daze
Annie Grossman, of Annie’s Books in Peregian Beach, knows a lot about literature and a lot about bookselling, but not so much about surfing, even though her shop has by far the best collection of surf books on the Sunshine Coast.
So, from time to time I become the beneficiary of the latest surf book to hit the shelves in return for reviewing it and mentioning Annie’s Books, Peregian Beach, as often as possible. In this case the book in question is a cherry-picked collection of surfer profiles by Sean Doherty called Golden Daze, a clever title of many meanings, if you were there.
Seano, Tim Baker and I have collectively written about 95 percent of the pantheon of Australian surf books, and I always look forward to new offerings from both my colleagues.
Yet another former editor of Tracks, Doherty first attracted attention as an author with his 2004 biography of Michael Peterson, MP. Nearing the end of a troubled life, Peterson opened up to Seano in a way he never had before. (The title of my first interview with him, 30 years earlier, was “I could say, but I won’t say”, and he didn’t.) Author Malcolm Knox liked Doherty’s book so much he turned it into fiction, but Seano got his own back when Knox later described MP as “the best book on Australian surfing yet written”.
Golden Daze won’t knock MP off that perch, but it is a great Covid read, a breezy collection of historical vignettes about many of surfing’s best-known names, and a few fascinating lesser lights. And it’s beautifully presented and features the photos of our best surfing archivists, including John Witzig and Peter Crawford.
