The Judges Bobby Brown Contest

Date1968

Object numberANMS1078[045]

NamePhotograph

MediumPhotograph on paper

DimensionsOverall: 305 × 405 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Dawn and Jack Eden

Terms

DescriptionA black and white photograph by Jack Eden of spectators watching the inaugural Bobby Brown surfing contest held at Cronulla Beach, New South Wales. Bobby Brown was a talented surfer from Cronulla, Sydney, who challenged Midget Farrelly's surfing supremacy in 1964. He beat Farrelly in the 1964 New South Wales Championship to take the title and in the same year was placed sixth in the inaugural World Surfing Championships held at Manly Beach. At age 18 Brown was the youngest finalist in the competition. He died at the age of 22 in a pub fight at Taren Point, Sydney. The following year the first Bobby Brown Memorial Surfboard Riding Championships was held at Cronulla Beach. Jack Eden started photographing surfing contests in 1958 and published many of them in Surfabout the magazine he published from 1962-1968. .HistoryThese photographs by photographer and publisher Jack Eden shows the many facets of surfing culture in Australia in the 1960s. It was a time of change with internationalisation of the sport on the one hand and the beginnings of what would become the relaxed ideal of the surfing surfari on the other - when surfers followed waves around the coastline, firstly for competition and then as a 'soul surfing' lifestyle. Eden's photographs show the surfers, largely male but also some of the females surfers, that he ascribed the title femlins in the idiom of the day. They also show spectators, media, judges, surfboard makers, entertainers - Little Pattie and the Statesmen, beachfronts, waves, land and sea scapes, along the coastline from Coolangatta in Queensland to Point Lonsdale in Victoria. The early 1960s saw the rise of Australian stars like Bernard Midget Farrelly, his early protege Nat Young, and Phyllis O'Donell, all of whom won their respective classes in the first world surfing titles held in Manly in 1964 that he documents from the beach, the water and the air. Many of his competition shots were published in his magazine surfabout and are energetic and exuberant but today it is those images of life aorund the surf 50 years ago that are compelling - surf and beachwear, the crowds, the personalities, the boards and the changes in the coastal sites themselves.SignificanceThis photograph is part of a collection of Jack Eden photographs documenting the explosion of surf culture in the decade from the late 1950s. He depicts surfers and their world in competition and at rest - capturing their sporting and social customs from the position of an insider, a chronicler of surfing culture. The photographs include male and female surfers in the waves and on the beach, and the crowds, cars, customs, dating, bathing and baking rituals at events and chasing adventure along the coast.