Australian Championships, Coolangatta

Date1966

Object numberANMS1078[089]

NamePhotograph

MediumPhotograph on paper

DimensionsOverall: 405 × 510 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Dawn and Jack Eden

Terms

DescriptionA black and white photograph by Jack Eden of three female surfers, including Gail Couper, at the Australian Surfing Championships held at Coolangatta in June 1966. There are a number of spectators surrounding them. The winner of the women’s division at the event was Gail Couper with Nat Young winning the men's. Gail Couper became an almost unbeatable force on the Australian surfing circuit in the 1960's and early 1970's and was the daugter of Stan Couper who was the preseident of the Australian Surfing Association. Gail Couper won 14 Victorian State Titles and won 10 Bells events every year from 1966, missing just once in 1969. She won her first Australian Title in 1966 with further victories in 1967, 1971, 1972 and 1975 and made the semi-finals of the World Championships in 1964, fourth two years later and the semi-finals again two years later. 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.