Images(2)

Bells Beach Easter Championships trophy

Date1972

Object number00054963

NameTrophy

MediumTimber, bronze

DimensionsOverall: 205 × 305 × 150 mm

ClassificationsCeremonial artefact

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Dawn and Jack Eden

Terms

DescriptionThe Bells Beach Easter Championships trophy consisting of a wooden stand holding a bronze bell. This 1972 trophy was awarded to Bob Pike for third place and features a metal plaque with inscribed text reading 'A.S.A Victoria Bells Beach Easter Championships 1972 Senior Men’s Division, 3rd'. Big wave surfer Australian Bob Pike won this iconic bell trophy for his performance in the 1972 competition. The name, Bell's Beach and the form, the bell, are potent symbols in Australian surfing folklore. The event has been held every year since 1962 and today is part of the professional circuit, sponsored by surf wear business Rip Curl.HistoryThe Bell's Beach surfing competition is today sponsored by the surfing company The Rip Curl Pro and in 2017 celebrates 56 years. Formerly the Bell's Beach Surf Classic it has been held in and around Torquay on the southern coast of Victoria since 1963. The site was known as a good surfing spot but access with heavy timber boards was difficult along a 45 minute walk through bushland. Surf mats were used and when shorter boards were popularised after the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games, the fame of Bell's Beach grew and in 1961 local surfers and Olympic wrestler Joe Sweeney hired a bulldozer to clear a road along the Bell's cliff. Sweeney charged surfers one pound to visit. The first surfing contest was held on the Australia Day weekend in January 1962, organised by surfers Vic Tantau and Peter Troy. The following year it was held at Easter, thereby opening it up to interstate competition. This makes it the longest-running professional surfing event in Australia and the world and one of Victoria's six 'Hallmark International Sporting Events'. The consistency and excellence of the surf saw Bells become the site of the world amateur board-riding championships in 1970 and, in the early 1970s, the first surfing reserve in the world. Now a fixture on the world professional circuit, the Rip Curl Pro is the second event on the 2017 World Surf League (WSL) World Tour. The event holds a very special place in surfing folklore, as the longest running world championship level contest on the World Tour, with the reward one of surfing's most treasured trophies - the Rip Curl Pro Bell. In the year 2000 it was listed as a site of historical significance by the Victorian branch of the National Trust. Bob Pike (Robert Hughes Pike 1940-1999) won third place in the Bell's Beach Classic in 1972. He is genrally regarded as Australia's first and one of its best big sea riders. He travelled to surfing's big-wave Mecca, Hawaii first in 1961, to the north shore of Oahu. 'I felt like I'd discovered where my umbilical cord was connected to,' Pike said of his introduction to the tropics. He featured in the surfing films Surfing Hollow Days (1962), Angry Sea (1963), and The Endless Summer (1966) exposing his 'driving big-wave style' to global surfing audiences. http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/pike-bob From Hawaii Pike was invited to compete in Peru where he went on to win the 'small-wave' competition. It was the first overseas win by an Australian. Bernard Midget Farrelly was to follow with his win at the Hawaiian Makaha championship in January 1963, the major global event of the era. Bob Pike surfed regularly at Sydney's northern beaches Long Reef, Dee Why, the Bower. He travelled to Hawaii in 1964 to compete in the Makaha championship in January. According to Jack Eden 'in a freak west swell at the treacherous Banzai Pipeline Pike was dumped by a wave of such force that his shoulder was pulled form its socket and some ribs were displodged from his spine. He was pulled from the water by a photographer Leroy Grannis.' Surfabout revisted collection nd. c1999. He continued big wave surfing. As the Australian surf industry blossomed from the mid-60s, Pike removed himself almost entirely from the commercial surf scene and worked as a fireman. He also married the sister of 1964 world champion Midget Farrelly. 'If nobody had ever heard of me,' Pike said in a 1998 interview with Australian Longboarding magazine, 'if no one had ever known if I'd surfed or not, it wouldn't have mattered one iota. I did it because I loved doing it.' The following year, the 59-year-old Pike killed himself by asphyxiation. A bronze plaque dedicated to Pike was installed at Manly Beach in 2000, with the inscription describing him as 'The first and greatest of Australia`s big-wave riders.' http://encyclopediaofsurfing.com/entries/pike-bobSignificanceThe Bell's Beach trophy recognises the significance of the Bell's Beach Surfing Classic (now the Rip Curl Pro Bell's Beach) on the professional world circuit - it is a bronze bell - for the Bell's Beach event - immediately recognisable in form as a holy grail, with the Victorian location as a mecca (to mix metaphors) in surfing circles.

Bob Pike (1940-1999) was a prominent big wave surfer who competed with success on the international circuit from the early 1960s until he was injured in 1997.