Balsa Big Guns

Date1963

Object numberANMS1078[048]

NamePhotograph

MediumPhotograph on paper

DimensionsOverall: 404 × 300 mm

ClassificationsPhotographs

Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Dawn and Jack Eden

Terms

DescriptionA black and white photograph by Jack Eden titled Balsa Big Guns. It shows surfers Scott Dillion and Ron 'Baba Looney' Graham standing on a grassy patch holding a balsa wood longboard each. Scott Dillon began making longboards at Brookvale near Sydney in 1961. His first boards were solid Malibu-style and made of balsa wood which preceded foam boards. 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 female 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 protégé Nat Young, and Phyllis O’Donnell, 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 around 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.