Surfing Hawaiian Redwood Boards at Lorne 1920

Rare footage of Victoria's first surfers in 1920 - “Surfing Hawaiian Redwood Boards at Lorne”

27 March 20

From Craig Baird at the Australian National Surfing Museum: “The museum is closed to the public (for a while) but we are still here digging through the archive and putting together pieces of the surfing heritage puzzle.
 “This vision is part of an exhibition called First Wave we had planned to launch in time for Easter, celebrating Victoria’s first surfers and the centenary of surfing in this state.
 “This footage from Lorne in the early 1920s showing the earliest surfing in Victoria. Wealthy Geelong sports enthusiast Louis Whyte travelled to Hawaii in 1919, spent six months learning to surf at Waikiki and bought four surfboards from Duke Kahanamoku before returning home to surf at Lorne and Anglesea. 
“The footage was recorded by Frank Beaurepaire (who would go on to become Lord Mayor of Melbourne) a world- class swimmer and good mate of Duke’s.
“We will be following this up with a video about creating and surfing a 9’ replica of one of the Hawaiian boards - and the story of the four boards and their history (all four still exist!)".

All four of these boards still exist.

With thanks to Craig Baird Australian National Surfing Museum and John Brasen / Pacific Longboarder