A Golden Age: Some of the Lesser-Known Pictures

Co-Founder, Tracks Magazine

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Angourie #2 – 1970 A slightly wider shot tells you more about what a fine wave Angourie is in a good easterly swell. Photo: Witzig

Angourie – c. 1972 There were a few suggestions as to who this kid was, but it doesn’t matter. As one of my friends said, you can’t see anyone in the lineup. That wasn’t actually the case very often, even in the very early 1970s. Photo: Witzig

Baddy and Owl – 1978 A candid picture of Baddy Treloar and Owl Chapman while the Coke contest was on in Sydney. I can’t say that I paid any attention to this picture at the time, but now I think it’s pretty good. Photo: Witzig

Blacks – 1976 A couple of snapshots of an early morning surf run to Blacks north of San Diego. I was staying in Encinitas with Garth Murphy and the kids were the sons of friends of his as I remember. Photo: Witzig

Another one from that morning at Blacks. Photo: Witzig

Byron sign – 1970 I ran this picture with a story in Tracks in the very early 1970s and it fitted the anti-authority ethos of that publication pretty well (not that too many of our readers understood Latin). Photo: Witzig

A run-in picture at Cactus – 1971 I’m sure that some of my friends got sick of me sticking a camera in their faces. I was pretty relentless in documenting life around me. This mucking-about picture was taken in the spectacular dunes at Cactus in South Australia after we’d shot an ad for O’Neill wetsuits. Work and play were inextricably mixed up together. Photo: Witzig

Garth and Russ – c. 1970 From the early 1960s, Byron Bay was a magnet for surfers wanting to get out of the city. There was good surf around there, and land was relatively inexpensive. Three of my friends had houses on a small spur of land just inland of the town – this is Garth Murphy and Russell Hughes at Garth’s place. Photo: Witzig

The opening of Neverland – c. 1972 Friends opened a shop in the main street of Byron Bay selling clothes that they made. This was either late 1972 or early ’73, and music for the launch was provided by Garth Murphy, John Adrian, Rusty Miller and Jimmy Sunshine. Photo: Witzig

Me and Nigel – 1971 I ran this picture very small in a Tracks story in March 1972, but it charms me now. Nigel Coates and I were driving across the country to Margaret River in my Kombi van. Photo: Witzig

Rolf and the farmer at Johanna – 1970 The finals of the World Championships in Victoria were moved from Bells Beach because of the lack of surf. Johanna was an idyllic dairy farming area. This was Rolf Aurness (who won the contest) with one of the locals. Photo: Witzig

When I was searching through my old pictures to make an initial select for A Golden Age that Rizzoli published earlier this year, I came across a bunch of pictures that’d slipped from my mind or never been there in the first place. There were no wondrous discoveries unfortunately – more that I was reacquainted with pictures that’d been published some 40 years before, or noticed others that I hadn’t seen the significance of. That was pretty nice actually.

To see more photos from John Witzig’s A Golden Age: Surfing’s Revolutionary 1960s and ’70, click here

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A Golden Age: Some of the Lesser-Known Pictures

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