Farewell Martin Tullemans

1st December - 2020

I was deeply saddened today to hear the news of the passing of fabled Queensland surfing photographer, Martin Tullemans.

I’ve know Marty Tullemans since 1971. That was the same year I was shooting my first 16mm surf movie ‘In Natural Flow’ on the Gold Coast. Earlier in that very same year, I had struck up the beginning a life-long friendship with Peter ‘PT’ Townend. PT and I had frequently spotted Marty perched on the rocks at either Kirra, Rainbow or Snapper, feverishly snapping away with his slightly under-powered Takumar 500mm telephoto lens. One sunny day, we both walked up and introduced ourselves to Marty – and that was where another long friendship took off like a Space-X rocket. It was dear Marty who wrote the review for my second movie ‘Ocean Rhythms’ for Tracks Magazine in November 1975. Marty attended a screening at the old Alhambra Theatre in Stones Corner in Brisbane, which, back in the day, was the flea house where we screened all the surf movies. Marty was originally a Brisbane boy from Indooroopilly.

Two of Marty's most exemplary Tracks Magazine covers.

Marty was from the era of emulsion, read: 35mm film. Black and White negatives or colour slides. That was his medium - that's what he shot. He never crossed the digital divide to emerge into the deep world of computative photography. Yes, he was old school, but this also lent his work, at best, to an inordinate richness of purity. A freelancer and self-taught, there was no motif he would draw on, no wave set line-up he could not adapt to, and above all, no fear of failure. Always short of a dollar, it bred in him a case hardened adaptability. Martin’s photos were admirably received by surf magazine photo editors and readers alike. To me, two of Marty’s most enduring shots each earned the front covers of Tracks Magazine. These two cover shots here, firmly affix PT and myself to Marty now for eternity. By a small freak of nature I happened to be in the foreground of one of those shots.

Martin Tullemans

Marty snagged the cover of Tracks Magazine with his shot of Butch Cooney competing in the ‘74 Australian Titles at Burleigh Heads. With me in the foreground shooting with a 16mm movie perspex housing. Marty’s second Tracks cover is of Peter Townend in 1976, soul arching into the Coolangatta Beach shore-break. Taken from the Kirra groyne and capturing PT in a religious moment of ascension. Martin also captured a staggeringly good representation of Gold Coast surfing during his period of continuous shutter high. Crisp work which brought on none of the catcalls from the Sydney, Northside-based surf media of the time – who would normally decanter such work from outer fringe dwellers like us. He shunned mainstream commercialism and that would eventually lead to become the hallmark of his work. He produced a large body of work over his time. His photos were never high-end art, or all that surfing photography can give, but they were never disagreeable either. Marty concentrated on the Gold Coast, strictly on his own terms, and eventually becoming one of its senior social photographic record keepers. (for the time).

Marty's awesome Burleigh Heads image of
Butch Cooney and me, also made the cover of
Albie Thoms Australian book: Surf Movies

Slightly nomadic, he grew up with home being everywhere. He once coerced Michael Peterson, a friend and confident, into a series of posed man and board portraits. With stunning results. Guided by Marty taking the photos and MP, two kinda pushy personalities eager to make their mark in surfing. The images had an under current of non commercialism to them. Some say it was some of Marty's best portrait work. Marty, thank you for your contributions and your devotion to surfing and for being a small part of my humble life. Like the azure sea, and the blond beaches of southern Queensland you and your legacy of majestic images will always surround us, immersed with rich movement and glittering with crystalline light. May your spirit surf on my old friend.

Steve

The Richo books have arrived...

Cleared through Customs yesterday, the Richo books have arrived in country. 

Richo now has two big jobs to tick off before his book launch appearance in Cronulla at the Cronulla RSL on Tuesday 30th October.

Hot off the press - Richo taking delivery of the first print run of 
books and begins signing all the pre-ordered books

Job 1] Currently Author Rob Reynolds has Richo working feverishly on unpaid overtime signing copies of books for the big mailout which begins today. Reviewers and the mainstream surf media get their copies too.

Job 2] After a couple of weeks of hardcore surf training, Richo leaves home this weekend for the Azores to compete in the WSL World Grand Masters Titles which is set to run September 18-23, on the Atlantic shores of São Miguel, Azores.

Just two more things to add to his list of a lifetime of surf stories to talk about at the Richo Book Launch Tour, check the list [below] for a date and location nearest you.

Books are $30.00 + shipping and are available direct only at the moment from the Richo Surf Shop link below or from the Road Trip signings. CLICK HERE to purchase.

Richo to launch his book in Cronulla

1st September - 2018

Terry Richardson Book Launch - Cronulla.

I'm proud to announce that we in Cronulla are going to see and hear Terry 'Richo' Richardson talk about his new book after he returns from the WSL World Grand Masters Titles which is set to run September 18-23, 2018 on the Atlantic shores of São Miguel, Azores.

Richo’s career as a competitive surfer and professional shaper spans 50-years. From Michael Peterson to Kelly Slater, from single-fins to computerised shaping, from Aussie Pipe to Banzai, Richo has held his own. 

From the very start of pro surfing in 1976 to this year’s WSL World Masters Professional Surfing championship, Richo has surfed the eye of the cyclone.

He charged Hawaiian waves bigger than houses as a 17-year-old, redefined tube-riding at South Coast Pipe, and battled the ravenous pro circuit for 16-years.

Richo in a full-wrap cutback at Torpedo Tubes
screen-cut from my '75 film 'Ocean Rhythms'

Richo remains one of an elite band of surfer shapers who have surfed at the highest level and banked a lifetime of shaping experience, while remaining enduringly competitive.

On the night, the MC will be the book's author Rob Reynolds. There will be video on the big screen, chats with Richo, Q&As from the audience, book sales & signing and photo ops - so bring along your photographic device of choice.

WHERE: Cronulla RSL, Sunroom
WHEN: Tuesday 30th October, 2018
TIME: 6:00pm mingle for 7:00pm start

Cronulla's Battle of the Reefs - September 2018

To promote the up-coming inter-club, annual battle next month between Cronulla Point Boardriders and rival Cronulla Peninsular club, Sandshoes Boardriders - Leader newspaper senior staff photographer & resident, in-house surf guru, John Veage penned this up for the sports page edition of this week's St George & Sutherland Shire Leader.

Screencut from the e-edition of the StGeorge & Sutherland Shire Leader
22 August 2018

The contest is set to go down on Saturday 15th September, 2018.

Nice work as always JV - stoked - thank you

My Tribute to Glynn Ritchie

My Tribute to Glynn Ritchie

Some sad news emerging earlier this week with the reported passing of surf pioneer and shaper, Glynn Ritchie. I worked with Glynn back in 1968 when I was 18-years old. In 1968 I was assigned to work at Peter Clarke Surfboards' newly created Brookvale factory as finish coater & pinliner.

'68 Australian Surfing Champion, Keith Paull and Glynn Ritchie were our resident shapers. Bob Newland 'the yank' was our glasser and occasionally Ross Longbottom ventured across the bridge to glass a few. Keith and I were the shoo-ins, as we were south-siders. Keith moved over to permanently reside on the northside at Cromer, but I chose to commute from Cronulla every work day to Brookvale.

Peter Clarke Surfboards Advertisement

When the surf was on, we'd quickly down tools in the factory and Glynn would often take us surfing down to his beloved Manly and Fairy Bower. We would throw our boards into the back of his hotted-up Holden ute brimming with over-sized tyres. 

Glynn, who had a great sense of humour, would be laughing his head off with sheer delight as he floored it and we four-wheel drifted around corners in the back streets of Harbord along the way. Pinning us to the side of the vehicle with a positive 8 g-force, meanwhile, we'd all be hanging on for grim death.

Not only did he push the performance limits on the road, he pushed them in the surf as well. Glynn was considered the doyen of Manly's big wave location; Fairy Bower, matching style and abilities with regular performers out there like world champions Nat Young and Midget Farrelly.

Glynn won the inaugural Bells Beach Contest in 1962. But he never got to ring the bell, the iconic Bell trophy had not yet been created then. In 2011, a half a century after Glynn's Bells victory, Rip Curl invited Glynn down to Torquay to join in with other past champions celebrating fifty unbroken years of the event.

Glynn Ritchie, second from the right

At that Bells gathering in 2011, Glynn told ABC-TV: "Look where surfing has come, and no-one would have thought in our days that it would have ever, ever, ever come to this, heh? You just never. It's mind-blowing how it's turned out. 'Cause we got told that there would be no money in surfing and we must stop wagging school because, we had to get a job."

Victorian surf trailblazers and surf entrepreneurs Peter Troy and Vic Tantau who had joined forces to make surfboards together in Torquay and Melbourne's suburban Moorabbin, created the first Bells Beach surf event by placing an advertisement in the second edition of Australian Surfrider Magazine in 1961. That ad invited entries for "the first surfboard rally to be held in Victoria".

For a mere two shillings competitor's entry fee [twenty-cents], surfers were urged to compete for trophies in both junior and open divisions. There was no mention of the one-pound [two dollars] prize for the wave of the day, or the illegally gained pig that would be ceremoniously barbecued at Bells Beach after the contest.

Advertised for New Year's Eve 1961 but held on Australia Day in 1962, Glynn Ritchie was an accidental competitor in the rally. The Manly teenager had come to Victoria with his aunt Ethel for a holiday, and been spotted by self-appointed 'talent scout' Peter Troy when Glynn was surfing on the softer, rambling beach breaks in front of the Torquay surf club.

"We've got a much better place around the corner," Troy told him.
Ritchie is acknowledged as the stand-out surfer at the first rally but his contribution to the event extends well beyond his efforts in the junior and open divisions.

I've seen a photo of the finalists for that '62 event lined up on the sand at Bells, dwarfed by the scale of the Bell's sea cliffs and they are all wearing boardshorts. 

The photograph confirms that surfers in those days were very hearty indeed.
Glynn was a well traveled surfer in those early pioneer days, and was the perfect advocate for surfing's growing popularity, frequently making surf safaris up and down the coast to surf and explore new and unknown locations.

Upon his return to Manly, Ritchie encouraged his fellow surfers and beach mates to make the Victorian journey the following year, when the Bells contest was held over the Easter long weekend for the first time.

Glynn was very well respected in Sydney's northside surf community where everyone loved him. I have fantastic memories of those days working and surfing with Glynn that I will cherish forever. I'm certain that Glynn will be ringing the bell with one hand out the window as he four-wheel drifts his way into to the big adventure surf land in the sky.


© Steve Core - 2017

Peter Townend: Why Midget Mattered

by Peter Townend
Monday, August 8, 2016 - re-posted from WSL

It's hard to put into words the impact Bernard 'Midget' Farrelly had on the surfing world, but he was certainly responsible for making Australia one of surfing's great superpowers.

In the early 1960s the World Championship Tour didn't exist, but the Makaha International did. From 1954 onwards, the annual winter event was held on Oahu's west side. That's where world champions were crowned in those early days. The event was steeped in Hawaiian style, with 24-man heats narrowing the field down through the hundreds of entries. 

The vast majority of competitors were local Hawaiians or Californian transplants. In the broad stream media, surfing's first boom was underway with the Gidget craze in America, and Hawaii was still considered the edge of the surfing universe.


 

Midget Farrelly came of age riding traditional longboards, but he remained a key player Down Under during the shortboard revolution with his evolutionary performances.

It was in this environment, in late 1962, that a young Midget Farrelly arrived in Hawaii with a few friends from Australia to give the Makaha competition a go.

When he won the Hawaiian event early in 1963, he quickly became Australia's first face of surfing. Midget's success was a pivotal step in importation of the surfing boom Down Under. Thanks to Midget, Australians would host their own elite tour event as early as 1964.

Groms like myself who grew up in Australia in the '60s were all diehard readers of his column in the Sunday paper. And we were rabid fans of the Farrelly Surf Show on ABC. I can still vividly remember huddling around the one TV set in the house to watch his latest adventures, which included safaris around the world. And, naturally, I had his book, The Surfing Life.

Midget Farrelly and Peter Townend talking 

design at Bells Beach in 1974. - WSL 

The first time I crossed paths with Midget I was at my home beach in Greenmount Point in 1970. The Australian Titles were being held and I had made the Queensland team for the first time. I was able to mingle firsthand with all the top surfers, a starry-eyed grommet just soaking it in.

Our Queensland local hero Peter Drouyn (now known as Westerly Windina) won over Midget, Nat Young, Ted Spencer and Keith Paull. That same year, after Midget ran second to Rolf Aurness at the Bells Beach World Titles, a picture came out in Witzig's Surf Magazine. The image showed speed, rhythm and style. Back then, style mattered. I was a 16-year-old Coolangatta teen, inspired.


 

Midget's performance at Makaha in early 1963 helped propel Australian surfing 

into its future as a dominant force on the international scene. - WSL

During the '73 North Shore Winter season, Midget turned up in Hawaii for the first time in years. He invited me to go over to Makaha with him for a surf. It was my first time on the west side. It was a perfect little offshore day, and of course Midget was still treated like royalty around there. He introduced me to Buffalo Keaulana and all the boys for the first time.

After that we went to a luau at the Aikaus (the famous cemetery house). We were able to swap stories with the family, a moment I will always treasure. It was as real as you can get when it comes to Hawaiian family culture.

PT quote: Groms like myself who grew up living in Australia in the '60s were all diehard readers of his column in the Sunday paper. And we were rabid fans of the Farrelly Surf Show on the ABC Television network.

It can be argued that Midget was Australia's best competitive surfer of the 1960s, winning Makaha in '63, the inaugural ISA World Title in '64, runner-up to Hemmings in Puerto Rico in '68 and then finally runner-up to Rolf Aurness at Bells in '70. No one had that kind of consistency in that decade.

He was also a master shaper/designer. He was always pushing the envelope. The quality of Midget Farrelly Surfboards was second to none. It quickly became a staple of the Australian surfboard industry.

Despite his accomplishments, his style, and his contribution to design, he was often overlooked by surf historians. When Surfer Magazine's "50 Greatest Surfers of All Time" issue came out in 2009, I was mortified that they'd left him out, and I let the editors know it. 

He's an Australian surfing icon that can't be forgotten. When it came to speed, rhythm and style, Midget was the best. I wanted to surf just like him.


WSL Editor's Note: Peter Townend is recognized as the first world champion of pro surfing's modern era. He won the first world tour in 1976, closely followed in '78 by another Australian, Wayne "Rabbit" Bartholomew.

Australians would continue to dominate for most of the next decade, with Mark Richards, Simon Anderson, and Cheyne Horan all playing pivotal roles. But each one of them will be the first to tell you that the age of Australian dominance all began with Midget Farrelly.

To read the WSL's latest news and info click here


Related: Below a tribute clip of Midget Farrelly - hang-gliding from Steve Core's 1975 surf film 'Ocean Rhythms'




To purchase 'Ocean Rhythms' on DVD on-line from the Steve Core Store click here

Member of the Senate gets in the Flow

Surfing's Green Senator

Current Tasmanian Greens Senator and surfer, Peter Whish-Wilson called into the Scamander Beach Surf Shop today to pick up his personally signed DVD copy of my '71 surf movie: 'In Natural Flow'.

Tasmanian Greens Senator
Peter Whish-Wilson

Photo opportunities were grasped - not battling the news hungry media scrum on the front steps of Parliament House in Canberra, but on the serene front deck of Dale Matheson's Scamander Beach Surf Shop on Lagoon Esplanade, in sleepy, but idyllic Scamander Beach, Tasmania. No better a location!

Peter is no stranger to these parts and not just a politician on a coastal run lending an ear to the local resident's concerns.

With a long and colourful history of being closely connected to the ocean, Peter is a past president of the North Branch of the Tasmanian Surfrider's Association. 

Over the years he's also been a regular in the water at the many classy surf breaks that surround the wholesome area.

My thanks go to Dale Matheson of the Scamander Beach Surf Shop for the great photo.

Being one of 76 Senators; I don't know how many Senators have pictures of pristine Australian surf breaks proudly hanging on their office walls in their offices inside the Parliament House building - but check the untarnished shot of Scamander Beach [below] that PWW has displayed in his Canberra office.

Being a Greens Senator - I guess that a fantastic ocean inspired nature shot is highly apropos. The windswept photo was taken by Dale Matheson on 2006.

The Senate is one of two houses in the Australian Federal Parliament and shares the power to make laws with the other House of Parliament, the House of Representatives.

Scamander Beach is located on Tasmania's North-East Coast - just 15-minutes south of the East Coast's biggest town, St Helens.

The image of Scamander River Mouth
that Tasmanian Greens' Senator
Peter Whish-Wilson has hanging 
on his office wall in Canberra
[click to enlarge]

If you're heading on a surf trip down Tasmania's East Coast and you need to pick up any surf related items or just want to talk to a highly experienced local surf native about the best spots to check out for the prevailing conditions - then make sure you call into the Scamander Beach Surf Shop or it's sister shop; the Bay Surf Shop in St Helens.

For all Dale's local contact details please click here

Check on the Tasmanian Greens by clicking here

Purchase 'In Natural Flow' by clicking here

Also view at #stevecoresurf on Instagram - click here