Australian Female Surfers Making Waves and Driving Change

Even without a clear view,the Australian female surfers  cheer enthusiastically. With whoops and supportive hollers, they watch the surfer from the waist up: a glistening black wetsuit, soaked hair fluttering as she rides a nine-foot longboard.

Admiring a surfer isn’t new, but these aren’t teens on sandy towels watching from the beach. Instead, the rider is zooming away from them, heading towards shore. From their own boards, the swelling wave gradually conceals the surfer until only her head is visible. It’s unclear how her ride ends—perhaps a wobble and a splash, or a triumphant finish with fists pumping in victory. This is the perspective from the lineup, and this lineup is all women.

Riding a long, pine plank, Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku introduced the ancient Polynesian pastime of surfing to Australia’s shores in the summer of 1914/15. Aussies eagerly embraced it as part of an emerging beach culture that valued active men and decorative women. As the sport’s popularity grew, more riders competing for fewer waves led to an increasingly aggressive surf culture. Women largely faded from the scene, with only the most determined enduring decades of thin tolerance for ‘chicks and sticks’ (the ‘sticks’ referring to the boards) and overt misogyny, as depicted in the fictional 1979 novel “Puberty Blues” by Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette, and the eye-opening 2022 documentary “Girls Can’t Surf.”

There’s a direct line of inspiration from Duke’s century-old surfing exhibitions at Sydney’s Freshwater and Dee Why beaches to the women surfing near Mollymook, three hours south of Sydney. This legacy began with Isabel Letham, the 15-year-old “Freshie” local whom Duke pulled from a crowd of sightseers to demonstrate tandem riding. This act cemented Isabel’s place in Australia’s surfing history and started a chain of ‘If she can…’.

The next link in this chain is another former Freshwater local and the reason this group of eight women woke before dawn to squirm into wetsuits and paddle out: Pam Burridge, the 1990 world surfing champion and six-time runner-up. Pam is a recognizable figure to a generation of women who loved the ocean, even if they weren’t surfing themselves.

 

Source

https://www.womensweekly.com.au/news/real-life/australian-female-surfers/

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