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Midget Farrelly at Palm Beach c. 1964 Midget was the first great hero of Australian surfing. If his influences were Californian (the Phil Edwards multi-stringered boards and the Peter Van Dyke drop-knee cutback), he put the whole package together with a great individual style. Photo: John Witzig
These are fifteen pictures over fifteen years – pretty much my entire “career” from start to finish.
I was losing interest towards the end, and not even a wonderful water housing to take my Nikon F2 motor drive and a 105 mm lens could rekindle it. I’d also begun to feel the imperative to actually earn some money.
In lots of ways, the pictures I took over this decade-and-a-half are simply a documentation of my own life – with all the characters, the various missteps and interesting detours. Most of the people in them were my friends, and most remain so. Forty-and-more years later, that seems pretty significant to me.
Check out John’s book, A Golden Age: Surfing’s Revolutionary 1960s and ’70s here and a gallery of his amazing work here.