Myth-making in Australian sport history: Re-evaluating Duke Kahanamoku's contribution to surfing

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 260-276

  Osmond, Gary ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79959267505     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2010.529922     Document Type: Review

References (86)

1. Sydney Morning Herald (hereafter SMH), 25 December 1914, 4.
2. See, for example: Douglas Booth, Australian Beach Cultures: The History of Sun, Sand and Surf, (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 36;
3. Fiona Capp, That Oceanic Feeling (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2003), 184;
4. C. Bede Maxwell, Surf: Australians Against the Sea (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1949), 235- 7.
5. Paul Clarke and Greg Appel, dirs, Bombora: The story of Australian surfing, 2- 55 min (Sydney: Screen Australia/Bombora Film and Music, 2009). Viewed 4 August 2009.
6. Sandra Kimberley Hall and Greg Ambrose, Memories of Duke: The Legend Comes to Life (Honolulu: Bess Press, 1995), 138. This epithet also appears on the Duke Paoa Kahanamoku commemorative statue in Waikiki.
7. See, for example: John Morcombe, 'Debunking Duke', Manly Daily, 21 March 2009, 48;
8. Surfboard Shooting in Australia, 1909-1940. (About) 100 Years of Surfboard Riding in Australia. Accessed 23 February 2010 from the website: http://www.surfresearch.com.au/0000h-Aust-1900-1940.html.
9. Nick Ford and David Brown, Surfing and Social Theory: Experience, Embodiment, and Narrative of the Dream Glide (London: Routledge, 2006), 27-8.
10. Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans (New York: Meridian, 1995), 30.
11. Peter Cochrane, Simpson and the Donkey: The Making of a Legend (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1992), 241. Cochrane's 'Postcript' offers an insightful discussion on distinctions between legend and myth: 239-44.
12. Perhaps the most influential of these has been Russel Ward's, The Australian Legend (Melbourne : Oxford University Press, 1958).
13. For more recent examples, see Cochrane, Simpson and the Donkey;
14. Richard Waterhouse, 'Australian Legends: representation of the bush, 1813-1913', Australian Historical Studies 31, no. 115 (October 2000): 201-21.
15. Jim McKay, No Pain, No Gain?: Sport and Australian Culture (Sydney: Prentice Hall, 1991), 2.
16. James D. Hardy Jr, Baseball and the Mythic Moment: How we remember the national game (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), 10.
17. Eric Dunning and Kenneth Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players: A Sociological Study of the Development of Rugby Football (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979);
18. Benjamin G. Rader, Baseball: A History of America's Game (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992);
19. Gary Osmond and Murray G. Phillips, "'Look at That Kid Crawling!": Race, Myth and the "Crawl" Stroke', Australian Historical Studies 37, no. 127 (2006): 43-62.
20. See, for example: Maxwell, Surf, 235-7;
21. Kent Pearson, Surfing Subcultures of Australia and New Zealand (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1979), 51;
22. Booth, Australian Beach Cultures, 36, 194 n. 67;
23. Murray Walding, Blue Heaven: The Story of Australian Surfing (Melbourne: Hardie Grant, 2003), 6.
24. Daily Telegraph (Sydney) (hereafter DT), 27 January 1912, 21.
25. Douglas Booth, 'Surf Lifesaving: The Development of an Australasian "Sport"', International Journal of the History of Sport 17, no. 2/3 (June/September 2000): 167.
26. Lena Lenček and Gideon Bosker, The Beach: The History of Paradise on Earth (New York: Viking, 1998), xx.
27. See, for example, Sydney Mail, 7 March 1906, 606-34;
28. Manly Daily, 28 July 1906, 2;
29. A. M. Lowe, Surfing, Surf-Shooting and Surf-Lifesaving Pioneering (Sydney: privately printed, n.d. [1958]).
30. George Brown, Melanesians and Polynesians (London: Macmillan, 1910), 341-2.
31. Charles Steedman, Manual of Swimming: Including Bathing, Plunging, Diving, Floating, Scientific Swimming, Training, Drowning and Rescuing (Melbourne: Dwight, 1867), 268.
32. See, for example: David Samwell, in J. C. Beaglehole, The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery: Volume 3. The Voyage of the Resolution and the Discovery, 1776-1780 (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1967), 1,165;
33. Lone Hand (Sydney), 1 June 1911, 92-104;
34. DT, 26 January 1910, 5;
35. Albie Thoms, Surfmovies: The History of the Surf Film in Australia (n.p.: Shore Thing, 2000), 10.
36. Patricia Gilmore, 'When Ironing Boards Took to the Waves', SMH, n.d. [ca. 1948], Isabel Letham Papers, Warringah Library, Sydney;
37. Reginald S. Harris, Heroes of the Surf: Fifty Years' History of Manly Life Saving Club (Sydney: Manly Life Saving Club, 1961), 53-4;
38. Lowe, Surfing, 48.
39. Percy Hunter, 'July Skiing in Australia', Mid-Pacific Magazine, January 1911, 12.
40. Pauline Curby, Freshie: Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club, the First 100 Years (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007), 23;
41. In addition to those researchers listed in note 5, see: Curby, Freshie, 41, 45.
42. John MacRitchie, Manly Library, email to author, 18 January 2005.
43. Sun, 2 February 1911, 3 (no reports of the Bondi event have been located).
44. SMH, 24 March 1911, 10.
45. Evening News (Sydney), 22 January 1913, 10;
46. Clarence and Richmond Examiner, 29 December 1914; 5 January 1915.
47. Three photographs ofWalker surfing at Yamba, taken by fellow Yamba lifesaver Osric Notley, are sometimes claimed to be from 1911 or 1912: Deborah Novak, 'First Australian Surf Photo?', Australian Longboarding Magazine 71 (August/September 2010): 12-3.
48. Item 10 of Ordinance Number 52 on 'Public Baths and Bathing' was the first such law to address surfboards in the State: see NSW Surf Bathing Association Handbook 1913-14, 'Surf Bathing Ordinances';
49. Evening News, 22 January 1913, 10.
50. Gilmore, 'When Ironing Boards Took to the Waves';
51. Harris, Heroes of the Surf, 53-4.
52. Referee (Sydney), 23 February 1939, 16. The vessel was likely the steel barque Poltalloch
53. George Champion and Shelagh Champion, 'Tommy Walker, Our First Expert Surfboard Rider', unpublished paper, 2006. William Hendri Walker (1880-1948) became the inaugural secretary of the Manly Seagulls Surf and Life Saving Club in 1911 and later served as Secretary of the Royal Life Saving Society NSW branch for twenty-five years. Russell Henry Walker (1894-1952), nicknamed 'Busty', or 'Surf Board Bustie', was also a Seagulls member, a well-known board exponent, surf carnival judge and active sportsman in Manly. William Walker's son, Ainslie 'Sprint' Walker (1901-71), was a Manly surf champion who helped establish the Torquay Surf Club in Victoria in the 1940s, and served as president of the Surf Life Saving Association of Victoria from 1947-70.
54. Surf, 9 March 1918, 3-4;
55. 1917-22 Commonwealth Electoral Rolls, North Sydney and Warringah Electoral Divisions (Manly); Adelaide Advertiser, 'Funerals', 17 October 1941.
56. Duke Kahanamoku visits Sydney, film documentary, Film Australia, Sydney, 1963.
57. Maxwell, 'Typed drafts and summaries of information'.
58. Gary Osmond, "'Honolulu Maori": Racial Dimensions of Duke Kahanamoku's Tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1914-1915', New Zealand Journal of History 44, no. 1 (April 2010): 22-34.
59. Referee, 28 October 1914.
60. NSWASA Minutes, 10 December 1914.
61. The main advertising poster used in Sydney is reproduced in Thoms, Surfmovies, 21.
62. A common advertisement was used in Brisbane, Melbourne and New Zealand: see Brisbane Courier, 20 January 1915, 3.
63. Osmond, 'Honolulu Maori', 25.
64. Sydney Sportsman, 10 February 1915, 3.
65. Town & Country Journal, 30 December 1914, 43.
66. Bill Weiley, Country Party Member of the NSW Legislative Assembly for Clarence, reminiscing in the DT, 22 November 1963, 7.
67. Matt Warshaw provides one inconsistent exception to this: he acknowledges that Tommy Walker was one of a small group of Sydney residents who 'board-surfed as early as 1910', but nonetheless credits Kahanamoku with introducing surfing to Australia: Matt Warshaw, The Encyclopedia of Surfing (Melbourne: Viking, 2004), 309, 622.
68. Courier-Mail, 20 November 1933, 7.
69. Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 17 July 1939; 24 July 1939, 8;
70. Forecast (bulletin of the Outrigger Canoe Club, Honolulu), February 1949; May 1949, 8. The 1939 trip is also covered in Sean Brawley, Beach Beyond: A History of the Palm Beach Surf Club 1921-1996 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1996), 63-6.
71. Forecast, February 1949.
72. Duke Paoa Kahanamoku Statue and Commemorative Park Unveiling' Harbord Diggers (Sydney), February 1994, 1;
73. Jamie Brisick, Have Board, Will Travel: The Definitive History of Surf, Skate, and Snow (New York: HarperEntertainment, 2004) 9.
74. Richard Gruneau and David Whitson, Hockey Night in Canada: Sport, Identities and Cultural Politics (Toronto: Garamond, 1993), 132.
75. Osmond and Phillips, 'Look at That Kid Crawling!'.
76. Andrew Martin, Walking on Water (London: John Murray, 1991), 33.
77. Hall and Ambrose, Memories of Duke, 37, 52.
78. David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xxiii.
79. Pierce Julius Flynn, 'Waves of Semiosis: Surfing's Iconic Progression', The American Journal of Semiotics 5, no. 3-4 (1987): 403.
80. See, for example, Walter Forbes, The History of Freshwater Surf Life Saving Club 1908-1958 (Sydney: Kenny and Watson, n.d. [c. 1959]), 18;
81. Gary Osmond, Murray G. Phillips, and Mark O'Neill. "'Putting up Your Dukes": Statues, Social Memory and Duke Paoa Kahanamoku', International Journal of the History of Sport 23, no. 1 (2006): 82.
82. Chris Healy, Forgetting Aborigines (Sydney: UNSW Press, 2008), 9.
83. Bain Attwood with Helen Doyle, Possession: Batman's Treaty and the Matter of History (Melbourne: Miegunyah, 2009), 8.
84. Daniel A. Nathan, Saying It's So: A Cultural History of the Black Sox Scandal (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 217.
85. Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus: Further Reflections in Natural History (London: Penguin, 1992), 48.
86. Douglas Booth, The Field: Truth and Fiction in Sport History (London: Routledge, 2005), 126.