Yes

yes yes... we want it. 

Though no complaints here.. with a fine easterly swell and the tides and stars aligned, the local points have been lit up.. I believe I saw one old codger at the Bower on the weekend, sliding locked in the curl for a good 50-100 metre ride, dry hair, and a hand made mega handplane providing a superlative, frictionless slide ...I felt weak and meek as I looked down at the log I'd dragged out with me thinking, "how could I compete with the hordes and their boards in such a competitive lineup?"

.... man up man

....next time nothing but the hand sled.  

Deadman at Deadmans

Starting at One Minute, a deadman at deadmans.

True surfers can also bodysurf.

:::Spotted:::

Strike 2 !

A bodysurfer gets into the annals of Sprout Daily for the second time... more more more !

Sprout Daily...providing a daily chronicle of the surfing life around Manly.

::Spotted::

So my local beach is a crowded place..sometimes you can walk from one end to the other across the surfboards without getting your feet wet... and yet bodysurfers are everywhere, shore dump womping, shooting straight down-head down-arms out...life savers training, and a bucket load of old buggers with handplanes shooting across the face...

Sprout Daily , a daily photo log of the goings-on along the beach delivers a daily snapshot of life on the beach...documenting life in the water on one of Sydneys busiest beaches...and there has been a glaring discrepancy so far! No bodysurfers!

Today is the day...finally, the cellophane people get their showing. Nothing spectacular, but its a start!. Come on Barnaby and Murray! More!



I encourage you to go check out their material. Just Bewdiful.

::Surf - Shooting::

Tanna, Tommy (c1869- ?)
Tommy Tanna, a South Pacific Islander, is widely credited with introducing body surfing, or surf shooting, to Australia in Sydney around 1890. Little is known about Tanna, including his real name and his place of origin. ‘Tommy Tanna’ was a common nickname for any Kanaka male, derived from the fact that a significant proportion of indentured labourers in Australia came from the island of Tanna in the South Hebrides, now part of Vanuatu.
In his recollections, Arthur M Lowe says that Tommy Tanna was employed as a gardener for the Moore family of Manly around the late 1880s and 1890s, where he lived in well-kept quarters at the bottom of the garden at ‘Tramore’, corner of Addison Road and Darley Road. Tanna fished and swam at South Steyne daily before 7am, when beach inspectors enforced the by-laws prohibited daylight bathing. His routine was to check
his self-made, basket, fish traps, put in a rock pool any fish caught, rebait (with rump steak) and reset traps, and then dive from Rocks Point at South Steyne to swim and surf-shoot. Lowe met Tanna through his school friend Eric Moore when he was ten years old, in about 1889, and describes him as follows: ‘He was about 20 odd years of age [in 1889], with a good-looking Islander’s type of face, fairly tall, with an athletic figure, and close crinkly hair’. Tanna taught Lowe and Eric Moore how to shoot waves from the deep water at South Steyne. Lowe wrote that Tanna’s shooting style always involved a degree of swimming, unlike the ‘perfect shooting’ developed later in Manly. Tanna taught others to body surf, including, it is thought, Fred C Williams. Swimming identity Arthur Rosenthal wrote that a South Sea Islander
introduced surf shooting to Williams, who in turn taught a new generation.

Source: Biographical Dictionary for Manly

Wish you were Here

Shooting the Breakers, Manly, circa 1905.
Hall & Co.
Hall & Co. Postcard.

Body surfing at Manly Beach, circa 1905.
Postmarked February 1908.

Info and Photo from www.surfresearch.com.au One of the best websites ever.. go have a look around.

Bodysurfing the Queenscliff Bombie

I can't begin to tell you how nuts this is....



‘Bombie’ impulse makes David’s day
From the Manly Daily Newspaper

24 Apr 09 @ 02:29pm by JASON AVEDISSIAN

David Day bodysurfed the Queenscliff Bombie last weekend. Picture: SIMON DEAN

AN outrageous desire to bodysurf Queenscliff’s famous Bombora has been pulled off by a Mosman 60-year-old.

David Day was celebrating his birthday last weekend with family and friends when a spur of the moment decision to surf the famous break finally came to fruition.

With his brother Mark and nephew Ed, the trio swam about 700m to the deep-ocean spot in heavy surf last Sunday.

Do you have any crazy surf stories of your own? Let us know below.

Regular surfers need the break to reach at least 3m before they can take it on, and many of those generally reach the hidden beast after being towed-in.

“Bombie” was peaking that afternoon, reaching at least 4m by the time Day and his brave group nailed it.

“The heart was pumping like hell,” he recalled this week.

“When we got out there, it was like ... wow ... how good is this?

“We were miles away from anything. But once we got on a couple, your confidence just soars.”

Unfortunately, the group did not capture their moment with any video or camera footage.

Many within the northern beaches surfing community believe “Bombie” has rarely, if ever, been body-surfed.

But witnesses on shore are convinced the bodysurfers swam to the break before taking it on.

“They were surfing the Bommie,” North Steyne Surf Life Saving Club deputy president Geoff Cooper confirmed.

“I saw one or two of them catching a wave and thought; ‘that’s terrific’.

In fact, it was incredible.

Day, director of development at Redlands in Cremorne, had spoken to two-time world surfing champion Tom Carroll about taming the highly dangerous break.

Carroll had his doubts.

“Tom’s view was that there was no way and it was difficult enough just to be towed in on a board,” David’s Adelaide-based brother, Mark, said.

Carroll yesterday said he was stunned they pulled it off.

“It’s pretty crazy,” he said.

“If they got a wave, that’s great. It’s pretty risky stuff ... it’s a high sea. The ocean is such a wild and unpredictable place.”



To help you appreicate the madness of what they did, this is the queenscliff bombie on another day...