surfresearch.com.au  newspapers : surf-shooting, 1908-1909

Arrangements have been made for the Sly brothers to proceed to Newcastle on Saturday with the North Steyne (Manly) Lifesaving Club, taking the surf boat to help in the exhibition on the Newcastle Beach on Sunday 19th  inst.
An attractive programme has been prepared by the North Steyne Club, and, given anything like reasonable weather, it is expected that a good object lesson will be afforded to Newcastle people.
A special concert is being arranged for Friday evening next in the band pavilion to defray the cost of sending the surf boat and crew.
A number of members of the council, including Alderman Quirk, Pasaau, and Duggan, will accompany the bathers.

Riders were observed using 10 feet lumps of wood to ride the waves and in this there appeared an element of danger.

- Conrick: Northern Lifesaver (1989) page 95.
Initially noted by Dave Kelly contributing to realsurf.com.au forum, January 2008.

Notes:
Unfotunately a search of newspapers held by the State Library of NSW indicates the Coffs Harbour Advocate was only published once a week and there is no actual edition for 22 January 1908.

Without further information, the Coffs Harbour report is unusual in not identifying the riders, as may be expected if they were local residents.
If they were short-term visitors to the area and were accompanied by their surfboards, then they almost certainly arrived and departed in a coastal steamer.
They may be have been Australian boardriders (possibly with a life saving club connection) whose steamer had briefly berthed at Coffs on the way up or down the coast.
Far less likely, but possible, they were international seamen travelling with their surfboards, the obvious candidates, no doubt, of Hawaiian descent.

On Boxing day, at Bronte Beach, experiments with the new unswampable twin torpedo surf boar, were successfully carried out.
As the novel craft leapt though and over the big white breakers, it resembled two huge fish, withseveral men riding on them, presenting a most diverting spectacle  to the onlookers, and suggesting how successfully  such a craft could be manouvred by experienced men, even in a heavy surf.
The vessel is to have a third compartment built between the cylinders at the stern end, also proper seats, giving the crew greater propelling power.

The Manly Surf Club held a meeting at the Hotel Steyne last night, Mr Alderman Adam Ogilvy
occupying the chair.
It was reported that the Government would place the Captain Cook at the disposal of the club on carnival day to act as flagship, and would also arrange for a display with the Government life boat and a rocket display.
The programme of the carnival was settled, it being decided to again have tthe "Birth of Venus" on the harbour beach, and "The Landing of Captain Cook" on the ocean beach; also a fancy dress procession through Manly, in which a representation of Lady Godiva's ride will be given.

All the lifesaving clubs around Sydney will be invited to send representative teams to walk in the procession in club costume carrying their life-saving reels and gear.
There will be a number of competitive events on the ocean beach, land drill, surf swimming and shooting and alarm reel races but the chief event of the day will be a rescue competition with lifelines and reels in which twelve teams will probably take part.
This event last year caused considerable rivalry, and the Bondi Surf-Bathers' Life-saving Club and the Manly Surf Club proved a very close match.
The Sly Brothers will give an exhibition of shooting the breakers in the surf boat.
Every effort will be made to provide the thousands of spectators with a good view of the proceedings, and the council will close the dressing sheds in order that only competitors may be in the water during the progress of the carnival.
The Manly Band will perform during the afternoon.
At the conclusion of last night's meeting of the Manly Surf Club, Mr A W Relph, who has held the position of hon. secretary for eighteen months since the club's formation, handed in his resignation, owing to pleasure of private work.

H. M.S. Challenger, which recently visited the Cook Group, with the Governor of New Zealand, arrived in Sydney on Saturday and moored in Farm Cove.
The Cook Group has for the past eight years been attached to the Dominion, and the islands visited by the Challenger were Roratonga, Mangala, Atlu, and Altulaki.
At Mangala, where the island is encircled by a fringing reef, the party experienced the exciting sensation of being landed by the system of surf-running in catamarans.
Thero wero 1560 natives and six whites on the island, and everybody but the halt and maimed seemed to have come down to the gala.
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