Blanketing opinions that I'll probably regret soon.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

World's Largest Surfing Museum in Torquay, Australia

I'm in Melbourne, Australia for a trade show. After we set up our exhibit yesterday, we went for a leisurely drive along the Great Ocean Road and saw some of the best beaches in the world for surfing. In the town of Torquay, they actually have a museum dedicated solely to surfing! Below are my pictures. (Side note: Aussies pay more than $6/gallon of gasoline --- further supporting my insistence that Americans should STFU about gas prices).

It took me a while to figure out that the blue is supposed to be a wave:



Notice this guy's dog in the bottom right:



I guess this guy was some legendary surfing god. This was on the bottom of an old board:



If I surfed, I'd want my board to look like this:



I love these little glimpses into surfing history:






These old wooden longboards are tall as shit:



I guess surfboards got smaller over the years because they were faster?:



This is the famous Bells Beach, where Billabong and others hold surfing competitions. Notice the lack of people. Australia is about the size of the continental US, but with 280 million FEWER people.

Comments:
Dude. I tried surfing in a place imaginatively named 'Town of 1770' in Queensland. It's IMPOSSIBLE!!! Your your shoulders are burning like the fires of hell from all the paddling, your nips are sore from the rough board and as for standing up, that's a laugh!!
 
Tim,

I'm not in Qland. I'm in f-ing south Victoria!
 
Well I'm not suggesting you should go. Maybe just buy some surf shorts and a blonde wig and hang about.
 
thanks for the pics! i am a surfer, and would love to see this museum!
FYI:

The Duke shrine is for Duke Kahanamoku, who is credited with popularizing the sport of surfing. He was in many surf movies of the sixties, and an Olympic swimming champ.

The size of boards changed for several reasons. The big boards were the ones Hawaiian royalty would surf on (It used to be that only Hawaiian royalty could surf- this was a religious and cultural tradition). They were often used in combination with paddles, so that the surfer would stand and paddle and use the paddle for leverage when surfing in. Back then, surfing was done "straight in" style, with the nose pointed toward land. But with the popularization of surfing and the modernization of materials, lots of different sized boards have been made for different conditions and styles. The smaller boards allow the rider to turn them, so you can ride along the face of the wave rather than just forward toward land. The speed of the board depends on the combination between the type of wave and the type of board.
 
tim - I have tried surfing in two places, one west coast and one east. And for us beginners it all depends on the wave. Just like for skiiers it all depends on the slope.

You can't learn to ski on a diamond - you need a bunny slope. You can't learn to surf on a mean wave - you need those nice flat swells you see in hawaii and use a long ass board. The difference is night and day. and where a shirt for your nips.

DON'T GIVE UP!!!
 
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