Surfing Nation(S) – Surfing Country(S)

SURFING NATION(S) – SURFING COUNTRY(S) A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree Doctor of Philosophy University of Wollongong by Colleen McGloin B.A. (Hons) School of Social Sciences, media and Communications Faculty of Arts 2005 Certification I, Colleen McGloin, declare that this thesis, submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the School of Social Sciences, Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. …………………………………….. Colleen McGloin 4 April, 2005 ii List of Contents Abstract iv Dedication v Acknowledgements vi Chapter One: Introduction 1 Chapter Two: Methodology 27 Chapter Three: Surfing the Nation 77 Chapter Four: Be Yourself. Naturally: The Metaphysics of Surfing 132 Chapter Five: Performing Surfing Masculinity 193 Chapter Six: Other Nations, Other Countries 252 Conclusion 297 Bibliography 303 Appendix 1 320 Appendix 2 323 Appendix 3 326 iii Abstract This dissertation provides a genealogy of the relationship between surfing, the nation, and white masculinity in Australian culture. I argue that, despite its historical connections to countercultural and subcultural expression, surfing has emerged as a cultural formation which, in multiple ways, contributes to and sustains dominant conceptions of national identity. This claim is demonstrated through the investigation of a diverse range of texts produced both within surf culture and outside it, including documentary and fictional cinema, novels, magazines and advertisements. Reading these texts for the politics of gender, race and class that inform them, I identify the crucial connections of surfing culture to the dominant discourses of white Australia, while also attending to the various manifestations of surfing masculinity that do not ‘fit in’ with contemporary national identity. As a counterpoint to the congruence of mainstream surfing culture and white Australian nationhood, I discuss the culturally specific views of nation and country that inform contemporary Indigenous surfing culture. This part of the dissertation is supported by the contributions, through conversations, interviews and questionnaires, of Aboriginal surfers and elders in the Illawarra region as well as by readings of Surfing the Healing Wave, a film on Indigenous surf culture, and the Indigenous sports magazine, Deadly Vibe. I demonstrate that Aboriginal ways of understanding and relating to the ocean constitute an important counterpoint to dominant white representations of surfing and beach life generally. The perspectives of Aboriginal participants and contributors to this thesis provide an oppositional view of nation/country and of surfing as a form of cultural expression. These worldviews instate a point of departure from white, “mainstream” ideas of nation and proffer an epistemology that testifies to Aboriginal peoples’ continued resistance to colonialism. Through the voices of Aboriginal people, nation(s), surfing, and the ocean, are contextualised according to a culturally relevant frame of reference. Indigenous voices construct a counter- discourse that contests dominant projections of nation at the level of cultural production and cultural practice. iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated with love to the memory of John and Kieron. It is a tribute to my father’s belief in social justice and an acknowledgement of my son’s need to make sense of who he was in an unjust world. v Acknowledgements I am indebted to many people whose support has made this dissertation possible. I want to acknowledge Associate Professor Joseph Pugliese, whose inspiration as an intellectual and a teacher during my undergraduate years culminated in my decision to embark on an academic career. I thank also my PhD supervisor, Dr. Guy Davidson, for his mentorship, patience, intellectual support and his confidence in my project. A special thank-you also to my close friend and colleague, Dr. Glenda Moylan-Brouff, whose friendship and academic support have been invaluable, and whose wisdom and humour have consistently provided inspiration and delight. My sincere gratitude is offered to my friend Bronwyn Lumby for her emotional and practical support, and her endorsement of the political efforts of this thesis. In addition, I am deeply grateful to all the Indigenous participants in my research. I wish to thank my friends and co-workers from the Woolyungah Indigenous Centre at the University of Wollongong, Joanne Buckskin, David Kampers, Ernie Blackmore, Sharon Anderson, Ravi Daga and Michael Adams, all of whom have provided friendship as well as practical, academic, technical and collegial support. I am also very grateful to the Centre’s Director, Professor John Bern, for his encouragement, and for facilitating the conditions to complete this thesis. To my mother, Drene, and my daughter, Jenny, thank-you for your belief in my ability and for being the inspirational women you both are. Finally, I want to thank especially my partner, Chris, for his unselfish support of my endeavours and his consistent provision of music, food and humour throughout this journey. vi Chapter One: Introduction In the mid 1960s, a young girl sat on a beach in the scorching sun near Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast. She was with her parents, her two older brothers and her younger brother. Her only sister would be born an Australian. The family were “ten quid” migrants. They had come to embrace “the land of milk and honey” that had enticed them in the newsreels screened by Australia House in London for prospective migrants. Their previous home was a seaside town on the south coast of England where, at night, the distant lights of Calais, France, visibly identified for the girl the boundaries of her homeland and the beginnings of another. On this beach, such identifiers were absent; there were no perceptible beginnings or endings on the endless horizon of a blue that strikingly contrasted with the familiar grey of the Atlantic. The girl asked two questions of her parents: “what are those men doing running to the water with planks of wood under their arms?” And, “where does Australia end?” To the first question, the reply, “I think that’s what they call surfing here,” inspired what would become a lifelong fascination with this activity. The bronzed, peroxided males running towards the water crashed into the waves and stood up on the “planks of wood”, propelled, it seemed, by exuberance or sheer force of will. The girl had never seen anything like it. The beach was crowded with people who looked and sounded remarkably similar. They shone with oiled skins, marking the whiteness of the guests. This epidermal difference would be addressed, as would any discernible variations in speech and cultural practice. The family would come to embrace their devout 1 weekend rituals at similar beaches where they, too, would anoint their bodies with coconut oil and sit for hours, and where the brothers of the girl would all eventually learn to glide across the ocean on a “plank of wood”. There were no identifiable Aboriginal people in sight. The migrants had been warned about them, though. There were also no women surfing. To the second question, “where does Australia end,” the response by her father, “Australia’s a big country,” contained more questions for the girl than it satisfied as an answer. In retrospect, the parents no doubt understood the limitations of coastal boundaries and knew that somewhere “out there” land, buildings, and other signifiers of endings and beginnings marked out who one was and where one could or could not “fit in.” This narrative illuminates my relationship to the subject matter of this dissertation. The act of migration, albeit from a site of privilege accompanied by the ability to move discursively across many new institutional sites, has nonetheless continued to produce questions about Australia, its self-production as a nation, and how it is perceived outside of its dominant projections. The need to reflexively engage with discourses about nation is highlighted in my narrative’s reference to the “warnings’ we received about our new home’s original inhabitants, its Indigenous landowners. The colonial relationship was identified early. Despite a long and rich history of coastal subsistence and cultural traditions, many of the local Aboriginal people, lived in “humpies” in the bush, venturing into town for food when their exemption certificates - “dog-tags”- allowed.1 In Bomaderry, near Nowra, the United Aboriginal Mission (UAM), 1 Organ, Michael. ‘Illawarra and South Coast Aborigines, 1170-1850, University of Wollongong, 1990, p.372. Exemption Certificates, often referred to by Aboriginal people as “dog tags”, 2 where stolen children had been taken to since 1908, still housed many children until an amendment to the NSW Aborigines Protection Act in 1969 made all Aboriginal children state wards.2 It was little wonder that Aboriginal presence could not be identified at the beach. As we and countless other migrant families of vastly different socio- cultural backgrounds were to understand, the beach was rapidly becoming the primary icon of the nation. This was an Australia fraught by the tension of attempting to instate an independent national culture as it was simultaneously trying to retain its loyalty to Britain. The beach and an emerging surfing culture were replacing previous symbols of nation inscribed in much nineteenth century bush mythology. The beach and the surfer were part of the symbolic basis on which national identity was being re-written. This thesis is an exploration of the connections between Australian national identity, surfing culture, the beach, and dominant models of white masculinity. These connections are far from tidy, and the tools available to draw out this complexity are often inadequate. Through research that includes textual analysis, discourse and myth analysis, and the oral transmission of stories about surfing and the beach, I attempt to draw out these links.

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