"Mahape a ale wala'ua," Duke would say. "Don't talk -- keep it in your heart."
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Under the Hau Tree | Olympic Gold, 1912 | Surfing's Ambassador | Duke's Mile+ Ride of 1917 | Olympic Gold and Silver | Corona del Mar Save, June 14, 1925 | The Father of Modern Surfing | Twilight Years, 1962-68 | Sources

  In 1912, Paterson, of Manly Beach, had brought a solid, heavy redwood board back with him from Hawaii. He and some local body surfers tried to ride it, but with little success. So, it was not until Duke visited Australia in 1915 that true board surfing hit the Aussie shore. In 1914, would-be surfer and writer Cecil Healy primed Australians with the possibility of Duke Kahanamoku coming to Australia to show a thing or two. "Kahanamoku is a wonderfully dexterous performer on the surfboard, an instrument of pleasure that Australians have so far been unsuccessful in handling to any degree. Reports have been brought back from overseas of his acrobatic feats exexuted while dashing shorewards at great speeds, but one doubts the possibility of Duke, or anyone else, duplicating such feats in Australian surf. Still, if he should give one of his rare exhibitions for our edification, be sure it will create a keen desire on the part of our ambitious shooters to emulate his deeds, and it goes without saying that his movements will be watched intently. Personally, I am convinced that the natural amphibious attitude of the Australians will enable one or another to unravel the knack."

  Three years later, the New South Wales Swimming Association invited Duke Kahanamoku to give a swimming exhibition at the Domain Baths, in Sydney. While in Australia, Duke brought surfboard riding to the continent. Yet, he did not bring a surfboard. Instead, he made one. Patricia Gilmore, an Australian reporter/historian, described what happened, in a nostalgic look back for The Sydney Morning Herald, in 1948: "Having no board, he picked out some sugar pine from George Hudson's, and made one. This board -- which is now in the proud possession of Claude West -- was eight feet six inches long, and concave underneath. Veterans of the waves contend that Duke purposely made the surfboard concave instead of convex to give him greater stability in our rougher (as compared with Hawaiian) surf.

  "Duke Kahanamoku was asked to select the beach where the exhibition would be given. He chose Freshwater (now Harbord). It was in February, 1915, that Australian board enthusiasts had their first opportunity of seeing a 'board expert' on the waves. There was a big sea running, and from 10:30 in the morning until 1 o'clock Duke never left the water. "He showed the watchers all the tricks he knew, sliding right across the beach on the face of a wave. Demonstrating the ease with which he could manage with a passenger, he took Isabel Latham (still a resident at Harbord) out with him, and they would come right into the beach with incomparable grace and precision."

  Duke recalled to his biographer, in World of Surfing, "In 1915 the swimming-obsessed Aussies wanted to see the so-called 'Kahanamoku Kick,' so, along with several aquatic stars, I had the pleasure of visiting that wonderful land of Down Under. The swimming exhibitions went well and we were gratified over the royal treatment they gave us." Exhibition swimming at the Domain Baths, Duke broke his own world record for the 100 yards with a time of 53.8 seconds.

  While in Australia, Duke made a tour of the beaches because he "was particularly excited by the fantastic surfing conditions they have down there." He chose Freshwater beach, on Sydney's north side, to give a demonstration on surfboard riding. "I was in Australia long enough," he explained, "to build a makeshift surfboard out of sugar pine." Duke didn't know about Paterson's redwood board in the district, so he made his own out of "a piece of sugar pine supplied by a surf club member whose family was in the timber business." Nat Young recreates that historic three hour demonstration of Sunday morning, January 15, 1915, at Freshwater, based on a conversation he had with the woman whom Duke rode tandem with that day.

  It was "A clear, brilliant day. Spectators were milling around to watch. Manly Surf Boat was on hand to give Duke assistance to drag his board through the break -- an offer he laughed at good naturedly. Picking up his board he ran to the water's edge, slid on and paddled out through the breakers. He made better time on the way out than the local swimmers who escorted him. Once out beyond the break it wasn't long before he picked up a wave in the northern corner, stood up and ran the board diagonally across the bay, continually beating the break. Duke showed the crowd everything in the book, from head stands to a finale of tandem surfing with a local girl, Isabel Latham."

  "When he went to Australia to show them surfing," Duke's brother Bill recalled, "the lifeguards tried to stop him. They said, 'You can't go out there. There are a lot of man-eating sharks.' Duke said, 'Ah, no, I'll go out." After Duke's surfing exhibition, when he came back to the beach, "the lifeguards asked him, 'Did you see any sharks?' Duke said, 'Yeah, I saw plenty.' 'And they don't bother you?' the lifeguards asked. 'No.' Duke replied. "and I didn't bother them.'"

  "I must have put on a show that more than trapped their fancy, for the crowds on shore applauded me long and loud," recalled Duke. "There had been no way of knowing that they would go for it in the manner in which they did. I soared and glided, drifted and sideslipped, with that blending of flying and sailing which only experienced surfers can know and fully appreciate. The Aussies became instant converts."

  Duke's impact on Australian surfing was tremendous. He essentially kick-started surfing in Oz. Over twenty years later, in 1939, on the eve of a big Pacific Aquatic Carnival held in Honolulu, then longtime surfboard champion of Australia, Snowy McAlister, wrote: "We in Australia learned the rudiments of the sport from Duke. He gave the boards new meanings. I don't think anybody, Hawaiian or Australian, could duplicate Duke's old time skill."

  One instant convert in the crowd was ten year-old Claude West, a Manly beach local. "He was so impressed by what Duke did that he managed to get the Hawaiian to coach him in the art of board riding, and when Duke left Australia he passed the board he had made on to the youngster. Claude soon became a proficient board rider, and other surfers began to imitate him. Claude proved himself a great surfer: he won the Australian surfing championships from 1919 to 1924." Claude West went on to demonstrate the benefits of the surfboard in surf rescue work and at one point rescued the then Governor-General of Australia, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson. He built many boards like the one Duke had given him and was a fine craftsman, "having learnt to fine-plane making coffins for an undertaker." In 1918, West attempted to make a lighter surfboard by chipping out the center of a solid board and covering it with a lighter wood. The experiment failed, due to the absence of a waterproof glue, which had not been invented, yet, and the fact that all Australian timber of the period was sun-dried instead of kiln-dried. When the sun got to the board, it quickly cracked the thin outside veneer.

  Before Duke had left Australia, in 1915, he also helped show the Aussies how to build boards. "Nothing would do," he recalled, "but that I must instruct them in board building -- a thing which I did with pleasure. Before I left that fabulous land, the Australians had already turned to making their own boards and practicing what I had shown them in the surf." "Incidentally," added Duke, "forty years later, Tom Zahn came to Australia, found my sugarpine board to be still in seaworthy shape. He took it out into the waters of Freshwater Bay and gave the spectator-jammed beach an exciting surfing demonstration."

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