The following is an excerpt from Sean Doherty's 2021 book, "Golden Daze: Australia Surfing, Then to Now." This version has been slightly edited

Col Smith had just been asked in a 1977 

 interview if his surfing revolved around pulling off ‘gravity-defying stunts’. Col wasn’t sure if the interviewer was taking the piss. ‘Well, let me put it this way . . . .’ After a weighty pause, Col told it straight. ‘There are certain maneuvers that are near impossible . . . 

. I don’t really like going for tubes all the time. If there’s a tube and I can’t avoid it I’ll go for it, but there’s nothing very difficult about getting tubes. I’m not going for the packet of hundreds and thousands. I’m going for the

This wasn’t a hollow boast. Col Smith, in 1977, might have been ancient at age 28—but he was the oldest, most radical surfer in the world.

Going for the big one had recently landed him in hospital. ‘I was always trying to do stuff that no one else could do,’ Col remembers today, ‘and the thing no one else could do was a barrel roll. To turn around, upside-down 

 the barrel, and land it. The first guy I saw do one was a dirt bike champion named Herbie Jefferson. He did a barrel roll on a kneeboard at Angourie and made it. I went, 'that looks good. If he can do it on a kneeboard, I can do it standing up.' So this day at Car Park Rights at Narrabeen the surf was just phenomenal. I dropped down this wave on my backhand, jammed a turn and I've gone right round inside the wave. I made the barrel roll, I was 99 per cent there, but came down and fell off the front of the board. It whacked me in the mouth. The nose of the board hit me and snapped off in my face. I got a hundred stitches—but I was pretty close to making it.’

To this day, no standing surfer ever has.

Col Smith’s radical streak started early. Soon after moving to Narrabeen at age 10, he’d taken his mother’s wooden ironing board, stripped all the metal fittings off, cut his jeans down into shorts, and gone surfing. A couple of years later his brother brought him home a 10’6” balsa noserider from the States, which Col had no intention of noseriding. ‘Chris Crozier and I cut three feet off it and that was our shortboard.’ Col was a child of the shortboard revolution and like most of those kids would almost immediately take it too far. ‘We made them smaller and smaller and smaller to the point where I ended up one year riding a 4’10” board at 15-foot Margaret River.’

As a kid, Col also rode skateboards for the Midget Farrelly skate team. ‘I remember doing a demo at Dee Why and another out at Ryde where the big shopping center is. It was a bit scary, downhill racing at Dee Why in bare feet and a see-through skateboard.’

Maybe the biggest influence on Col Smith’s surfing was a kid his own age. Col doesn’t remember ever actually surfing with Wayne Lynch, but in those years before Wayne stepped away from the spotlight, he was kind of hard to miss. In particular, it was Wayne’s backhand re-entry that caught Col’s attention. ‘I’d watch him and think, gee whiz, I’d like to do that.’ If Wayne was the first to train the board vertically at the lip on his backhand, Col was the one who took it even further. ‘It got to the stage where I thought, look, most of the surfing contests are held in right-handers, I’m going to ride rights better than I can ride lefts.'

And that’s exactly what he did. Narrabeen, his home break, was the best left in Sydney. But Col preferred surfing Car Park Rights, just down the beach.

The biggest influence on Col, in fact, was Narrabeen itself. ‘As a kid, you weren’t allowed to surf Narrabeen until you were good enough. That were the rule. And it was strict.’ Young Col worked his way up the beach from Waterloo Street to The Pines and eventually to The Alley. Col remembers the ‘Log Mob’, a hardcore group who hung around a log that had washed up on the beach. Before it was Narrabeen against the world, it was always Narrabeen against Narrabeen. ‘It was ruled with an iron fist,’ recalls Col of the Narrabeen scene. ‘Very strong but very close. It’s probably the closest community I’ve ever been involved with.’

He wasn't just accepted at Narrabeen, the most alpha lineup in Australia—he was exalted. Throughout the ‘70s, Col Smith was Narrabeen's alpha male. Col had the women. Col had the soul patch beard and Col had the cars. He’d do burn-outs in the Narrabeen car park in his Holden FJ, smoking the place up until the diff blew. He would paddle out with a cigarette in his mouth and drop in on someone with it still alight. He’d scold the local grommets for not hitting the lip hard enough. ‘You were going out there to surf, not make friends,' he recalls. 'We had a reputation for that.’ At a time when it seemed every surfing beach had its resident surfing animal, a wild man in and out of the water, Narrabeen had Col Smith.

Surfing Narrabeen wouldn’t be enough for a competitive animal like Col. He needed other outlets. A natural athlete and all-around sportsman, he excelled at everything he turned his hand to. Col was a great tennis player, footballer and ice hockey player. He’d never ice-skated before but was playing at a high level within nine months. The physicality of hockey suited. ‘That was to learn how to fight,’ he laughs. ‘Every time you go on you’re in a fight. I remember this guy smashed me into the railing so I let him have it. Straight into the sin bin. But I loved it. I used to do barrel jumping on the ice. I could jump 10 barrels. If I took something up, whatever it was, I wanted to go full-on.’

Cars were his real vice. Col was a car guy. ‘Was I ever. I put a 351 Ford motor into a four-cylinder Transit van. Mate, that was the fastest thing on the planet. It had four wheels on the back and I could wheel-spin them up to 60 miles an hour. Then I bought myself a ‘66 Pontiac GTO, two-door, two-speed Powerglide, a hundred miles an hour in first gear.' He was a demon behind the wheel. He recalls driving north on a surf trip to Newcastle and being overtaken by another car doing 80 miles an hour. ‘This car just blew me off the road. I’ve tightened the seatbelt up and took off after him. It felt like the car was floating. I looked at the speedo which went up to 120; the needle had gone past that and was almost back around at zero.’ When asked how it ended, Col replied, ‘The car in front blew up.’ Col’s driving was a bit like Col’s surfing–not exactly graceful, but always in the red.

Col earned a living shaping boards. Here, too, speed was of the essence. ‘I was a very, very fast shaper. I could turn out a board in 12 minutes. They weren’t real good but I was still getting them out.’ Col had got his start at 18, when Denny Keogh offered him a job down at Brookvale. ‘I was a carpenter before that. I could cut the outlines out nearly perfect, but the rest of it was pretty bad. I ended up with a lot of wafers and this side’s thicker than the other.’ He laughs. ‘But after doing twenty or thirty thousand I got there eventually.’

At Keyo’s he shaped alongside Geoff McCoy and discovered Narrabeen competitiveness didn’t stop at the tide line. ‘Geoff and I were mates, but one afternoon he says to me, “I’ll never, ever show you how to shape a surfboard.” And I went, “Why not?” He goes, “Because every board you shape is one I don’t!” I’ve never forgotten that. Every time I see him I remind him.’

Col shaped with Terry Fitzgerald at Hot Buttered before going out on his own in 1973 with Morning Star surfboards. ‘The idea never entered my head, but one day Wayne Warner said to me, “You want to make surfboards?” I said, “Oh yeah.” He asked, “How much money you got?” I replied, “Maybe 150 bucks.” And he said, “Well, I got 250. Let’s go make surfboards.” So we ended up making ‘em in his garage in Garden Street and that was our start.’

Morning Star soon moved to Darley Road, Mona Vale, then opened a shop at Dee Why. Col even employed a young Simon Anderson. They then opened a surf shop in the Western Suburbs. ‘Nat, Wayne and I went thirds in a shop out there on the corner of Bellfield Road, which was about three kilometers from Bankstown Square. There were no other surf shops for 25km in any direction out there. We were only open 13 hours a week, but we took more money than any other surf shop in Brookvale. We had ’em lined up down the street to get in.’

The seventies was a Golden Age of Surfing in Narrabeen. Guys like Terry Fitz, Grant Oliver, Mark Warren and Simon Anderson were winning contests all over the country, and in time all around the world. Col’s dominance of the Narrabeen lineup during this period, however, never translated to wider contest success. He’d never won a major title outside of Sydney. He’d been to Hawaii but never received invites to the contests there. (He actually did receive an invite in ’76 but nobody told him.) Judging through the seventies also favored numbers of turns, not one big radical turn. Hundreds and thousands, not 

. This was frustrating to Smith. ‘Even though I might only be doing one maneuver,’ he told 

in 1977, ‘that’s got to be better than doing a dozen other less radical ones.’

By 1977, the most radical surfer in Australia was getting on. Col was 28, married with a two-year-old daughter, not surfing as much and working long hours at Morning Star. Professional surfing had arrived, but he felt like an outsider to it. He was being overtaken by younger guys. For all of that, Smith still kept the faintest hope alive for a major contest win. In 1977 he surfed all four Australian pro events but never managed to finish above mid-field. When Col looked at the ratings, however, he saw his name respectably high. Then he saw his name again, way down the list in the same ratings. Turns out the guy higher up was another Col Smith, a radical young goofyfooter from Newcastle. Col Smith from Newcastle, in fact, had only surfed 

 and was way ahead of Col Smith from Narrabeen, who’d surfed four. Narrabeen Col bristled, taking some consolation that at least a Narrabeen surfer–Simon Anderson–was leading the ratings.

Simon had been a Col Smith protégé, a role now being filled by 16-year-old Tom Carroll. Despite living up the peninsula at Newport, Tom was a regular down at Narrabeen as he was working an auto body repair apprenticeship there. Col was shaping his boards, and when Tom got a start in the Stubbies Pro at Burleigh–the first event of the first full professional season–the youngster jumped in the front seat of Col’s Holden FJ. ‘I was the oldest,' recalls Col, 'so I had to cart everybody around. I took Tommy to his first big pro surfing contest, the Stubbies. That was the one Peter Drouyn ran. At 10 o’clock in the morning the surf was going off and Drouyn would go, “Okay, contest over for the day!” Everybody lost it. He said, “Don’t worry, it's going to be better tomorrow.” He did this day after day and every single time the surf got bigger. It was absolutely phenomenal. Tommy had to go and surf against Shaun Tomson, who was the biggest surfer in the world at the time.' Shaun beat the little Tommy, but it was an adventure and learning experience for all involved.

The world tour contests were over, but that still left the 1977 Australian Titles, due to be held at Narrabeen. Col had flirted with the Aussie Title in the past, having finished as high as 4th place. The past two Aussie Titles had, meanwhile, been won by Narrabeen surfers–Fitzgerald in ’75 and Mark Warren in ’76. But Col Smith’s biggest threat for the '77 title, it turned out, was Col Smith of Newcastle. The two men–who didn’t really know each other at the time–ended up in the final. ‘That was fun,’ recalls Col Smith from Narrabeen, who won. ‘Col Smith first and Col Smith second, and the write-up in the paper going, “This is not a misprint.”’ (Newcastle Col Smith returned the following year and won.)

For his win, Col was supposed to receive an airline ticket to Brazil to compete in the pro event there that year. The ticket never turned up. The pro tour took off without Col. ‘I went to a few world tour contests–I could’ve gone to a lot more–but I would’ve been away from home too much. I’d have to leave the kids behind and find somebody to do the shaping. Besides that, I was just getting too old and not placing as high as I should. So yeah, I gave it a miss after that.’

 interview not long after his Aussie Title win, sitting on the bonnet of his FJ. Strapped to the roof racks were a set of snow skis. ‘I just spent my first three days in the snow and I’m afraid of it!' he said. 'If I get to like it, and I am 

 on it, I might have to give up surfing for a while. I’ve been thinking about it since I got back. I learned more in the three days I spent there than guys who’ve been skiing for a couple of full seasons.’

For the next five winter seasons, Col–always the obsessive–would make 20 trips a year to the snow. In years to come snow skiing would be replaced by fishing, and later, by Ceroc dancing.

COL SMITH OF NARRABEEN: "I'M GOING FOR THE BIG ONE!"

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