 that posted last week? A few EOS readers (mostly but not exclusively Australian) reached out last night and this morning to suggest this might be the case. I've so far replied that Midget and his advanced board are noted in the '67 Bells pic, and that Midget is the star attraction of the Windansea vs Australia video a little further down the page. But true, I didn't talk about Midget the way I did about Bob McTavish or Dick Brewer.

McTavish later said (it's still there on the Midget Farrelly Surfboards website) that McTavish "plagiarized" the vee-bottom idea from him. I find this hard to believe. But put that idea on hold for a moment. Let's work backwards from the Windansea contest at Palm Beach, in November-December, 1967, as seen in 

. Lots of different "small" boards are on view here, but Midget's snub-nosed vee-bottom looks to be the most advanced. Apart from Midget, the standout surfer is Ted Spencer, on "Little Red," an 8' 4" roundpin Spencer and McTavish shaped together. But Midget's board is smaller (8' 0"), looser, quicker.

Roll back to the Bells contest, in April, and Midget is still right there in terms of advanced equipment. The crucial source material here is Paul Witzig's 

. Nearly all the Bells competitors are riding the new boards; most look to be either McTavish-shaped or McTavish-inspired vees, and the performance jump from the year previous is huge. Nat won and Midget got third, but really it's a tossup as to who is surfing better—both are ripping. Runner-up Peter Drouyn may have out-surfed Nat and Midget both, but there's just one brief shot of him. Nat's on a 9' 4" precursor to "Sam," Midget's "Stringerless" signature model looks to be around 9'. Nat has a Greenough-style narrow-based fin, Midget doesn't. Nat's board is thinner. But Midget has a clear and noticeable edge in terms of rocker; his board has nose-lift where the other competitors' boards are flat, and it clearly fits better into the curves of the wave. So Nat has the vee, Midget has the rocker. (Below, top to bottom: Farrelly, McTavish, Young, from 

Now let's go back and approach things from the other side of the timeline. Mid-1965, Nat and Bob Evans met with McTavish and George Greenough and rode the Noosa points. Bob, influenced by George, was already thinning his boards out; Bob and Nat both, on that trip, began using a Greenough-style narrow-based swept-back fin. George's radical up-and-down line in the water, and the obvious fact that he achieved that line by using radically smaller equipment—this is the seed from which the shortboard revolution will sprout. It is impossible, in my opinion, to overstate this fact. Greenough doing figure-eight turns at National Park, while two of the most progressive surfers watch in stunned amazement and wonder how they can ride in similar fashion—this is where it all starts. (Returning to Sydney, Nat made a stand-up version of Greenough's spoon kneeboard. A complete failure, but a good indication nonetheless of where Young's head was at in late 1965.)

 his first-person book, was published in 1967, but written about 18 months earlier. (Midget mentions the 1965 World Championships, and the Aussie version of the book was published that year, so I'm guessing the text was written in mid- and late-'65.) Obviously Farrelly's views on board design were about to change in a big way, but at the time Midget had this to say about equipment: "It's no use a tall, heavy man trying to ride a short, very light board. Everyone has different ideas about what is the right board length, width and weight. The following chart is one I use when building boards."

McTavish, meanwhile, in late '65 and early '66, was sidetracked into Rennie Yater-inspired run of speed boards designed for down-the-line surfing on bigger days at Noosa. I'm waiting to hear back from Nat, but it looks like he shaped Sam in April or May of 1966. It was McTavish, Nat later wrote, who inspired him to make Sam thin (2.5 inches) and light, with soft egg-shaped rails. Nat absolutely ran the table in terms of competition that year, winning the State Titles, Nationals, Bells, and the World Championships. Midget also made the finals in the World Championships, riding his signature model Stringerless, similar to the board pictured below; he's clearly found religion on lighter boards but, unlike Sam, the Stringerless isn't significantly thinner than the standard longboard of the period, and if this ad (SURFER, March 1967) is any indication, Midget hasn't yet changed to the Greenough fin.

Okay, now here we go. In late 1966, McTavish, while working at Hayden Surfboards in Queensland, made a bevel-to-vee nine-footer for his friend and glasser Mick Hopper. (See board #4, below; illustration by McTavish.) "This was the first board to get 'slippery'," McTavish later wrote. "I put 6" bevels along each rail, from the trim zone to the tail, which resulted in a vee around the fin."

McTavish, however, didn't build himself a bevel-to-vee board until March 1967, after moving from Queensland to Sydney to work for Keyo Surfboards. This board (#5, above) is the original "plastic machine." Two days later, McTavish says, he was back in the shaping room working on an 8' 6", followed shortly by an 8' 0" (see board #6). This all happened in March.

So that brings us back to the Bells contest in April, discussed above, where Midget is riding a Stringerless while Young and McTavish are on plastic machines.

Do we believe everything McTavish himself has said about what happened with his own board development between late '66 and mid-'67? Or more to the point. Has anybody, apart from Midget, ever called Bob out for stealing ideas, or even stretching the facts? Midget aside, my impression is that McTavish is and always has been regarded not just as an innovator but a straight shooter.

Is there something about Farrelly's Stringerless board at Bells that I'm missing? Had he done something design-wise between January and March that hadn't yet been done by McTavish? I'm not being rhetorical. My belief is that George, Bob, and Nat were the breakthrough players, but I'm open to the possibility that I've missed something that Midget did in those first few months of the year. But for the moment, it looks to me as if Farrely's Bells board is a lighter and better-rockered version of what he rode in San Diego six months earlier.

I'll wrap this up with a few excerpts from an interview Midget did with John Witzig for the February 1968 issue of 

. It was recorded in December 1967. (Thanks to SurfResearch.com; read the full interview 

Could you explain in basic terms just what has happened to surfboards in the last twelve months?

Nothing really radical has happened to the majority of boards yet, but there is a general trend towards a shorter board. Last summer it seemed everyone was riding nine feet. I remember midway through the winter I made my first 8' 8" and I thought that was short, but then about September they started to go even farther.

Any other basic differences except length?

While we have gone down in length we have come up in a few other things. The design is so radical that we do need a basic thickness of at least three inches. I think the most significant and obvious change is in outline. We have almost got a very basic old-fashioned outline: big, wide, square tail, parallel rails and a blunt nose. You wouldn't say that the boards of today are beautiful at all.

Is the development that has taken place in Australia applicable only to Australian surf?

At the present rate, it probably is. We have realized more and more so that we are riding our own waves in our own way. I looked at Nat [in 1966] and as well as seeing the World Champion I could see a little bit of the future for Australian surfing.

In other words, the rest of the world isn't moving along a similar path to Australia.

No, definitely not. I think that what we have done, really, is to utilize our waves and ourselves and our boards to get an unbeatable approach to our own waves.

What do you think your part is in the development of the modern Australian surfboard and the modern Australian style of surfing?

I felt quite inspired after watching some of the surfers at the Australian Championships at Bells [April 1967]. They wanted to ride Bells in a way that had never been done before. They weren't afraid of Bells, and I think this sort of inspired me to try to create some pattern for progress. For instance, I have always known the difference between a yacht hull, which is a displacement hull, and a speedboat hull which is a planing hull. By a combination of the two, I thought you could achieve a board to plane as well as displace so as to achieve speed and control all in one. I felt a split-planing surface under the tail, set at different angles, would provide the displacement of a round bottom plus the planing advantages of a flat bottom. Reduction in fin areas [also] changed the performance of my board. Actually, the surfboard is turning more into a hot rod. We are not building beautiful instruments, or beautiful boats—they are just basic hot rods. I think that's as far as my part goes.

[Midget color photo, top of the page, by John Witzig]

MIDGET AND THE REVOLUTION: A CLOSER LOOK

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