Kevin Brennan was a tough freckle-faced kid from Bondi Beach who won both the junior and senior divisions of the 1965 New South Wales State Championships. He was just 15. Two years later, filmmaker Paul Witzig captured Brennan and pal Bobby Brown surfing Noosa, and the resulting sequence was a highlight of Witzig's 1967 film Hot Generation. By the turn of the decade, however, Brennan had detached from the surf scene and was spiraling into drug use and petty crime. He died in 1975, at age 25.

The following quotes are from various sources, both print and digital. Most are from people who knew Kevin personally.

Kevin ‘The Head’ Brennan, nicknamed so for his outrageously large cranium, was a jockey-sized petty thief with almost supernatural surfing ability.


Brennan was to his generation what Michael Peterson was to the next.


He was a surfing prodigy, an extravagantly talented switchfoot who could surf the Platts off riders twice his age and double his size.


I saw him paddle out with a lit cigarette, catch his first wave, and flick it away when he got to the nose. He was a great talent. You never thought you were better than Kevin Brennan. He’d just go out and trounce you any day of the week. But he couldn’t keep it together and sometimes he couldn't be bothered to even show up. Kev had a disadvantaged life.


Dad shot through early. Mum drank. Her boyfriends monstered the boy. And with his home-made haircut, busted teeth, and appetite for danger, he was the archetypal delinquent for whom the Bondi surf was both babysitter and battlefield. Australian surf culture took off through these tough kids locked out of home.


Bondi in the 1960s was not the glamorous location we all know today. Back then it was described by newspapers as “a seaside slum.” Flanked by sewage outlets to the north and south, Bondi’s street-smart surfers were accustomed to all manner of trash–both human or otherwise. Led by the legendary Jack Mayes, Bondi’s top boardriders would hang out by the "Hep Pit," a leaky storm drain at the southern end of the beach. This is where the phrase "Scum Valley"—a now affectionate name for Bondi, proudly proclaimed by some current locals—takes its roots.


Kevin had little use for school and from an early age spent most of his day surfing. The rest of the time was spent dodging truant officers and nurturing a career in petty crime.


The Head’s Breakfast [was] double milk and two raw eggs, a teaspoon of vanilla essence, a slab of ice cream, and an overripe banana–all whipped up hard and topped with a cream squirt, followed by a Cherry Ripe choco bar.


I went to Bondi Beach primary school with Kevin Brennan, Chris Brock and a few other larrikins. Kevin got me into surfing when I was about 10. My parents took me to the beach one weekend to meet the South Bondi crew. I remember Mick Dooley was there along with Barry Magoo, and the big Kahuna of them all, Jack "Bluey" Mayes. I was dying for a go on a board and asked Jack if I could ride his. He just laughed and introduced me to Kevin Brennan who said g'day mate, hear you want a ride. Kev loaned me his board. It was a shocker, though. Someone had broken a 16' toothpick in half, rounded off one of the broken bits, and glued it up to somehow resemble a mal. It leaked so you had to drain it every 20 minutes. Later, Kevin taught me some of his bad habits like wagging school and breaking into the South Bondi Boardriders club which was just an iron door across a cave in the side of the cliff to get a nice board to ride.


I knew him back in the day and he was an aggravating pain in the ass looking for trouble. A lot of good guys came out of Bondi. Good guys that surfed great and made a success out of their lives. Not much is said about them but that’s the way life works—bad news makes the headlines.


Brennan spent some time at Vaucluse High, a hotbed of South Bondi surfers, and I was part of a Waverley College Leaving certificate class scheduled to do an exam in the school’s hall. The local lads watched us all file in, uniformed and wearing boaters. How they scoffed. Brennan left the group when he saw me, walked over, came right up and wished me luck.
That’s the bloke I remember.


Roaring tales of Kevin’s mischief-making abound; stories of him breaking into board sheds, being bashed senseless, tied to poles, and pissed on after picking one too many pockets. He was a serial school truant who’d run away for weeks on end.


He got caught once doing something he shouldn't have been doing, and was tied naked to a pole at the southern end of the beach. The only lesson he might have learned that day was not to get caught the next time.


Kevin possessed a talent for attracting crowds, either lined up along the water’s edge watching gobsmacked as he surfed, or else being chased through the Bondi car park by a mob of fellow board club members after being caught rifling through their gear.


He rode a different board every day, he just borrowed other people's boards.


I got down there one afternoon to find my board missing from the cave. Kevin came over and told me he'd been riding it outside of the official surfing area that day, and the Beach Inspector, as they did back then, confiscated it for two weeks. Kevin said he was very sorry.


 and when he put the show on at Anzac House in College Street someone busted the glass doors in their hurry to get inside, then Kevin hopped up onto the stage and played the fool until everyone threw things at him.


In 1965, he did what no other Australian surfer had done before or since, winning both the NSW State junior and senior titles. To win the senior event he had to beat ’64 world champ Midget Farrelly, and Nat Young, who claimed the world title in 1966.


It was the year the Beach Boys outsold the Beatles and over 30,000 Sydneysiders packed Bondi Beach to see 92-pound Kevin Brennan easily win both the juniors and men's divisions of the NSW State titles on a borrowed board with a busted fin.


Fifteen-year-old Kevin Brennan, of Bondi, won the junior and senior finals in the NWS surfboard championships at South Bondi yesterday. Brennan, 4' 9" tall, gave the crowd a deft exhibition of riding in a very light surf. The heavier surfers had no hope of performing as well on the small surf as did the lightweight Brennan, [who] frequently hung five on the nose of his board as he took the left-hand curl, and at on stage rode backwards with his foot on the nose, a feat seldom seen in competitive surfing. His performance was all the more remarkable in that he surfed three heats running: a semifinal in the seniors, then the juniors final, then straight back into the water for the senior final.


Kevin Brennan's record-making double win in the State Championships last week gets me thinking about competition. I don't want to devalue "The Head's" performance. He surfed really well and deserved the titles. But what happens if a junior wins the National Championships and so ends up being Australia's representative in the big overseas surf? A surfer like Kevin Brennan, good as he is, would get eaten alive on a big day at Makaha.


- Midget Farrelly, Sydney Morning Herald, April 11, 1965

The best longboard surfing in Paul Witzig's 

, for my money anyway, takes place at Tallows in Bryon Bay, with teenaged wonderboy Kevin Brennan and Bobby Brown. Sand dunes and blue skies. Nobody else in the water, and crystalline sheet-glass beachbreak lefts pouring through.


Brennan baffled everyone by surfing brilliantly, drunk or sober, and was the star of the movie.


Unfortunately, Kevin’s talent stopped at the water’s edge. Apart from picking up a few minor endorsements and appearing in 

 he was unable to translate his surfing success into a career or even a reasonable living. Never the sharpest knife in the drawer, he quickly immersed himself in a drug lifestyle that eventually left little time for surfing.


When I first moved here [Queensland, 1969], Kevin came with us. I was teaching him how to shape. He just had personal problems. When he was growing up, he got a lot of shit from everyone, and it played on him.


He ended up a derelict in an overcoat walking the beachfront. He was playing at being a psycho to get a pension but ended up believing his own ploy. Even still, he'd bum a board off the beach, go out and rip, then step off the sand and walk off.


Legend has it Kevin could pick your pocket, suck your dick and betray you within the hour.


In 1975, ten years after what was probably the best day of his life, Kevin Brennan died of a heroin overdose in a Kings Cross nightclub. He was 25 years old and mourned by the few friends that he hadn’t managed to completely alienate.


He died of an overdose and the surfing world barely noticed.


There was no obituary, nor funeral of any note.


Kevin died choking on an oversized medication tablet, whilst fighting his addiction. I was his friend and schoolmate; I kept in touch with his mother [after Kevin's death]. Scott Dillon told me recently, talking about the '60, he said, "those Bondi Boys are no good, the lot of 'em."


Kevin Brennan was a classic Bondi boy—tough, damaged, lost. It's not complicated. He crashed and burned. He was the first casualty of Australian surfing.


[Photos: John Pennings, Jack Eden, Paul Witzig, Dave Milnes]

ORAL HISTORY: REMEMBERING AUSSIE TEEN-TERROR KEVIN BRENNAN

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