The birth of Aussie surfing

Down the coast from here, a long way down (about 600 clicks), is Sydney's Manly Beach, said to be "Seven miles from Sydney and a thousand miles from care". That was before miles were replaced with 'clicks'.

Like everywhere in Oz and in a lot of the world, the guys and gals like to surf at Manly, and Sandy, and they owe it to the Big Kahuna.

On this day, January 15, 1915, the world-famous Big Kahuna (Duke Kahanamoku; 1890 - 1968), from Hawaii performed surfboard riding for the first time in Australia, at Freshwater Beach near Manly. And on the same day, 16-year-old Isabel Letham became Australia's first female board rider.

Legendary surfer Duke Paoa Kahanamoku was an Hawaiian Olympic swimming champion, in Australia for a competition swim at the Domain Baths. He toured Sydney's northern beaches and chose Freshwater Beach, near Manly, to show Sydneysiders the finer points of surfboard riding, a hitherto unknown sport in Australia.

The Duke made a board out of a piece of sugar pine provided by a surf club member. After some graceful acrobatics, he called for a volunteer from the crowd that had assembled on the sand, to join him in a display of tandem riding. Young Isabel rode with the Duke for three hours becoming the Australia's first female surfer, on the day the sport was first demonstrated in Australia.

Isabel Letham left Australia for the US in 1918 to become a stunt woman in the movies, later teaching swimming and water ballet. She died on March 11, 1995.

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