Australia’s first female surfing champion stood her own with the blokes

PHYLLIS O’DONNELL: 1937–2024

Phyllis O’Donnell was Australia’s first female surfing world champion, claiming victory in the 1964 world titles, alongside Midget Farrelly, at Manly. Phyllis was also one of surfing’s most endearing characters. She travelled the world in pursuit of waves, visited Hawaii 18 times and loved to surf Sunset.

Known for her sense of humour, mischievous smile and classic surfing style, Phyllis will be remembered as one of the greats of Australian surfing.

Phyllis O’Donnell, winner of the women’s surfing world title, on May 18, 1964.Credit: Staff

This author interviewed her in her later years at her care home in Pottsville, on the Tweed Coast. I make my way upstairs, and see Phyllis sitting in the courtyard, eyes closed and face to the sky, drenched in spring sunshine. We take a seat in the courtyard together, and I see that Phyllis has brought her Hall of Fame trophy with her.

Phyllis was born in Drummoyne, Sydney, in 1937. She was a late bloomer, she tells me, and didn’t get on a board until the ripe old age of 23.

Phyllis O’Donnell in 1966.Credit: Fairfax

“I didn’t know a thing about surfing,” she says. “I bought my first surfboard from a place called Nock & Kirby’s. It’s like buying a surfboard from Woolies. I didn’t have a clue. I used to go down to Manly and I met a man named Snowy McAlister, who I would call my motivator or mentor. Snowy was many years older. He used to be able to get on a board and stand on his head.”

With Snowy’s coaxing, Phyllis became a regular down at Manly beach, and by the time she was 27, she had won the 1964 World Surfing Championships, alongside Midge Farrelly.

“It was very hard, surfing with all those blokes. You had to be aggressive,” she says.

Phyllis is a natural storyteller and launches into one of her signature yarns. “I was surfing at Rainbow Bay one day, and I had a pink rinse put through my hair. These guys were laughing. I said: ‘What are you laughing at?’ They said: ‘You’. They said: ‘We haven’t seen anyone as old as you surfing.’

Surfing World cover with Midget Farrelly and Phyllis O’Donnell, 1964.Credit: Internet

“Well, I was only 29. Anyhow, one guy dropped in on me, I got him by his wetsuit and pushed him into the rocks. You know, don’t mess with the old girl.”

Phyll was no pushover, but she also says she wasn’t overly competitive. “When Midget and I won our World Titles at Manly there were about 60,000 people on the beach. No one thought that we would win. There was a girl, Lynda Benson, she used to play in the Gidget films, and she was a very fierce competitor. Lynda was favoured to win, but what happened is, they started to play some really nice music, and I totally relaxed. I just swayed along to the music, jazzed along the waves – I didn’t even know I was in a contest any more.”

And so Phyllis O’Donnell, for whom surfing was a kind of dance, became Australia’s first female world champ, and her prize, as she loves to tell, was a carton of Craven A cigarettes. “And I smoked ’em all!” she declares with a chuckle.

Phyllis’ story is demonstrative of the immense shifts seen in surfing over the past 50 years. She has heard about the World Surf League’s recent announcement of equal pay for women. A momentous step in surfing history, especially when compared with Phyll’s prize-winning experience. “I think it’s great,” she says. “The girls that surf now, they’ve got a good fortune ahead of them. As I said, I was happy with my Craven A cigarettes.”

In those days, being a world champ didn’t translate to a career in surfing, and it’s only in recent years that the top 17 have been able to rely on surfing as a sole source of income. But Phyllis had a penchant for the road, and so she did bar work to fund her travels around the world.

The women’s world surfboard champion, 27-year-old Phyllis O’Donnell, prepares to represent Australia in the International Surf-board championships in Honolulu, 1964.Credit: Fairfax

“I can’t believe I used to carry a whole tray of middies, of spirits and beer, holding it above my head!”

Phyll travelled to Hawaii, California and the South Pacific, but it was Puerto Rico, she tells me, that stole her heart.

Other tributes:

Gail Austen: “In the surf, women were simply not welcome. Philly didn’t get that message or maybe she ignored it. Her answer was her courage, and talent. Her voice was used a lot to clear a pathway and prevent injury from the male surfers who did not put out a welcome mat.

“Surfing with Philly meant I got a wave and was assured a party afterwards in her flat opposite Rainbow Beach. Phyllis O’Donnell scored Australia’s first Surfing World Championship before Midget Farrelly paddled out to make it two in a row, adding the men’s title to the record books at Manly Beach in 1964.

“On the beach at D-Bah [Duranbah, north of the Tweed River] in January 1971, upon my return from Europe, I attended a contest where the men and the boys were out with the good surf and the women were left to the poor surf.

“Philly was on the beach and was really fed up, so I said to her: Why don’t we form the women’s surfing group and change things. So I was automatically the president and she was the secretary treasurer. AWSA then created surf contests for women throughout the east coast of Australia and we spent many hours driving south, organising and competing in these events. Youngsters like Pamela Burridge and veterans like Isabel Latham became involved.”

Deb Wordsworth: “She was our surfing [Edith] Piaf [she was maybe five foot tall]. She loved the water so much that her mother said she was brought up on plankton. In the 1960s she was often accompanied in the surf by American women boardriders in their Hawaiian bikinis. She could be quite wild. Kahlua was her choice of drink, resulting in what she used to call her ‘Kahlua Plans’. Sometimes a ‘plan’ involved a liaison.”

“Now that’s a beautiful place! I used to work at Twin Towns on the Gold Coast. I had a three-week leave of absence to attend a surfing competition. Well, I stayed in Puerto Rico [for] 12 months. I was eight stone when I left, when I came back I was 10. Hamburgers, French fries, pancakes! But mostly rum, Emily, that was The Rum Trip.” Phyllis tells me this last part with a little twinkle in her eye.

But Hawaii is Philly’s first love. She’s been 18 times, loves to surf Sunset, and if ever, throughout her life, she has found herself floundering, her mantra goes: If in doubt, go to Hawaii.

Phyllis is of tough stock, a woman of wry humour who doesn’t seem to take life too seriously. She shunned the idea of the nuclear family for a life of surfing and travel, in a time when to be a surfer meant to go against the grain.

Phyllis O’Donnell of Banora Point, north NSW with some of her trophies.Credit: Fairfax

Phyllie always had her vices, just like the surf culture she’s part of. While surfing grows cleaner and more respectable as it matures, it will always have its loose cannons. We breed them by our very nature – and aren’t we glad we do?

Reproduced with permission of Tracks surfing magazine.