By Millie Muroi
Surfing legends including Kelly Slater, Layne Beachley and Tom Carroll are campaigning to erect a statue of the late inaugural Australian world surfing champion Bernard “Midget” Farrelly in Palm Beach.
Former Quicksilver chief executive Bruce Raymond said Farrelly’s legacy - which included taking out the first official World Surfing Championship at Manly Beach in 1964, needed to be enshrined on the northern beaches.
Surfing legends are campaigning for a statue to honour Midget Farrelly. Credit: HISTORIC HOUSES TRUST OF NEW SOUTH WALES/Artists Impression: Gillies and Marc
“We have the first-ever world surfing champion right here in our backyard,” Raymond said. He recalled going down to the shore as a 10-year-old, alongside 60,000 people, to watch Farrelly win the first world title, which he said had a big influence on him.
The plan has the support of Farrelly’s family, including his widow Beverlie.
The statue, which mirrors a famous photo taken during the 1964 World Surfing Championship, would depict Farrelly surfing with his hands in the air, an image that encapsulates his fluidity, style and grace. It would be placed in the Palm Beach Plaza, with a $150,000 fundraising target to bring it to life.
Australian former professional surfer Tom Carroll with grommets he teaches every Friday morning.Credit: Brook Mitchell
On Friday morning, a group of grommets took to the waves of Palm Beach with Carroll despite the windy and sub par surf conditions. Standing in his wetsuit, Carroll told The Sun-Herald that as a young boy himself, he had photos of Farrelly in his Bible, and that the surfing legend left a mark on him.
“There was a beauty in his approach and his unwavering commitment to the life of a surfer,” he said.
Farrelly also left a lasting legacy on surfing style in Australia, especially among women. “Today there’s a whole movement of surfers who are surfing in the style that Midget represented,” Raymond said. “A lot of those surfers are actually female because it takes grace as opposed to brute power.”
Midget Farrelly pictured in 1986.Credit: Lorrie Graham
Co-chair of the Midget Farrelly Recognition Committee Gordon Lang said Farrelly’s style at least partially came from his childhood where “[Farrelly] actually did ballet when he was young to try to get the grace.”
Farrelly started catching waves at North Bondi Beach in the early 1950s and became the first non-American or Hawaiian surfer to win the Makaha International championship in Hawaii in 1962. He later moved to Palm Beach where he surfed almost daily for 54 years until he died in 2016.
While Farrelly was inducted to the Hall of Fame of Sport Australia in 1985, the Surfing Walk of Fame at California’s Huntington Beach in 2007, and posthumously inducted as a Member of the Order of Australia, Raymond said the statue of Farrelly in Palm Beach would help recognise the surfer’s global contribution to surfing, locally.
“There’s the Duke statue in Waikiki, the Kelly Slater’s statue in Florida, and the proposed Midget statue on Palm Beach will complete a trifecta,” he said.
“The statue will give people a feeling that this truly is an area serving and acknowledging Midget’s contribution to the overall good lifestyle and good feeling that a lot of people get from surfing.”
Carroll said the proposed statue was important in recognising the place where Farrelly, and some of surfing’s biggest names, got their start. “This area has produced world champions from the northern beaches, all the way along from Manly to Palm Beach,” he said.
Farrelly kept surfing every day until he died in 2016. Credit: Dallas Kilponen
But Carroll said the statue would also serve a broader purpose. “Surfing means so many things to different people, but the main thing is that it’s a dance with the ocean,” he said. “The way we take ourselves into the ocean as Australians, and our relationship with the ocean. That’s what Midget really brought.” Carroll said the statue would be “a beautiful reminder of really who we are.”
The Midget Farrelly Recognition Committee is asking for community donations toward building the statue.
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