Photo of ‘Surf Girl’ changes history ... but does anyone know who she was?

Isabel Letham is commonly regarded as the first woman to surf in Australia. Grab a ballpoint and some liquid paper. We may have to rewrite history.

Osric Notley's now famous photo of Tommy Walker doing a headstand at Main Beach Yamba during the Surf Life Saving Season of 1911/12

I’m obsessed with this feisty young woman. Cannot stop looking at her photograph. Fascinated by the historical implications. Her image is on a wall at Surf World Gold Coast. The caption asks a question, begs more. Was this Australia’s first female surfer? We may have to grab a ballpoint and some liquid paper and rewrite the story of boardriding in this country. Again.

Not a damn thing is known about her. What a shame. What was her name? How old was she? How long did she live? What’s with the attitude? What was she thinking at this moment? I’ll surf if I want to?! You can all get stuffed?! Hurry up and take the bloody photo?!

What a face. What an expression. Combative or cheeky? A tomboy in boardies. A powerful stance. Weren’t all women and girls meant to be covered up back then? The little rebel. Or perhaps she’s a millisecond from breaking into a mighty laugh. There’s kindness in that face. Character. Who was taking the photo? Father? Mother? Brother? Sister? Boyfriend? Stranger with a Box Brownie?

The caption at Surf World reads: “The photo, titled Surf Girl 1912, was found by our volunteer Ed Southern while surfing through the GCCC Local Studies Library collection. It was taken on Greenmount Beach and is the earliest photo of a surfer we have in our collection. Does anyone know her identity?”

Let’s find Ed Southern. Here he is now. Dr Ed Southorn, to be precise. A foundation member of Surf World and Gold Coast resident for 22 years until he moved to the NSW south coast in 2021.

“I was researching a historical novel I was writing, trawling through old photos in the Gold Coast City Council Local Studies Library, a bit brain dead from hours of looking at countless images,” he says.

“When she appeared, I was stunned. What a character. Confident, feisty, athletic, a daredevil. I could see all that in her face and her stance, still wet on the sand, leaning on a small wooden board, probably a belly board, similar to the ancient ­Hawaiian alaia boards. I recognised that attitude immediately, she was a surfer, no doubt about it.”

Surfing loves a tall story. Yarns are like waves. The bigger, the better. Close enough is quite often good enough. Hawaii’s Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku is credited with introducing surfing to Australia in the summer of 1914-15 at Freshwater Beach in Sydney, but as romantic as it sounds for a legendary waterman to have been the pioneer, it simply ain’t true. Grab a ballpoint. The asterisk: there’s photos of a larger-than life Australian called Tommy Walker riding waves at Manly in Sydney in 1911.

Walker was enough of a showboater to do it standing on his head, thank you very much.

He was famous for catching a tiger shark by swimming bait straight into its mouth to make a few bob from spectators until his money-making venture was shut down by the council’s “inspector of nuisances”.

When he nearly drowned while boardriding, he told his rescuers: “Well, that’s the last time I’ll go surfing immediately after a heavy breakfast!”

He wasn’t shy about claiming to be Australia’s first surfer. When Sydney newspaper The Referee spun the old line about Kahanamoku blazing the trail, Walker wrote to the author, urging a rewrite: “I saw an article by you in ‘The Referee’ re surfboards, so enclose a photo of myself and surfboard taken in 1909 at Manly. This board I bought at Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, for two dollars, when I called there aboard the ‘Poltolock.’ I won my first surfboard shooting competition at Freshwater carnival back in 1911, and that wasn’t yesterday. Regards.”

Isabel Letham is regarded as the first woman to surf in Australia. She was plucked as a 15-year-old from the crowd by Kahanamoku to ride tandem with him at Freshwater. It’s always been deemed significant and factual enough for the late Letham to be inducted to the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame, but at the risk of being an inspector of nuisances, ballpoint, please. Surf Girl 1912 has her covered by a couple of years. She’s unlikely to have been catching waves on her own. If she was on her belly, she or one of her mates was likely to have been on her feet before 1914. When she was photographed with her plank at Greenmount – well, that wasn’t yesterday.

“I completed a Masters in surfing history and have studied a lot of old surfing photos, some more evocative than others,” Dr Southorn says.

“But never this one. It’s possible a few wooden surfboards came from Hawaii to Australia on ships in the first decades of the 20th century, and that Australians made their own wooden boards at that time after visiting Hawaii.

Some Aussies knew about surfing before Duke Kahanamoku’s famous demonstration at Freshwater in 1914 with Isabel Letham … Australian female surfing has a deep history. Not enough people know the first female world surfing champion was Australian Phyllis O’Donnell in 1964. Surfing is such a huge part of the Australian social fabric … this photo of the girl on the sand adds another layer to our history. There are not that many old photos of female surfers.”

Surf Girl 1912. What a timeless, haunting, mesmerising, ghostly, fascinating image. Feet buried in the sand. An umbrella to her left. Clean fingernails. The ocean does that to you, flushes them out. But nothing’s black and white about the black-and-white.

The mystery is a true shame. Before the world’s oldest surfing contest begins at the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach next week, does anyone know anything about the unknown surfer? 

“As far as I know, there is no name for her,” Dr Southorn says. “Tim Baker published the photo in his Australian surfing history book, but apart from that I don’t believe it’s been widely circulated at all, although she does feature on our Surf World brochures and she is popular with our visitors, a reminder that surfing on the Gold Coast goes way back. I would of course like to know who she is – but I reckon her identity might be lost to time.”