'the birds go home to roost',,, classic

Would love to go down to Yamba and see Thornton up on the stage.

Still one of the high points of my young surfing life, driving up from Bribie as a kid and coming up over the hill past the Reef Hotel and seeing Laguna Bay filled with plump swell lines.

God, nostalgia is a hard thing not to feel.... yes, it was the 60s with all the conservative, religious hogwash still flowing through society, they still had Vietnam to get through and a few global energy shocks and some recessions....but something stings a little when you think that some things are not actually physically possible anymore - like Noosa peeling for 200m with a handful of surfers, that if you wanted you could actually choose to go and live there without several million dollars in the bank - and all underpinned by a blissful ignorance about what we were doing to the planet.....

Maybe the conservative, religious hogwashers were doing something right?

Definitely wasn’t classic cyclone swell Nationals though,
Although if you regularly walk around to Granites before dawn, you might get some uncrowded waves ,?
Possibly.

I dunno, 2:25 looks a bit crowded.

Would have been such a wave park paradise back then without the crowds and development.

Did surf it a few times in the 90s when you could even get a carpark though..

Now all the hipsters mindlessly ape that look, and it just seems like a functional lack of choice back then.

Tea tree , 2022

I scored all time boiling pot last year with only a couple others out. Cyclone Gabriel

It was an incredible 5 minutes, under the stars, 45 minutes before sunrise, then 100 of my best friends poured out into the lineup haha

It looks so nice. Sad that it had to change. Remember camping at Hastings during the 80s and it wasn't a problem. Since then if I happened to be on the road up there before sun up also not a problem. I stayed there last year and as long as you get up early and don't stay out for ever it's ok.

Life was so simple and honest before mobile phones, computers and internet.
The population was only about 12 million.
Thank God for the shortboard revolution though, someone should tell the hipsters that logs were useless POS.
Surprised to see Nat on the nose so much in '68, I thought he was off it by then and into power turns.

Nostalgia is a bitch but you would have to be pretty bloody minded not to mourn being able to surf sub-tropical points with low/no crowds and be able to thrive in coastal towns without needing millions.

Those days are gone for ever.

I think a few guys in the 60 s 70s got lucky and got it to themselves,
But Noosa still has perfect waves, which are
sometimes less crowded than other times,
Maybe why longboarders don’t complain about crowds as much as short boarders
(Assumption)

The council has wiped maybe 80 spots from the little cove area for parking. It’s a dick move driven by residents complaining about too many people parking…although maybe is slightly less in the water. Living here the long boarders are pests, a lot surfing no leggies as though there isn’t 50 plus people out and young kids too.

As someone who has surfed, off and on, at Noosa since the mid '60s (more off than on since 1990s) a couple of things stood out in that old footage. Firstly, back then there was deep(ish) water off first point, creating the long wave that used to break off the point there. Sand pumping has put an end to that, and indeed the next point at Johnsons Bay as well. Back then, on more solid days, First Point would barrel perfectly for 100m or more, starting on rock and running along and across the sandbank, ending in a close-out on Main Beach. During big cyclone swells like Dinah and Lena, First Point could handle solid 6' plus surf. Standouts (with apologies to those I haven't mentioned) among the young local crew who grew up on Hastings Street (yes it was residential back then) included Robert and Derek Male, Reggie Johns, Glenn O'Brien, Pegsy, Merv and Wayne Gower, Peter Wallace, Shane Staley, Paul Donaldson, an the Thorgelsons. Bruce Marion would occasionally grace us, surfing through from Boiling Pot. As would shapers Kevin Platt (towards the end of his stellar surfing - shaping career), Darrell Rooster Dell, Stringbean, and during their stays Richie West and Michael Cundith, among others. The waves were never empty, but there was a degree of respect for good surfing that seems to waver as crowds and new faces fill the lineup. Granite remained a lot less crowded right through to early 2000s, particularly when it was over 6', and before the sand buildup, could handle double-overhead waves wedging off Fairy Pools, with leg-burning rides towards Dolphin Point at back of Tea-Tree. My own minor claim-to-fame is surfing and paddling from Granite to Main Beach - used to do that fairly regularly, as I guess crew still do today. But as noted above, the sand pumping has put an end to First Point and Johnos, at least as we knew them back in the 60s-70s. Noosa will need several major cyclones in succession, as happened in the mid-late 60s, to change that. At which point, many of the richie-riches who have bought in there will have a major wake-up call!

And just to add that the clubbie body-surfers out there during those big 1960s cyclones claimed they could see the Reef Hotel from the top of the waves at the back of First Point. That was before Netanya was built, but still an impressive call.

All too true Stu, but the Council is focused on filling the beach with sand, and tourist $$$, and they have been very successful in doing that. Surfers are not necessarily the most cashed-up crew, although that too has changed as surfing has become mainstream no doubt there are heaps of surfing millionaires and maybe even a few billionaires - wandering off topic here, bit yes the days of a 2 metre drop off the rock wall on Main Beach, hastily dumped there back in the late-60s are long-gone, at least for the present. The Council has a surfing councilor these days, and Phil Jarrett, an episodic correspondent here, writes a regular surf-focused column in the local paper, but I doubt there's much desire to lose the extra-wide beach, even a little ...

God points re the sand flow and Clarkes at Byron!

Strangely, I had a nightmare last night - and again wandering off-topic, but I dreamed I was walking along the sand point at Double Island Point (a classic case in point re sand flow) and there was an ugly besser block (no offence to besser) building there with two young women offering tourist information! The dream is partly based in the reality of the earlier loss of the 'Cardinal Principle' of nature preservation from the Queensland National Parks Act during the Newman regime, and increasing push for 'eco-tourism' - effectively giving away what has always been public ownership for posterity to vested interests catering to those with the $$$. Back in 2017 Labor promised to restore it, but never did. This is not to discount some activities in National Parks (Noosa is, I believe, the most heavily visited in the state) but that there should not be private development inside them - my view, no doubt others think differently.

a very good and valid point of view lindo - hence it was very pleasing that the recent push for that private development in the Noosa NP/Cooloola was quashed. Cooloola has been kept cool, for now...

and speaking of DI, havent been up in many years, but have a real treat in a couple of weeks, staying at the lighthouse for a week, yew! Might report back on the sand situation after that

Cheers GreenJam - getting some NPA maintenance in I guess - hope the points, lefts and/or rights, deliver for you. And interested to read of the sand situation on both sides ... Swellnet does a great job of covering that aspect. My first trip there was 1959, riding up front as a 3 year old with George Clifford and his wife in their converted army truck 'tourist bus' on their weekly delivery run up Teewah Beach to the lighthouse keeper and family. Back then, George would stop for folk to collect coloured sands on Teewah and Rainbow sides - I've still got some stashed somewhere 6 1/2 decades later. George built the House of Bottles in Tewantin and then the Big Stubby - no idea if they still exist. He found a huge chunk of ambergris on one run - reckoned it was worth 10,000 quid back then ... That was before the sand miners got started, then stopped, and 4WDs became very popular. It is a magical place, as are all the undeveloped headlands along the Aussie coast! There's another early surf video, maybe already posted on Swellnet, of Mactavish and crew driving an old 2WD up there to surf tiny waves on the Rainbow side ...

nice reminisce there lindo, thanks. Lucky you having those experiences.

yes, a bit of daily weeding will cover most of the 'rent'. Really looking forward to exploring all of the headland, and yes, hoping huey will deliver something fun. cheers

I attended the screening on Fri night at the Lennox community centre.
Great night, got to meet Jolyon: great bloke.

It was funny, before the screening that night, thinking about this issue of nostalgia for what has been lost (uncrowded surf mostly, cheap living) I had a knock-off surf down at the local.
It was windy, building B-grade surf and there wasn't a soul around.
I surfed solo, at the edge of a feeding frenzy until I felt a pressure wave underneath me that sent me in immediately.
Irony was in this of nostalgia I was hoping someone else would paddle out.

Lots of good moments in the film. Australian surfing has a lot to be proud about- a lot of wisdom in it.

It was a damn good night.

Here's a current shot of the corner of Clarkes showing the vegetated salt marsh that has colonised the area.
Mostly Knobbly Club Rush and prickly couch.
Never seen that before.

I use to sleep there in the 80's.
Put a "for rent" sign up and buy a disposable sim card....$ £ !!

If it wasnt for Jules Verne, Tom Swift & Greenoughs' tuna fin..... they may have all faded into another beautiful sunset.

http://www.tomswift.info/homepage/gforce.html

Meanwhile the chunky clunky D'fin was driving those mals straight down & hard ..... at pipeline Hawaii; in 1968

Before ASP & WSL .....Hawaii pro competition for TV.... in 1965