Midget Farrelly passes away
Surfing's first world champion has died overnight. Bernard 'Midget' Farrelly was 71-years-old.
Midget won the 1962 Makaha International, then considered the unofficial world title, and two years later became the legitimate world champion when he won the inaugural World Surfing Championship in 1964 at Manly Beach in Sydney. The image of Midge riding to victory in the number 3 singlet, both hands in the air, is among the most famous in Australian surfing.
Farelly was born in 1944 in Sydney, the son of a taxi driver, and spent his early years living in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. He first began to surf aged six, on an 18-foot hollow plywood paddleboard, and came of age during surfing's first big boom in the early 60s. From 1962 to 1970 he was arguably the best competitive surfer in the world.
Farrelly, however, fell out of favour with the surf media and he developed a hostile rivalry with his one time protege, Nat Young. Young was the media darling, Farrelly the bitter patriarch, a position he wasn't wholly uncomfortable with as surfing, as he viewed it, was blighted by the drug years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In recent times the surf media had begun to pay Farrelly his historical due recognising his part in the shortboard revolution. Speaking about his 2014 book Century Of Surf Tim Baker said, "I really strongly got the impression that Midget had been done a disservice by the popular version of history."
Last year, reflecting on the world championship, he said his win at Manly in 1964 came at a time of change for surfing. “If you look at images from the 1964 Manly competition some of the crowd on the beach are in suits,” Farrelly said. “We couldn’t have imagined the number of brands there are today.”
“Slowly but surely things began to change — we’re now so far along the road it’s quite amazing.”
Comments
Very sad. Condolences to the family.
Huge respect for Bernard, hard to image him not hanging out at 2008. As BB said, very sad and make sure you order your next board with Surfblanks foam as a mark of respect.
Images of a young Midget and JJF... has anybody ever joined the dots?
The similarity is spooky.
RIP.
Condolences to Midgets family and friends.
A true surfing legend. A talent in many ways. For many of you not of his generation, will be intrigued at his many talents and abilities. Not only his surfing, his board designs, windsurfing, business. RIP.
A few years ago a friend of Midget's, Marc Atkinson, wrote this in the Swellnet forums:
"Midget got a very close second to Rolf Aurness in 1970. In fact it's said one more wave and Midget would have won that title, and had he caught that wave the history of surfing would have taken a different course. Namely the design ideas would have stayed focused in Australia and not gone to the Hawaiian gun inspired planshapes that resulted from Rolf's win. Midget's inspiration as a board designer obviously would have taken centre stage as all world champs have even to this day...practical or not."
Aurness rode a 6'10" pintail (or a 7'0" depending upon who you trust) while the rest of the Aussies, bar Midget, were on sub-six foot boards taking the shortboard revolution to its illogical conclusion.
It's an interesting point and worth considering even if you don't necessarily agree with it. It'd be good to know exactly what Midget was riding though I can't find any evidence anywhere. One thing is for sure, Hawaiian-style downrailers did become more prevalent and they were as ill-fitting in standard Australian surf (East Coast) as sub-six shortboards were in Victorian waves.
I've also just spent the morning leafing through old copies of SW and Surf International. Surf International was John Witzig's title and he was supposedly the media guy that tilted things toward Young and away from Midget, yet I found plenty of column space devoted to Midge, photos, references, even whole articles penned by him.
SW issues approx. 63-66, Surf International 67-68.
R.I.P
He was such a big inspiration to me . Loved his surfing and his skateboards !
Used to see him when sailboarding up at Long Reef .
RIP midget - true to himself apart from his surfing.
On the public records, my understanding is Bob Pike was the first Australian to win an international surfing contest - The Peruvian International, also in 1962. Here is a great quote from Midget from the same source “They’re now 26 surfing publications in Australia, surfing is a school sport and if you travel to Sweden, kids there will be wearing Billabong board shorts. Pikey was there at the start when it was all just a bunch of young blokes pushing the limits. He was one of the first to ride the really big waves of Hawaii. He was one of the people who helped turn surfing into a cult” Midget Farrelly. Source: “Surf veterans farewell Bob Pike, a lord of the board” by Greg Bearup, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 June 1999.
Ah, of course! I should know that as I made the same mistake in an article a few months back and Craig Baird pulled me up.
Funny how Midge was hard done by in the mdia and here we are overlooking Pike's legacy.
Thanks for the heads up RR, have edited the article to reflect changes.
Vale Midget.
Nice article from Peter Fitz in the SMH:
http://www.smh.com.au/sport/the-fitz-files/the-day-midget-farrelly-surfe...
Big passing for the Australian surfing world. It always intrigued my why Nat and he were such enemies. Nat from a distance seems never to be short of a word and will let you know what his mouth thinks whereas Midge seemed far more measured and reserved. I thought the opposites might gel. Maybe just too much ego, anyway may you rest in peace Midge.
Condolences to family. Was he still surfing until he died?
Yeah, at least until fairly recently. Bill Morris had shots of him at Cloudbreak taken a year ago (from memory), and Barton Lynch also made mention of Midge staying on Tavarua recently.
Thats good to know a true surfer through to the end RIP.
He was out at Dee Why on his longboard a few months months back.
Also saw him a while back in a surf boat off collaroy coaching/steering a girls surf boat team.
He was hooting away when the girls caught some good runners.
It's quite amazing to go back and see just how good he was- certainly our premier stylist on both long and shortboards. He was truly balletic on a board, he made it look wonderfully easy, graceful, fluid. Even to this day his longboarding stands as a highwater mark, up there with Phil Edwards, of that artform.
I could never understand how it came to be received wisdom that he was the subject of a media campaign of planned obsolescence in order to have Nat and his cadre installed as the pinnacle of the sport. Certainly something must have happened but I don't know if the real story was ever told.
60'000 people watched him win those first world titles at Manly. Wow. That must still stand as a record crowd to watch surfing.
I never got to meet him or see him surf in person, but I certainly harboured a massive admiration for his curmudgeonly exchanges online with neophytes on surfing design website Swaylocks. He knew how to dish it out in the most witty way. He had a great mind as well as that preternatural surfing talent.
71 seems too young.
Vale Midget.
aye to that
I used to run home from school to watch the Midget Farrelly show,
RIP and my condolences to his family and friends.
Yeah Sted , did the same . After I would go out and skate or if I could get down to the beach and go for a surf.
It was so cool to see surfing on TV at that time .
a
Thought this would of been top of home page news,
more important and noteworthy than yet another video of shippie,s wipeouts
RIP Midget.
Just quickly, news stories are listed chronologically, not in order of importance.
Surfed with him about a year ago at Dee Why (where I heard he was still the surfboat rake) in mid winter he was on a 9ft slim lined longboard waiting for the bombs, Brett Herro got a classic shot of him from that session two hand above the head bottom turn classic Midget. Had a good chat in the car park about boards and all sorts of entertaining crap, he crack's a joke and leaves and we were trying to work out his age in the vein of wanting to be like that at his age. He seemed so healthy. Vale.
He was on the footage of that epic east coast swell a couple of months ago. June maybe?
RIP
I was fortunate enough to surf with Midget a few times, watch him surf many times and meet him from time to time over the years. In my opinion he set himself the highest possible standards, particularly in terms of being a role model to younger surfers, but also in the quality of anything he put his name on and, it goes without saying, in his actual surfing.
The first word that comes to mind in describing him would be dignity. He was aware of his status and tried to live up to those expectations, but without affectation. In some ways he represented a different era to many of his peers. It is hard for people who didn't live through the cultural change that occurred between 1966 and 1970 to understand how profound it was. Midget, by becoming a public figure before the change, in many ways retained its values.
A less powerful personality might, like most of his peers, have gone with the changes. He didn't. It would have been much easier to keep his opinions to himself but he felt he had a duty to speak out on the issue of drugs and his stance was extremely important. It gave the drug free life style a legitimacy in the culture that it might otherwise have lacked. It also created a link through to surfers like Mark Warren and Mark Richards, who espoused those same values, and who would keep them alive through a later generation.
I have a couple of very clear memories of him which reveal another side. The first is of getting absolutely cleaned up in the toilet bowl on a sizeable day at Haleiwa and having him take the piss out of me relentlessly, in front a mightily entertained bunch of pros, for not having the sense to pull out before it. From anyone else it might have been insulting, from him it was almost like an honour. The second was many years later on probably the best day I have ever seen at Palm Beach. It was a solid six foot, cranking lefts and I was frothing. I caught three or four set waves, took off on another and saw Midget stroke in outside me, cut straight across my line and give me a little hand signal like 'get out of the way'. Oh and a nice little smile as the lip took me out.
I rate him as being at least as significant a figure in Australian surfing as the Duke and would start raising the funds to build a statue of him to put up on Dee Why Point to match the one of the Duke at Freshwater, but something tells me he would have hated the idea!
PP he was sweep of the Palm Beach boat. The reason he was at Dee Why was that they were holding a boat racing event there so they came down to train.
The first man to put a bundy clock in a surfboard factory.
Some wonderful stories here and some all time classic photos floating around on Instagram. One of my all time favourite surf shots on mfanno 's IG tribute. My Mum dated Midget as a teenager and always said he had the best manners and respectfulness of anyone she ever met.
Vale
A master stylist and rail surfer on one fin .Respect.
He made / sold the best skateboards in the 60's. $10 (5 week's paper run wages) to replace my old roller skates screwed to a piece of wood, painted with three competition stripes.
One of the world's great stylists. Now there's a pantheon. I want one of his boards. I want one of his mals. Vale.
Agree BB, Midge is one where a statue would be appropriate. There is a plaque for him Maroubra but Dee why would be the place. Maybe Manly.
shared a chairlift with midget in the 70's at queenstown, he was skiing on a prototype snowboard, it was a broad single ski, feet parallel together on a plate facing forwards and raised about 3 inches from the ski. it looked no fun at all in relatively icey conditions despite his assurances it was the "future"
I hear the paddle out is scheduled for September 11 at Palm Beach. Get there early, it will be huge!
Sad news. What a lovely lovely man.
really sad to hear the news.only saw him surf once at the 1973 rip curl and he beyond everyone for style
DYSF are holding a paddle out to honour their first President. Around 12 just north of the surf club. All welcome.
Midget won this 1968 World surf comp in good waves. No legropes....
Heat 1 Wayne Lynch going vert; note Reno was riding a 6ft shortboard
Heat 2 Nat Young power plus
Heat 3 Midget beautiful flowing style.
Ladies next Heats
Finals @25min
35min Video
Yeah reckon he was totally ripped off. Also got 2nd in the 1970 world titles.
Great video bbbird , did you make a typo on the winner ? I thought Hemmings won the final easily and was surprised that they did a count back on the days waves . The woman’s final was also a highlight, alas the commentary hasn’t improved much in 55 years.