WOMEN’S SURFING
Women have often been overlooked in the history of surfing. Most research focuses on male surfers. However, this does not mean women have made no contribution to the sport. Far from it. There have been many great female surfers throughout the decades. Today around a third of of Australia’s surfers are women. In the 1900s male and female surfers were known to consider each other equals when out riding the waves. Particularly throughout the 1950s and 1960s, women who surfed felt respected by male surfers and male and female surfers were known to hang out and generally be good friends with each other. The 1950s was also when surfing became officially recognised as a sport. At first men and women were not separated for surfing competitions but eventually competition organisers began creating separate events for men and women. Women competed at the first International Surfing Championships held in Makaha, Hawaii.
ISABEL LETHAM
Possibly Australia’s most famous female surfer. Isabel gained notoriety when she surfed tandem with Hawaiian Olympic swimming champion Duke Paoa Kahanamoku for an exhibition surfing lesson at Dee Why Beach on the 6th of February 1915. She later said in an interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, “I was really frightened, but the Duke took me by the scruff of the neck, stood me before him, and we took the shoot.” According to a newspaper article at the time, Isabel struggled to keep her balance during the ride and eventually fell off.
Duke left his surfboard to another of his students, Claude West, and Isabel would frequently borrow it to go out surfing, much to her father’s chagrin. In fact, she had to ask one of the local lifeguards to keep an eye out for her father returning over the hill by the beach and then ring the shark bell to warn her so she could return before he caught her surfing.
Isabel has become somewhat of a legend in Australian surfing. However, some people believe her exhibition surf lesson, which earned her a place in history, was heavily exaggerated or did not happen at all. These people believe the story was a fantasy, invented or exaggerated, by newspapers trying to improve the image of Australian surfing. In the early 1900s surfing was a sport dominated by men in Australia and these men were often described as aggressive and brutish. The argument is that the Isabel story added a new layer to Australian surfing, one with determined tomboyish girls taking on the waves.
Speaking of fantasy, many writers, of both fiction and non-fiction, have published books and articles fantasising the relationship between Isabel and Duke. That Summer at Boomerang by Phil Jarratt details a romance between the two born of time they spent together while Duke was in Australia. Isabel herself apparently claimed many times throughout her life to be in love with Duke. Surf historian Peter Warr once talked about an interview he did with Isabel in the 1980s saying: “She started talking about her feelings for him. I said, ‘that’s wonderful that you kept these feelings all these decades,’ and she just said, ‘oh, he’s in my heart’.” There is no definite evidence of a romantic relationship between the two but it isn’t likely.
photo of Isabel Letham surfing, credit: Dee Why Library.
Photo of Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, credit: The Australian.
Isabel is considered the first female surfer in Australia and the only female surfer of her time. However, this is not actually true. Others have simply and unfortunately been forgotten by history.
ISMA ARMOR
She apparently began after finding an abandoned surfboard on the beach and simply taking it out into the waves and, through a process of trial and error, self-learning how to surf.
She began surfing after her family moved to Manly when she was just a child because she had contracted polio (poliomyelitis: a viral infection that can cause temporary or permanent paralysis). Her daughter wrote in a letter to Murray Philips and Gary Osmond, who were doing research on her mother for an article about female surfers, that after moving her mother ‘became a very good swimmer and, eventually, surfer.’
Isma comes up in newspapers and various statistical reports such as surf club committee meeting minutes and lifeguard reports but little is known about the details surrounding her and her exploits as a surfer.
Photo of a young woman surfing from an article about Isma Armor, possibly a photo of Isma but not specified in the article, credit: Sunday Times.
She was good friends with Isabel Letham and the two would often surf together on Bilgola beach in Sydney.
She was a member of Manly Life Saving Club in the 1910s and spent a lot of time an effort into mastering the art of surfing.
Her skill as a surfer was praised in the Sunday Times in January 1914:
“Another charming young person of 15 or 16 summers, distinguishable by a red bathing cap and a figure of slight and graceful type, has been very much in evidence of late in the Village by the sea [Manly]. She manipulates the waves as if to the manner born, and crowds of visitors have been delighted by her expositions of surfcraft.”
And again in April:
“The use of surf-boards of the Honolulu variety has become the rage at Manly of late … Miss Amor is the best lady exponent so far produced as, in the case of the ordinary form of breaker-shooting [body surfing], she makes a very clever showing.”
GAIL COUPER
Sadly, not all female surfers were respected the way Isma was, in fact many faced harsh discrimination. Gail Couper was an Australian surfer throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Things were not easy for her; in her own words women who surfed were ‘harassed and put down’ and she herself was once punched.
Many other female surfers around that time claimed surfing was a ‘boys club’; that the male surfers saw each other as a community but didn’t include any of the female surfers. In fact female surfers were often insulted and objectified.
Gail often spoke out against the poor treatment of female surfers. She was reportedly pleased to hear the news in 2019 that women and men if professional surfing competitions would finally be given equal prize money. She said she felt it was “about time” and “a positive move.”
Photo of Gail Couper, credit: ABC News.
She took second place at the Women’s Finals of the World Surfing Championships in September 1966 when she was only 18 years old. In October that same year she also competed in the Women’s Division of the Australian Surfing Championships but only came in fourth. She apparently blamed herself for not placing better saying, “fourth place is pretty good, but it would have been better had I surfed properly.”
Throughout her career as a surfer she achieved records still yet to be broken. Most famously, she has won the Bells Beach competition 10 times. No other surfer, male or female, has ever won the competition that many times.
Gail was born in Lorne in Victoria. When she was 15 she began spending her summers surfing on the beach near her house with a few other female surfers as well as her friend and fellow surfing legend Wayne Lynch.
Photo of Gail Couper surfing, credit: ABC News.
Between 1966 and 1975 she claimed four women’s titles in surfing.
Gail went on to become a school teacher and is now retired.