My childhood impression of surfing was that it was almost an entirely new way of living. It seemed to be wrapped around a collection of progressive and, at the time, alternative ideas; connecting to nature, engaging with eastern philosophies, practising healthy living, eating different foods, not working 9-5 and more. My hero was my uncle, who had moved to Lennox Head to surf, building his own shack out of wood salvaged from falling-down farmhouses. Surfing was beautiful, exhilarating and dangerous and felt ‘real’ when compared to my suburban Sydney upbringing. As I grew older I watched as surfing became more commercial, aggressive and competitive. The beautiful ideas I had related to surfing were sidelined as it was packaged and sold all around the world. One day I was standing on an underground train station in Washington DC, 6 hours drive from any ocean, and was surrounded by Billabong and Rip Curl t-shirts. One of surfing’s original gurus, Alby Falzon, says “First they owned the companies, and then the companies owned them”. Those original beautiful ideas seemed to be lost. I still saw them in the surf and on the beaches, but the perception of surfing had become something very different. For a long time I’ve imagined making a film about the ‘true’ culture of surfing, about those beautiful dreamy progressive ideas which had first attracted me.
In 2008 I was in Dick Hoole’s garage looking for footage of famously reclusive schizophrenic surfing legend Michael Peterson for a film Searching for Michael Peterson. I found some beautiful shots of ‘MP’, but there were piles of other film reels. I wondered - what gold must be hiding in those other film cans? And what about the other filmmakers, what happened to their footage? During the pandemic these two ideas came together and I decided to use this ‘lost’ film footage to make a film about the side of surfing which didn’t fit the commercial mould. I think surfing culture can be seen as an analogy for the wider Australian colonial culture and, as Australia moves forward, grows up and becomes more multicultural and globally connected, we need to decide what we want to leave behind and what we want to keep.
You Should Have Been Here Yesterday will start conversations. What mistakes did we make? And what beautiful new ideas did we help usher into mainstream Australia? There is a conversation taking place, and it has only just begun.
