The Webbers

North Bondi, 1965.

Mont, me, Greg and John, 1968.

John sanding in back yard at Rose Bay, 1976.

The camper van, 1977.

Ellksy and Dan, 1977.

Angourie, 1979.

Monty on the awning at Britannic Mansions, 1980.

Norfolk Island, 1986.

Dan and Di Adams, Norfolk Island, 1986.

Norfolk Island.

Curved fins, 1987.

South Bondi graffiti, 1990.

The fourth of six boys, I was born between the baby boom and generation X. John, Greg and Mont were born within a shorter period than the gap between me and them, while Will and Ben were born five and six years after me. We grew up in the one house, situated in the harbour side suburb of Rose Bay, between the affluent suburb of Vaucluse and the then working class suburb of Bondi Beach. We were neither rich nor poor, but had access to the best of both worlds. For as long as I can remember, we have commanded respect, captaining classes, cricket and football teams, schools, etc. John was the school captain of Cranbrook in the same year I was school captain of Rose Bay Public. The notoriety attracted girls, opportunities and enterprises, opening doors to VIP treatment that always seemed unwarranted and yet irresistible. Like a badge of authority, the Webber name got me waves, not to mention entire surfing adventures. But, it's devastating when a girl says: "I can't believe I'm with a Webber!".

One way or another, you pay for your privileges and for my part, slip streaming my brothers only made independence from them more challenging. So, after two business failures; a clothing label with Greg and a surf shop with Gynge, I fled to Norfolk Island, where I spent a year surfing in the wilderness and experimenting with bizarre curved fin designs. My girlfriend was a descendant of the Bounty Mutineers. Her ancestors were granted the island, having outgrown their remote hideaway of Pitcairn Island. Prior to their arrival, Norfolk Island was a penal settlement. The island's history, its culture and natural beauty are enchanting. But, it wasn't home and so I returned to Sydney.

Our ancestors, some of whom were convicts, were influential figures within Sydney's business community. One married the daughter of a wealthy land owner, whose portfolio included the entire Bondi foreshore. Another built Waverley House, the first house in the district that subsequently took its name. He also built the colony's first theatre, its first high-rise and the first lending library. But, if the family had a visionary, it was the ex-convict brother, whose trade in and out of the colony brought such riches that he part owned huge swathes of land surrounding Sydney. Their prosperity stretched the resources of the financial institutions, which were humiliated when the partnership issued the colony's first currency. But, he personally lost £20,000 on an ambitious plan to establish a settlement on the Swan River, and his brother, known as the "Father of Australian Theatre" went broke in his quest to bring culture to the colony.

Apart from the obvious pride I feel in being a 7th generation Australian, it is uncanny that the same sort of audacity displayed by our colonial forebears appears to have carried through to my own family. How did George Negus figure on the Webbers being "Australian surfing royalty"? What a kind thing to say. Suddenly, his taking over Dateline didn't seem so bad. The news story concerned a shipment of surfboards destined for PNG, where surfers were shaping their boards out of raw timber cut from the buttress roots of banyan trees. After the episode, viewers were asked to donate surfboards to the remote village. Inspired by the story, we donated a new surfboard with custom decals of their traditional village symbol and the surf club's logo. The Webber logo wasn't used, because it wasn't meant to be a promotional stunt. It was just great to see these young guys solving problems in such a novel way. It reminded me of how we had started making surfboards.

The first boards we made were shaped out of stripped down old malibus. Dad was really supportive, which was unusual in the 70s, when most people thought surfing was synonymous with dropping out of society. I can remember body surfing with Dad at North Bondi. So, I guess that's how I started surfing. Come to think of it, Greg did make a few hand boards. But, that was after he had already reshaped a few coolites. The early coolites were so thick, they bounced around like a cork. So, John and Greg carved theirs to look more like the short boards that had revolutionised surfing in the early 70s. Naturally, one is tempted to credit one's father with having such foresight that he was able to plant the seed of one's eventual success. But, now that I have my own kids, I wonder if the coolites were actually a strategic investment, giving Dad the freedom to enjoy a surf without having to constantly monitor the kids. Had it been the 80s, I suspect he would have opted for the funky new boogie board instead. But, for us, coolites were the only safe alternative to fibreglass boards and their bulky form prompted John and Greg to start shaping.

Dad owned a picture framing business, so it was reasonable for him to buy us the tools we needed to make our own surfboards and a camper van to explore the coast. On weekdays, the camper served as a delivery van. Our first surf trips were inspired by the early surf films that were influential in the evolution of surf culture. Driving up the coast, listening to the sound tracks of The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun and Morning of the Earth, we felt that we had somehow superimposed ourselves into the world depicted in those films. We made our own surf films and held film nights, which inspired our friends and motivated us to keep doing it. School holidays were spent at Angourie Point, where Dad bought a classic hippy shack that was built in 1974 by Tracks founder John Witzig. On long weekends and Easter holidays, we surfed on the Central Coast, where our grandparents lived. Otherwise, our options were limited to the Eastern Suburbs, which was notoriously territorial, so we almost always surfed at Bondi.

Occasionally, waves would break in the harbour at Nielsen Park. But, it needed a big nor-east swell to reach that far down the harbour. Sitting at school, you could tell if it was on, by the height of the white water crashing into Middle Head. The other option was South Head, which hardly anyone ever surfed. It seemed like the edge of the Earth, which is probably how our ancestors felt, as they sailed through the Heads for the first time. We didn't know about our colonial ancestry back then. People used to be ashamed of their convict roots and so it was kept secret. The lighthouse on South Head was built in 1858, after a hundred and twenty one lives were lost in a shipwreck. The Dunbar was battling gale force winds in the middle of the night, when its Captain misjudged the entrance to the harbour. One person survived and spent two days on a cliff ledge before he was spotted.

Today, the lighthouse keeper's residence is a café. But, in the 70s it was derelict. The lighthouse didn't need a keeper after it had been automated. We used to marvel at the view it had of the harbour entrance. The light itself was switched off a couple of years ago, along with every other lighthouse in Australia. These days, ships rely solely on their GPS. Everybody seems to have a GPS these days. Knowing where you are is key to getting to wherever you are going. You can be located at different scales that place you in relation to a neighbourhood, a town, a city, a region, a country, a continent or the whole world. Next, we'll be able to locate ourselves in history, with everyone's present moment traced throughout the course of their lives, along with their ancestors' movements, to reveal migratory patterns that flow from place to place, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a torrent, sometimes turbulent, sometimes not. It'll show how some cultures mix freely, while others resist change to form islands that preserve their familiar view of the world.

The café culture took over Bondi in the 80s, a decade that saw rents double and school enrolments halve. In 1977, there were 1000 children attending Rose Bay Public School. Fifteen years later, the number had dropped to 250. The newcomers were steadily changing the character of the place. Fox Studios took over the Show Ground and Bondi Beach became a haven for wannabes. House after house was demolished to make way for apartment buildings. The higher cost of living displaced many locals to neighbouring suburbs or else further along the coast. Suddenly, the "locals" of Bondi were the café goers, who seldom stepped foot on the beach, let alone entered the surf. The surf had become a backdrop for a steady stream of traffic, with the occasional sports car purring past envious onlookers. By the mid-nineties, the transformation of Bondi was nearly complete. The final nail in the coffin was probably the demolition of Britannic Mansions, a building that held iconic status within Bondi's hard core surf culture.

Britannic Mansions overlooked the south end of the beach. In one of the front windows, a large sign identified the flat as HB, which was the brand of surfboard Greg shaped at the time. People would rendezvous at "HB" before a surf or a night out. Then came "Insight", which John accidentally misspelled in giant letters on the front door: INSIHGT. By the mid-eighties, Greg's boards were everywhere. They stood out partly because so many good riders had one and partly because they were all white. The emphasis was on performance surfing, which concerns the shape of the surfboard, rather than its appearance. As an expression of minimalism, this trend may have been a reaction to the popularity of brightly coloured wetsuits that drew attention to the surfer's appearance, instead of his surfing ability. In any case, white surfboards represented a level of professionalism that had been lacking in the seventies, when surfboards were more commonly endeared with the sort of airbrushed artwork characteristic of panel vans.

Behind Britannic Mansions, there was a large shed, which Mum turned into a bronze foundry with New York sculptor, John Gardner. She had studied Art at East Sydney Tech before meeting Dad. But, her artistic aspirations were stifled when they started having children. While her brothers, Dick and Greg Weight, revelled in the Yellow House experience, Mum was too busy raising children to take "art for art's sake" seriously. But, when the opportunity finally presented itself, quarter of a century later, she went back to the Tech, intent as ever to create art. That's where she met John Gardner, who was teaching bronze foundry at the time. One of her earliest commissions was a rugby league trophy for the Dally M Award. She made surfing trophies for pro contests and her exhibitions were well received within the Sydney art community. Then, she was asked to make a life size bronze statue to commemorate the Surf Lifesaving movement in Australia, a unique sculpture that stands beside Bondi Pavilion, where it will probably remain for all eternity.

Mum's grandfather arrived in Sydney in 1907, on his way to America, having spent five years in South Africa. He was hoping to find work in San Francisco, after it had been devastated by the 1906 earthquake. But, when the ship departed for America, he was in hospital with a nasty gash to his foot. Apparently, he had trodden on a broken bottle at the beach. His grandfather was a British foot soldier, who had been in Australia in 1847, but then served in New Zealand during the Māori Land Wars, settling there in 1855.

Thousands of Māoris settled in Bondi during the 1970s and some were keen surfers. But, the younger Māoris seemed more interested in rap dancing and graffiti. They probably felt intimidated by the competitive spirit within the surfing community. So, it was a surprise to me when two young Māoris entered the shop, looked around and smiled as they left. I later realised that they were casing the joint, in preparation for breaking in. We didn't have much stock, but I'm sure that was incidental to the exercise. They'd broken into every shop in Bondi and so it was part of their gangland sense of pride to also break into ours. They even wore the gear around town.

The territorial nature of the burglary hit home a couple of weeks later, when an older Māori came into the shop to apologise on behalf of the Māori community. The gesture was enhanced by the fact that he was carrying a baby, as he explained that the perpetrator didn't have a father and his mother couldn't hold it together. I'm glad that Gynge also witnessed this potent expression of solidarity, because the sentiment expressed in that moment underscored the strength of our connection to the community and the basis upon which we were building the business. But, Gynge had different ideas and the partnership was dissolved. He wanted to sell other brands, but I thought we should only sell Greg's boards.

Gynge stuck with it and later opened a much larger shop that was hidden behind a block of flats, in what had been an auto-mechanic's garage. He was offered cheap rent, because the developer thought that a thriving surf shop would draw people to the new restaurants, which were also hidden behind the building. To draw attention to the surf shop, Gynge commissioned Mum to make a replica of the classic Duke Kahanamoku statue, which he wheeled outside the shop each morning to welcome customers. Ironically, while this esteemed Polynesian enjoyed cheap rent, others were copping massive rent increases, which some say were part of a concerted effort to drive Māoris out of Bondi.

In Duke's day, surfboards were made of wood. Lately, there's been renewed interest in wooden boards, though mainly just for display. The one that appeared in the Dateline story would be a great conversation piece. I bet the journalist got it. Funnily enough, that story turned out to be a hoax. I don't know if Dateline knew about it. But, they pulled the same stunt three years before. Not that it matters, of course. At least the boards got there. I was afraid they'd be lost in transit. But, I was also nervous that the boards would disrupt life in the village. Sometimes, in trying to help, you actually cause more trouble. The fact that they had been so enterprising at our expense is better than our feeling so generous at their expense.

I was right to fear its impact on the village. The previous shipment of boards caused so much trouble that the local surf club was split into two rival clubs that competed for members. Bondi's surfing community suffered the same fate when Ellksy opened a surf shop in a better location than Gynge's. He was more "underground" than Gynge could ever be. But business isn't about community. It pretends to be, but in reality it is parasitic, cleverly associating community membership with material possessions. It leads people to believe that the appearance of belonging invokes the experience of belonging. But, there is a yawning gap between the surfing experience and its depiction to serve commercial interests.

Bondi's status within the surfing world was created by the community. A long list of legendary surfers grew up in Bondi. But, for every big name, there were half a dozen others, whose surfing ability inspired the rest of us to keep at it. It was a fertile breeding ground that spawned some of surfing's greats. Ben was one of the last Bondi guys to make a name for himself, winning the Australian Junior Championship in 1986. Ellksy's uncle, Robert Conneely, won it in 1964, having placed second the previous year, when the contest was actually held at Bondi; the very first Australian Surfing Championship.

By dropping the Webber brand, Gynge taught us an invaluable lesson. Kerry Packer had once told him that in business, you can only afford to take care of one person: numero uno. Ellksy's shop could have turned things around. But, it was too late. Greg was already selling through the SDS chain, which had a shop in Bondi Junction. To sell through Ellksy would have jeopardised that arrangement. It was a body blow that had repercussions effecting Greg's relationship with his business partner, my role in the business and their attitude to Will and Ben, who were competing on the Pro Circuit without Greg's support.

I felt betrayed by my brother, who had been generous while it suited his purposes, but ruthless when it didn't. That might be appropriate in business, but hardly the way to treat family. The business was born in the back yard of the family home. We all surfed and were recognised as a surfing family. So, it seemed only natural that we would all contribute to the brand's development. We made films, printed t-shirts, designed fins, made wax, competed in contests and wrote articles and drew comics for surfing magazines. But, the opportunity to build a common future slipped through our fingers and evaporated completely when I broke into the factory and stole nine surfboards that I kept until I was compensated for my effort.

I then moved to Denmark with my Danish wife. Will and Ben started a band with Matt Branson, a heavily tattooed, ex-pro surfer, who was then secretly gay. Monty started making surf films for Paul Sargeant, a surf photographer who Matt Branson lived with. And John started hanging out with Angourie's lesbian community, who doted on him for cross-dressing in public. After a few years, I returned to a family in utter disarray, clinging to the wreckage of a once proud reputation. To welcome me home, a few of my brothers set me up with an attractive blonde, who turned out to be a transvestite. I don't know if there was any malice intended. But, it took me a while to forgive them. Needless to say, I felt more welcome in Denmark and ended up staying there for ten years.

I would, however, drop in once a year, en route to G-Land, which was a sort of spiritual home to me. When Bobby Radiasa said he needed a website, I jumped at the opportunity to build it and returned in January to photograph the camp. I had never been there in the off-season and was immediately struck by the lushness of the jungle and the persistent clatter of birdlife. The swell was solid four foot, with long walls peeling the full length of the break. I had very clear ideas of how G-Land should be represented and Quiksilver signs were not a part of it. I also removed hundreds of stickers and hid all the snapped boards that had been nailed up all over the place, since they would only intimidate potential newcomers. Above all, I wanted to remove any evidence of commercial surf culture. But, when the camp manager suggested I reposition the tripod, so that a satellite dish would be in frame, it occured to me that the G-Land experience would be forever corrupted by commercial interests.

There is a fundamental contradiction between the surfing experience and its depiction to serve commercial interests. Unlike mainstream society, surfers follow naturally occurring patterns and processes that defy the daily grind imposed on society by capitalism. When surfing conditions are ideal, social commitments are typically set aside, in favour of going surfing. To expose this contradiction and encourage others to share their own knowledge of surfing, I established a wiki encyclopedia of surfing that allows anyone to supplement the commercial depiction of surf culture. Surferpedia empowers surfers who wish to challenge the way commercial interests distort surf culture.

Greg and Mont took a more avant-garde approach, making a film that focuses solely on the fluid forms of tubing waves. The only surf film devoid of surfing, Liquid Time won the Cinematography Award at the 2004 Saint Jean de Luz Surf Film Festival. The waves were artificial in the sense that they came from a boat running parallel to the shore. But, as the wake entered shallow water, it would break exactly like a naturally generated wave.

Following the success of Liquid Time, Greg enlisted scientists in a research and development project, aimed at building an economically viable wave pool capable of generating perfect tubing waves. He has since patented the design, which is being marketed as the Liquid Time Wave Pool. The waves are generated by five boat hulls, spaced evenly around the perimeter of the pool, each hull driven along the wall of the pool on standard roller coaster tracks. The swell advances towards the middle of the pool, where it enters shallow water at an acute angle, causing the wave to peel endlessly around an island situated in the centre of the pool. When the boat hulls circle the pool in a clockwise direction, the waves break left. When they circle anti-clockwise, the waves break right.

As a surfboard shaper, Greg is the Sufi of naval architects; adjusting the shape of the surfboard while simultaneously invoking the sensation of its movement through the water. This connection between shape and motion is key to the surfboard being absorbed into the surfer’s movements. But, the response of the surfboard is also influenced by the shape and motion of the wave. Since wave shape is influenced by the depth and shape of the reef, these features are a reflection of the surfboard penetrating the wave. Given that surfing has such a unique relationship with nature, wave pools might help society promote an authentic spiritual connection, by providing quality surf without compromising social engagements. Perhaps, in a thousand years, surfing will be a fully fledged religion, transcending the petty grievances of today's competing doctrines.