1944 - 2016

Bernard ‘Midget’ Farrelly learned to surf at Bondi and by the time he was 16 he was Australian Champion. A year later, 1962, he won the Makaha International Championship on Oahu, becoming the first non-Hawaiian to take out the international surf title. Two years later he became surfing’s first world champion while still a teenager, winning the title at Manly Beach in front of 70,000 spectators.

Farrelly was born in Paddington in 1944, and first surfed at North Bondi in the early 1950s. He was nicknamed Midget – commonly shortened to ‘Midge’ – because of his 173cm height.

He had his first surfing experience at age six, when his uncle Ray Hookham – himself a well-known board rider – ‘took him out’ at North Bondi. As a child, Midge also learnt ballet with his sister and used those skills to develop his quick, light-footed surfing style. He started building his own surfboards when he was only 14 and later established Farrelly Surfboards on Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

He was a pioneer of the sport at a time when Australian surfing was still just an extension of surf-lifesaving competitions. Farrelly’s international success helped push board riding into the mainstream.

In his 20s he was one of the world’s most successful competitive surfers, claiming Australian titles in 1964 and ’65. He won the Peruvian International Small Waves competition in 1966 and the 1968 inaugural Bobby Brown Memorial event at Cronulla Beach, then finished second in the 1968 and 1970 world championships.

Farrelly was a founding member of the International Surfing Federation (now the International Surfing Association) and the inaugural president of the Australian Surfriders Association (now Surfing Australia).

He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985, into the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in ’86 and into the Surfing Walk of Fame at California’s Huntington Beach in 2007.

Farrelly continued to surf on the Northern Beaches until a few weeks before his death, from stomach cancer, in 2016, aged 71. In 2017, he was posthumously made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his contributions to surfing, as a competitor and an industry pioneer.

Courtesy the Jack Eden Photographic collection.