It begins like this: a few mates get together in a garage on Tirriki Street at Blacksmiths and agree to form a surf club. It was 1965, and surfing had been the Australian coastal obsession for a generation.
By modern standards (and probably even by the standards of the day), it was a modest affair. Peter Staley was elected as the first president of a club ostensibly set up for his and his brother Paul's mates and neighbourhood surfers. His mum was the treasurer, and their clubhouse was the family shed.
More than half a century later, the Nine Mile Beach Surf Board Club has endured and etched its history into the sand and breaks of Blacksmiths Beach. Now, that history has been immortalised in the club's new spiritual home at the Orana Hotel at Blacksmiths, where a photographic chronicle of the riders' early years and a collection of memorabilia have been put on permanent display.
Club historian Gregory Lunn helped realise the effort with founding member Gary Simpson and said in a statement that the Nine Mile Boardriders have had an enduring legacy and connection to the local breaks. Lunn has been the club's historian since 2008 when it became active again. He is the author of Nine Mile Looking Forward, Looking Back and has produced two amateur documentaries on the club's history.
The Nine Mile Beach Surf Board Club still meets annually for its reunion competition, most recently held on Saturday, October 26, marking 48 years. The event, first held in 1976 and contested by founding members and their families, began after the club wound up and went into hiatus from regular competitions around 1973.
In its heyday, the Nine Mile surfers were a competitive bunch, ranking third in the Newcastle Surfboard Association competition in 1969 with a team colloquially known as the Terrific Ten, according to club records.
The club's history has been captured in a pair of murals, text and a commemorative surfboard displayed at the Orana Hotel in an effort Lunn described as overwhelming and humbling.
"We are all humbled to have the club's history displayed in image and story for all to see, remembering this everlasting legacy of surfing, music and friendships that stands strong today," he said in a statement.
By European reckoning, surfing arrived in Australia when the Hawaiian founding father of the modern sport, Duke Kahanamoku (better known as the Big Kahuna), visited in 1915. But, the pre-colonial First Nations connection to the ocean reaches into the mythic.
By the time that first meeting was called on May 15, in 1965, surfing was the national pastime, and Blacksmiths beach at the southern end of Nine Mile was the beloved local break for generations of board riders. It was the perfect spot, the club's history tells, prone to offshore southerly winds that made for ideal conditions for learners and old hands.
"Blacksmiths was a very popular beach. Buses would bring kids from Warners Bay, Charlestown, Gateshead, Windale, Belmont and Marks Point," founding member Phil Donoghoe wrote for the Newcastle Herald in 2018.
"Waves and waves of kids learned to surf, and the culture thrived, including the accessories of surfboards, surf clothing and surf music."
Nelson and Joyce Staley, the club's founders and parents of Peter and Paul, were inducted as life members in 1969, as were a handful of other notable names before 1973.
In more recent times, members have called for a sand transfer system to channel dredged sand from the Swansea Channel to Blacksmiths to improve the beach and breaks' condition.
