He was the first lost genius of Australian surfing. The tiny 15-year-old Bondi kid who won the New South Wales junior and senior titles on the same day, beating the incumbent and future world champion. A “little master” whose exploits, good and bad, entered the mythology of 1960s Sin City and whose tragic end – drowned on dry land opposite the beach he loved – went largely unmourned.
The cracked ballad of Kevin Brennan won’t rate a mention at Bondi over the 2025 summer. Fifty years after his death, his story, like the beach he made his own, is almost unrecognisable.
