Jock Sutherland, barreled in 1967. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
The 1960s would have been an interesting era to be a surfer. The crowds weren’t quite as bad. Surfing wasn’t as mainstream as it is today. It was more feral, looser, and frowned upon as a waste of time that hippie longhairs practiced. But then, like today, Pipeline was the shiniest diamond on surfing’s crown.
“In the early ‘60s, the Pipeline had already killed a surfer from Peru, so there was this specter about it,” Gerry Lopez told The Inertia. “But, you know, a good wave is a good wave. If you had the chance and the space that we had back then, then you got to enjoy it.”
Lopez, of course, became known as Mr. Pipeline. “I had a long affair with the Pipeline,” he continued. “Twenty-five Pipe Masters events. I got to surf against guys that hadn’t even been born when I surfed in my first one. It was a spot that, I guess, I was intimidated with at first, but I got to know it, and eventually became pretty comfortable there.”
But Lopez was far from the only one surfing there, and in this film clip from 1968’s High on a Cool Wave, courtesy of the Australian and New Zealand Surf Film Archive, some of surfing’s greatest icons can be seen.
Peter Drouyn, who became Westerly Windina and then back to Peter Drouyn again, is featured heavily in it, but Jock Sutherland, Jackie Eberle, and a little dachshund called Sandy Dick are also featured. It’s a look into a time often regarded as surfing’s halcyon days, and with all that time in between then and now, it sure does look good.
