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Ed Sinnott's memoir of the great Michael Peterson, MP in the early 1980's down in Merimbula on the South Coast of NSW.
Michael Peterson set the surfing world on fire in the 1970s and was by far the most outstanding competitor of this era. The image of MP frozen in mid-cutback at Kirra in Alby Falzon’s classic surf movie, Morning of the Earth remains one of surfing's most famous images. By 1972, Peterson was Australian champion, and over the next three years, he won every major surf contest held in Australia, including the inaugural 2SM/Coca-Cola Surfabout (1974) and the Bells Beach Easter event three times in a row (1973-'75). He was a free spirited and dynamic surfer who set the standards for the birth of pro surfing's world tour, even winning its first official event, the Stubbies Classic at Burleigh Heads in March 1977. MP exploits are legendary and Ed Sinnott had the luck to work, live and surf with him down in Merimbula on the Victorian border in the early 80s, Here is his story.
“In 1981 Simon Anderson had won at Huge Bells on the first thruster the world had ever seen. Terry Richardson who worked with Ed at Skipp surfboards in Wollongong had come third and was on the hunt for some Hawaiian guns for the upcoming season. I was shaping Terry’s twin fin models was for our wholesale markets and he suggested a trip down to Merimbula to get some Guns hand-shaped by MP. Mick and his brother Tommy were living down as well as some mates of ours from Towradgi, Paul Winter, Noel Gibson and Tom Storey. I had seen Mick surfing at some of the contests and like every other Australian surfer in that era was blown away by his persona." "To me and thousands of other young Australian surfers MP was a surfing buccaneer, a rebel insurgent against normality and the king of all the pirates who defied convention and lived beyond the boundaries of everyday society."
Mick had made a clean break from all the madness on the Gold coast and was shaping boards under the Wintersun label as well as his own on the far south coast. Terry and I surfed Dolphin point at Ulladulla on the way by ourselves in the rain exploring the good force of nature. We watched the dark clouds blowing in from the south and knew a big swell was coming. We hit the highway and counted down the kilometers listening to the Rolling Stones till we arrived in Pambula where the Wintersun showroom was situated. When we got there we waited around for MP to arrive, then suddenly this Ford 351 roars into the dirt car-park and screeches to holt in a blaze of rocks and dust. When the dust cleared I could see a shadowy figure low in the seat laughing with black aviator sunglass on that were reflecting our images back at us. Mick stepped out of the car smiling and shuffled towards us. Here he was 28 years old drug free, clean and in his prime physically. By today’s standards as a pro surfer he was only beginning; back then it felt you would retire at thirty.
The time out of competitive surfing hadn’t changed him much he still looked like the lean and super fit paddling machine we all knew. Heroin had taken its toll with him mentally though and the undiagnosed schizophrenia he was suffering from only added to his creative abstract edge. We didn’t know any different other than this was Mick Peterson the best surfer of our generation and he had the aura of a supernatural being. Thus began an amazing two and half year period of working and surfing with him. I travelled back and forward from Wollongong a lot; sometimes with my partner at the time Marion and daughters Conie and Keone; sometimes I went alone. Most of the time I stayed on Paul Winter’s farm on the Bombala Rd at Wyndham where Mick lived. Paul had a Falcon ute and we would throw our boards in every morning and head off down the dirt road to surf wherever the waves where the best, Leonard’s Island, Pinnacles, Haycocks or the Bar if it was cranking. MP loved to drive and he always drove one hundred miles an hour flat out, sitting low in the seat black aviators on with one hand coolly gripping wheel. I will always have an image of him etched in my mind overtaking at a furious pace and speeding towards oncoming trucks in the wrong lane, with me terrified gripping the dash while MP grinned from ear to ear saying “Don’t worry I’m a city slicker boys” and swerving at the last second to avoid instant death. Whew it was heavy!!!
Mick drove like he surfed. He had an extremely fast paddling style and surfed relentlessly doing nonstop carving turns which he powered with a dynamite psyche. When we got to the beach I used to thank god for getting us there in one piece. Richo would be straight out there and I wasn’t far behind him. Mick would walk dragging his board by the nose in the sand huge arms wrapped around his fin looking around taking it real easy but it was all a ploy. We would be paddling like blazes to get out there but as soon as Mick hit the water wham he was on fire! Arms like pistons paddling out the back in a flash then coming strait at you before throwing a ton of saltwater in your face as he’d go screaming past you gouging the face in a massive cutback arms held aloft triumphantly. Richo was riding thrusters because it wasn’t long after Bells, but Mick wouldn’t have a bar of it. He was riding red bottomed concave singles with his little trade mark MP hook fin right on the tail. He had me spray the ace of spades on the deck because he said he was the ace. Mick told me hated thrusters and twin fins because he was a power surfer and spun them out. He said “those new thruster things can’t hold me in the water I’m the original power surfer, big back foot you know, and the things got to hold in the barrel none of this spinning around for me .Ha ha ha”! I loved his boards and he was light years ahead of others in that department as far as his bottom shapes went. Here we had a case of one of the planets best surfers fine tuning his own equipment. The concaves he had in his boards at that time were very similar to today’s thrusters, they were built for speed. A lot of other shapers were doing rolled vee bottoms at that time but not Michael. He’d spend hours sanding his board and fin till it was just right. His shaping style was something else, blessed with a great eye he would simply measure the length and width then draw the curves out before attacking the blank with a planer. Mick would shape at a frantic pace just like he surfed and drove. There would be foam flying everywhere; the sound of the planer getting buried at full cut with the ball bearings screaming. Then it was all over, forty five minutes later there would be a Peterson original ready to glass. We worked in an old dairy high on a hill on the Eden road overlooking the backwaters of Pambula River that was converted into the Wintersun surfboard factory. It was the full Morning of the Earth vibe and I loved it. The cows would come over and stick there heads through the window while we were at it. Tommy, MPs little brother was also shaping there at the time and he was an even faster shaper than Mick was and much more radical. Tom is a fun loving guy and a great surfer who always had me in stitches with his stories about the exploits him and Michael got up to growing up in Coolangatta. They certainly had a love hate relationship from what I saw but Tom always had Michael’s best interests at heart.
Tommy was shaping these little 5’6’’ step bottom fishes that had belly channels leading into the fins. They were so different to the mainstream, but they went ballistic. His boards look like the ones Rasta rides today or a fish with the nose pulled in. Tommy was ahead of the pack and he was already onto the fish revolution back then. Tom Curran eventually grabbed one of these Fireball fishes and gained a huge amount of exposure for the design. So much in fact that you could say that the Tom Peterson was in many ways a catalyst for the resurgence of the fish design worldwide. Both Tom and Michael had a huge influence on my shaping career, in that I was never afraid to experiment or try new things. I would just simply do it because as Tom said “it’s all about the feel you get when you surf; different designs are just different feelings you adjust to”. So true. The way the Peterson brothers used a hand planer so confidently to carve out a blank into a surfboard was something else, they were both so fast at it and accurate. In those days there were no pre shapes like today we did everything by hand the “old way”. It really was a great learning curve for me and helped me get to the stage as a production shaper in the eighties where I could hand-shape up to eight or nine boards a day if a had to. Terry Richardson was also a great shaper, he used to run around the shaping bay all day when he was off the tour and knock out ten or eleven. That era was something else and you had to be part of it to understand the work ethic. These days shapers only scrape away at a pre-shape basically sanding the lines out; in those days we designed the whole board every time we picked up a planer.
Living out on the Bombala Rd with Mick and Paul Winter was great. Mick was into his health food stage at that time and I would awake in the morning to the sound of the blender going ballistic. Mick would get up climb the mulberry tree then deposit the contents into the blender along with apple pieces, brewers yeast, fish oil, heaps of vitamin pills, yogurt and whatever else was available. Then he would swallow the lot. Mick swore by his health elixir. My daughter Keone who had just started walking would steal his mulberries and you would hear him going “hey kid bring them back”. It was hilarious. Mick had also got hold of a set of acupuncture needles from somewhere and practiced on himself all the time. He had big acupuncture charts in his room on the wall showing all the points for the entire body. It seemed far out but whatever works and it did for him. At night we would all hang out on the farm where Mick would always have me and Marion drawing pictures for his boards or for the sails of his windsurfer. I remember drawing teradactyles, sharks, eagles and monsters and having loads of fun in the process. Michael had theories about everything he would tell us about how we all need to live on mountains to survive the tsunamis that was coming and how surfers were the strongest and fittest people on planet earth. He also told me that he thought the majority of Australian people were alcoholics who were destroying themselves and their livers.”Yeah they’ve all got cirrhosis how can they surf being like that”! Mick wasn’t a drinker. He said that’s how he dominated for so long and that he had a one track mind for winning.
I spent a lot of time in working at the factory with just me and Mick. One day I found out we shared the same birthday the twenty-fourth of September it blew us out. He used to freak out about the old woman down the hill who would light fires in her farmhouse everyday to cook. He used to say to me “..shes willing me , she’s trying to get to me.” Mick’s paranoia was something we all knew about but it seemed to be getting more severe. Sometimes he would disappear for days on end and no one knew where he went. One day in 1983 I think it was we had gone surfing at Haycocks beach early in the morning and got some great waves. Mick was on fire and on the top of his game as far as surfing goes. When we went to work I noticed he was a lot more agitated than usual and sweating profusely. He started spinning out about the woman in the farmhouse and the fire she had , and then told me he was going to drive to Coolangatta which was eighteen hours north. It was the last time I ever saw him as I stood in the field watching his car disappear in a swirling cloud of dust flying down the dirt track in the morning sun. All I know is that not long after this I heard the shit had hit the fan in Queensland where all these police had pursued Mick in a high speed chase which resulted in his arrest and incarceration in the Bogga Road jail and then in a mental health facility. He hasn’t surfed since. I still wonder if that surf we had was his last. Who Knows? The legacy of Michael Peterson lives on and my interaction with him was a fascinating insight into a flawed genius. In 1981 when I met Michael, Neviile Wran was the Premier of N.S.W, the film Puberty Blues had just been released and the song Ant Music by Adam and the Ants was number one right around Australia. Raiders of The Lost Ark was the top movie, Britney Spears was born and the legendary Bob Marley died. Life goes on. By Ed Sinnott.
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Pictured left to right, Ed Sinnott, Michael Peterson, Paul Winter, Tom Storey & Noel Gibson. (Pambula 1981) Photo Marion Jackson Boag.
Eds Story I grew up around Port Kembla beach on the south coast of N.S.W in Australia. My father was an ex British commando who came to work in the steelworks after the serving in world war two. He loved the beach lifestyle, the freedom it inspired and was always in the surf.
Ever since I was a baby in the late fifties I’ve had a connection with the ocean, my parents were always at the beach in summer and said they took me in the rock pools when I was six months old…. and I’ve been in the water ever since. North coast As a young boy I still remember holidays at Miami on the Gold coast in the sixties and being mesmerised by the surf, the sun and the sea. I have strong memories of being in my fathers Vanguard, as we drove north through Kempsey, Coffs, Grafton and Byron Bay; through thousands of gum trees all clouded in a surreal haze from the bush fires. The radio was always blasting out the top forty hits of the day such as Normie Rowe, the Beatles, the Easybeats and the Beach Boys. For me it was the ultimate adventure, new vistas, new places and new experiences around every corner. Coolangatta in the 60s The drive from Wollongong to the Gold Coast took forever in those days but when we got there, oh boy what a blast! Holidays in the Queensland sun, not a care in the world and I wished it would last forever. My brother brought up his boards with his mate Herman and I remember watching them wax up before they surfed at Greenmount and thinking I would like to try it out.
We used to go up to point Danger to look at the ocean and then down to Duranbah to swim. Then it was off to the Patch hotel in Coolangatta, which I thought was so cool because kids were allowed in the main lounge where all the action was. I still remember watching Little Patty, Dinah Lee and the Purple Hearts. Little did I know that lurking around the dunes and already surfing were the original Coolangatta kids, Michael and Tommy Peterson who I ‘d work with years later as a board builder in Merimbula. Portside Before I ever rode a board I did what every other aussie kid did in summer at the beach. I used to stay all day long in the summer inferno: no sunscreen, hats or lycra in those days, only white zinc and lots of sunburn. The only bonus was that I was free as a bird to explore every inch of Port Kembla beach. The Australian summers I experienced, as a child was something else; a time of absolute freedom, joy and adventure.
It was a time of mods and rockers, The Stomp, XP falcons and mini skirts. Surfing was becoming hugely popular everywhere on the Australian coastline and the social freedom that it conveyed was sought after as a legitimate lifestyle. Port Kembla beach is offshore in a N.E wind in summer and the water turns to an emerald turquoise colour. In my memory it was a perfect paradise with fantastic offshore waves. I spent summers bodysurfing, riding black surf-o-planes; jumping off the rocks and watching the older guys catch waves.
Surfing for the first time My first memory of surfing was awesome! I remember being in the back of my brothers FJ Holden with his mates Dirty Face, Little Mick, and several D fin long boards tied precariously to the roof. It was the summer of 1967 and we were driving around trying to find a perfect wave.
I was 10 years old and I remember ending up at the Farm a well-known south coast beach break where you had to pay the old lady 20 cents at the gate to get to the beach. I remember clearly paddling my brothers Keyo into the white water and getting flogged forever until that incredible moment I actually managed to stand for a few seconds.
I was hooked from that point on! That was it; my whole life changed and it wasn’t just summer surfing, it was full time all year round forever. It was as if the ocean was my blood, my lifeline and my identity. Even today if I’m out of the water for more than a day I go into major frenetic withdrawals. I’ve got to say I have loved every minute of it and still do. All the fantastic characters I have met through my surfing and shaping career; and all the great moments with my family and friends are things I will always cherish.
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