speech 7
He’e Nalu (Hey-Ee Nalu)
Mister toastmaster, fellow members and guests.
Tonight I'd like to share with you a little about one of my favourite pastimes, its history and its development.
But rather than tell you straight away what it is, I'd like you to use your imaginations.
I'd like you to imagine that you are Captain James Cook, the British sea captain.
The year is 1778 and some of your greatest achievements are behind you - laying claim to Terra Australis, exploring Australia's east coast and naming botany bay.
You've just become the first person from the Western world to visit the Hawaiin islands and as you're standing on deck one day you see something peculiar.
A young native man has an outrigger canoe positioned behind the breaking waves. Using immense skill, he paddles his craft quickly onto the crest of a wave and rides it gracefully to shore with a look of pure pleasure on his face.
When he's done he paddles back out and does it all over again.
Congratulations! You've become the first European to see a form of surfing.
For the past six months I've been learning to surf - in my case on a board - and while I haven't shown the same talent as the man seen by Cook, I share his enthusiasm.
Mostly I've been concentrating on getting up on the board, negotiating the different conditions and trying to avoid blue bottles.
But I've also begun learning surfing has a rich history, anchored in Hawaii.
Anthropologists speculate the first surfing took place in the island kingdom sometime before the 15th century and by the time Cook visited at the end of the 18th century, surfing culture was in full swing.
Cook was killed soon after his observation of the canoe surfer, but his offsider on the expedition, Lieutenant James King, wrote a full account of the traditional board surfing he saw:
''The men, sometimes 20 or 30, go (beyond) the swell of the surf and lay themselves flat upon a piece of plank about their size and breadth.
''They wait for the time of the greatest swell ... and altogether push forward with their arms to keep on its top.
''It sends them in with a most astonishing velocity and the great art is to guide the plank so as to keep it in a proper direction on top of the swell.''
For Hawaiians at the time of Cook's visit, surfing was an integral part of their very structured community.
It was a recreational activity; a way of expressing status; and achieving fame.
All walks of life surfed. The royals had their own breaks where no-one else was permitted .The commoners had their.
Gods were worshipped and a series of kapus or taboos dictated how society behaved.
These taboos extended to surf board building, how to predict when the surf would be good and how to convince the gods to make it good.
After Cook, however, life for the Hawaiians changed.
Being discovered by Europeans meant an influx of merchants looking for tradable goods and ships using the island group as a stop-over point.
From a pre-Cook estimate of 400,000 people, the population dwindled to 40,000 at the turn of the 19th century as disease and other ravages took their toll.
Surfing and the use of surf boards waned as missionaries visited Hawaii, urging the inhabitants to give up fun activities and apply themselves to work and god.
By the early 20th century, surfing was on the verge of extinction, with only a handful of people involved in the sport.
But a resurgence was on the way, ironically lead by the people of European descent who had helped put the sport in decline.
In 1907 the novelist Jack London visited Hawaii and fell in love with surfing.He wrote an account, describing the moment a surfer catches a wave:
``Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect full-statured ..... calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees...''
The account stimulated interest in Europe and America, prompting affluent young people to travel to the islands and learn the art of surfing.
Meanwhile the best of the Hawaiian surfers began travelling the world, promoting their sport.
A pro by the name George Freeth gave surfing demonstrations in California, giving people there an enduring taste for the sport.
Americans usually regard him as the modern day father of surfing.
A few years later in 1915 a young Hawaiian champion swimmer by the name of Duke Kahanamoku was invited to Australia by the NSW Swimming Association to give a demonstrations of his style in the pool.
While he was in Sydney he carved an eight foot board out of sugar pine and took it down to Freshwater beach for the country's first ever surfing demonstration.
As in California the sport quickly caught on.
At the same time in Hawaii native Hawaiians were reclaiming the sport, establishing formal clubs to practice it and make sure its traditions were not lost.
Throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s, surfing slowly simmered away, growing in popularity until in the 1950s and 60s it exploded, as out leisure time increased and young people took to the sport in their thousands.
Over the past forty or fifty years the sport has become so strong it's hard to believe it was once under threat of extinction.
It has spread to countries including South Africa, Brasil, the UK and Peru.
It continues to grow in popularity and is now practised by everyone from young girls of eight to old men of eighty
And also slightly clumbsy but enthusiastic men from Balmain.
Thank you
Mister toastmaster, fellow members and guests.
Tonight I'd like to share with you a little about one of my favourite pastimes, its history and its development.
But rather than tell you straight away what it is, I'd like you to use your imaginations.
I'd like you to imagine that you are Captain James Cook, the British sea captain.
The year is 1778 and some of your greatest achievements are behind you - laying claim to Terra Australis, exploring Australia's east coast and naming botany bay.
You've just become the first person from the Western world to visit the Hawaiin islands and as you're standing on deck one day you see something peculiar.
A young native man has an outrigger canoe positioned behind the breaking waves. Using immense skill, he paddles his craft quickly onto the crest of a wave and rides it gracefully to shore with a look of pure pleasure on his face.
When he's done he paddles back out and does it all over again.
Congratulations! You've become the first European to see a form of surfing.
For the past six months I've been learning to surf - in my case on a board - and while I haven't shown the same talent as the man seen by Cook, I share his enthusiasm.
Mostly I've been concentrating on getting up on the board, negotiating the different conditions and trying to avoid blue bottles.
But I've also begun learning surfing has a rich history, anchored in Hawaii.
Anthropologists speculate the first surfing took place in the island kingdom sometime before the 15th century and by the time Cook visited at the end of the 18th century, surfing culture was in full swing.
Cook was killed soon after his observation of the canoe surfer, but his offsider on the expedition, Lieutenant James King, wrote a full account of the traditional board surfing he saw:
''The men, sometimes 20 or 30, go (beyond) the swell of the surf and lay themselves flat upon a piece of plank about their size and breadth.
''They wait for the time of the greatest swell ... and altogether push forward with their arms to keep on its top.
''It sends them in with a most astonishing velocity and the great art is to guide the plank so as to keep it in a proper direction on top of the swell.''
For Hawaiians at the time of Cook's visit, surfing was an integral part of their very structured community.
It was a recreational activity; a way of expressing status; and achieving fame.
All walks of life surfed. The royals had their own breaks where no-one else was permitted .The commoners had their.
Gods were worshipped and a series of kapus or taboos dictated how society behaved.
These taboos extended to surf board building, how to predict when the surf would be good and how to convince the gods to make it good.
After Cook, however, life for the Hawaiians changed.
Being discovered by Europeans meant an influx of merchants looking for tradable goods and ships using the island group as a stop-over point.
From a pre-Cook estimate of 400,000 people, the population dwindled to 40,000 at the turn of the 19th century as disease and other ravages took their toll.
Surfing and the use of surf boards waned as missionaries visited Hawaii, urging the inhabitants to give up fun activities and apply themselves to work and god.
By the early 20th century, surfing was on the verge of extinction, with only a handful of people involved in the sport.
But a resurgence was on the way, ironically lead by the people of European descent who had helped put the sport in decline.
In 1907 the novelist Jack London visited Hawaii and fell in love with surfing.He wrote an account, describing the moment a surfer catches a wave:
``Where but the moment before was only the wide desolation and invincible roar, is now a man, erect full-statured ..... calm and superb, poised on the giddy summit, his feet buried in the churning foam, the salt smoke rising to his knees...''
The account stimulated interest in Europe and America, prompting affluent young people to travel to the islands and learn the art of surfing.
Meanwhile the best of the Hawaiian surfers began travelling the world, promoting their sport.
A pro by the name George Freeth gave surfing demonstrations in California, giving people there an enduring taste for the sport.
Americans usually regard him as the modern day father of surfing.
A few years later in 1915 a young Hawaiian champion swimmer by the name of Duke Kahanamoku was invited to Australia by the NSW Swimming Association to give a demonstrations of his style in the pool.
While he was in Sydney he carved an eight foot board out of sugar pine and took it down to Freshwater beach for the country's first ever surfing demonstration.
As in California the sport quickly caught on.
At the same time in Hawaii native Hawaiians were reclaiming the sport, establishing formal clubs to practice it and make sure its traditions were not lost.
Throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s, surfing slowly simmered away, growing in popularity until in the 1950s and 60s it exploded, as out leisure time increased and young people took to the sport in their thousands.
Over the past forty or fifty years the sport has become so strong it's hard to believe it was once under threat of extinction.
It has spread to countries including South Africa, Brasil, the UK and Peru.
It continues to grow in popularity and is now practised by everyone from young girls of eight to old men of eighty
And also slightly clumbsy but enthusiastic men from Balmain.
Thank you
posted by Daniel Dasey at 11:03 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home