midget farrelly. R.I.P
Seminal: (a) strongly influencing later developments.
This is Midget gliding out of a fade about 40 years ago, probably 50 –
Farrelly was a dancer in the surf, every move was connected, instinctively measured, done with grace. He was so sure of his momentum power wasn’t necessary.
Look at his wake, look at the shape of his wake. Imagine how right that gliding, deep bite must have felt to a surfer who grew up on longboard clunkers, and hearing that noise of a sucking displacement gurgle.
This was all new. This is what a few trips north turned Sydney surfboards into. The shapers caught the train up and brought the rails back.
^ This image makes a man hungry.
This one doesn’t, the older you get, the better you are at raising orchids.
header pic from Farrelly Surfboards
Midget died last night.
.. and things aren’t the same with him gone.
petebowes.com 
Very stylish cutback indeed. I thought you said ‘orchard’ for a minute there…
Orchids bear, they are as lovely as women, and can hide their flowers for years.
Midget a man amongst the many , able to hold his line with a keen sense of Oz Aloha.
He was at our dinner table every night of the week, Midge this, Midge that . . . .
Better him that nat freakin young
Yea you know what dings my rails , the truth that is midget is never told , all we get is this made fantasy about shaping v bottoms and chopping down down board lengths by Bob the preacher and his young side kick , and made up bullshit by run and hide lynch how comes back and is now some self declared expert on indigenous culture all the while still making a highly commercial living from popular surf culture , why is it impossible for the real stories to be told , you know young was a egocentric prick , bob stole other peoples credits and was infact a bludger , wayne was a spoilt rich kid that was overindulged , MC was a high level drug dealer ..etc etc its lame , but this was is a nice piece.
fact is mate, who wants to get noticed .. how many joe nobodys have we known who tear it up every time they go out, then slip away, back into the hills.
Got handed Nats History of surfing as a twenties something grommet. It became a bible (got the hardcover from a seconhand bookshop). Also got his hard cover Surfing and Sailboard book, it all becomes like this big cross references along the Readers Digest aerial thing. I’m sure when I’m dead they will be worth something. It is a real shame there is nothing more than photos generally for Midge, Nat was dismissive of him, whatever, mates etc. But Morning of the Earth I am sure would have been better with him.
You bastards aren’t immortal, that worries me.
Had a beer with Bernard at caves house last time he was in the west , nice chap good fun & happy surfer , not a stuck up prick which is more than you can say for a lot of other surfers of fame from that era.
Yep well life aint fair young fella, very well we may indeed live a life “”Girt by Sea but with Midget moving onto the Big-Kahoonaa those with a sense of dignity will be left wallowing in the cultural and historical shallows of our beach culture , we will now have no other voice to pass on the historical truth of those pioneering surfboard surf-riders from the very earliest of times in Australia.
Thank the .ods that some of the truth has been written down before the spoilt private school druggies Carroll & Co get hold of it all and wring every bit of truth from the story and turn it into simply surfing in Australia post Nat Young and Drugs the definitive story ….pricks the lot of em.