A Fitting Tribute to William Gocher

From Nat Young to Mark Occhilupo, I’ve always had a deep respect for Australian surfers. Characters such as Mark Richards and Rabbit Bartholemew were known as “the Bronzed Aussies” in my day, a cadre of outlandish athletes from Down Under who took Hawaii’s North Shore by storm. Others such as Tommy Carroll and Gary “Kong” Elkerton continued to push the envelope in competitive wave riding, and have left a lasting legacy in the sport.

  Funny though, all of the legendary Australian watermen mentioned above would have been branded as scofflaws and petty criminals if it weren’t for the defiance of a certain newspaper editor and the spirit of public disobedience later made famous by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Of course, many Australians are the direct descendents of felons, convicts and criminals, thus earning the self-deprecating nickname “Connies.” During the 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of British criminals were transported to penal colonies on the Australian continent. It is rather ironic then, that stodgier elements of Victorian morality such as bans on public bathing would pervade Australian culture until the turn of the 20th Century.  

An unclad Bather: once considered a threat to public decency

In the days when Duke Kahanamoku was first learning to swim in Hawaii, daylight bathing was considered a threat to public decency and order in Australia. In fact, it was banned until 1902, when a newspaper editor by the name of William Gocher forced the issue by defying the law and bathing during daylight hours. One might call Gocher the”Ned Kelly” of costumed beach-goers. Kelly was a rebel folk hero in 19th Century Oz, sort of an Outback Jesse James. It was that sort of outlaw spirit that lead to defiance regarding a ban on “cossies” or costumes, as the Australians call their bathing suits. Authorities refused to prosecute Gocher, making him sort of a cause célèbre, or an ocean-going Lady Godiva in Australian society.

Gocher’s defiant will would ultimately open the door widely for bathing, and later surfing at Australian beaches. Unfortunately, the newer, more open attitudes toward public bathing also lead to a dramatic rise in drownings, which eventually gave rise to one of the world’s great corps of lifeguards.


Modern swimwear: Gocher's legacy


If the Australians in their Victorian modesty seemed a little more backward than the happy-go-lucky, loin cloth-clad Hawiians of Duke’s day, it would serve well to remind readers that Missionaries practically banned surfing in the Islands for the same puritanical reasons.  Travel magazine images of scantily clad wahines consorting with half-naked beach boys and frolicking in licentious repose on the sands of Waikiki raised a bellowing outcry from the crusading censors of the day.

 Swimwear and beach apparel have undergone many transformations since then, and style and taste are still debated today on beaches from Biarritz to Bikini Atoll. One can still hear the ridicule and disgust among the crowds at Windansea or Waimea Bay when a corpulent hodad in bun huggers parades his pale, flabby backside across the sand.