John Philip Walker photographs and related material

fonds

approximately 1954-1974

Graphic Materials, Textual Records, Photographs, Ephemera

1012071

1 box of textual and printed material, 2 albums, 271 photographic prints, 439 negatives, 8 slides

John Philip Walker (1944-2012), was in his late teens when he received his Praktica camera, as a birthday or Christmas gift, with which he proceeded to capture activities and events of his daily life at Guildford, NSW, and later life at Sawtell, near Coffs Harbour. Walker also kept a written account of his activities, compiled in a series of loose-leaf, 'day-to-a-page', flippable desk top calendars with portable stand, marketed as a ‘Bunch of Dates’. The contained format of the desk calendar diary was suited to Walker’s brief commentary style and sometimes itinerant lifestyle, and reflected the disciplined mind of an organised young man with regular habits, and interests ranging from 1960s popular culture to mechanics.
Walker’s desk calendar diaries and photographs covering the early 1960s record more emphasis on family routines, with snapshots of Australian backyard life, pets, travel, cars, and beach life including holidays at Patonga. NSW. His entries record details of social outings, sporting pursuits, what he is reading, telephone calls and meetings with girlfriends. His Saturdays were spent in the pursuit of spare parts and working on cars in which he also traded. He also worked for Truscott’s car dealership on Parramatta Rd, Five Dock, as well as for his father’s hessian ‘sugar’ bag recycling business which operated from a factory behind the family home at Guildford, a western suburb of Sydney, near Granville.
By 1964 Walker was seriously engaged in surf culture. At this time Australia was in the middle of a short but intense ‘surf craze’ period. 1964 was the year of the first World Surfing Championship held at Manly, on May 16-17. This event was the best-attended surf contest to date. Walker, then 20 years of age, was one of thousands of spectators who filled the beachfront promenade for the finals, which were filmed for the nightly news.
Nicknamed 'Mr Fish’, Walker was a dogged weekend surfer who favoured the difficult breaks at Sharkies Beach, near Coledale on the near South Coast, about an hour’s drive south of his home, which he visited on most weekends, using his diary entries and photography (1964-7) to record details of his surfing successes and failures, the weather conditions and his companions.
He records his attendance at live music performances – including Digby Richards, the Fugitives, Billy Thorp and Digger Revell & The Denvermen (July 1965), Australia’s premier surf instrumental group of the 1960s with the top ten hits 'Surf city stomp' (1963) and 'My Little Rocker's Turned Surfie' (1964) – a developing taste in menswear (he opens an account at Ron Bennet's in the Sydney CDB), the management of potential (and actual) courtships, as well as his changing financial priorities – his trading in bags and used cars was committed to weekly payments on a block of land at Blackheath.
Walker was also regular at the surf film sessions at the University Sydney Union, attending three screenings of Endless Summer, the first occasion in November 1964 when he notes 'most of the mob were there'. This seminal surf movie may have inspired Walker in his own series of surfing ‘safaris’, up and down the coast of NSW, and on to northern Queensland (1964-1966).
The following gives a representative sample of his activities over one eighteen month period. On February 1, 1966, he is at Scott's Head, traditionally a spot for more advanced board riders, in the Nambucca region of the NSW’s north coast, where he notes that ‘Midget Farrelly surfed for an hour today’. In March 1966, he’s having his FJ Holden fitted with a camping body, in May he’s paying off a wet suit (£16), and in June/July he orders a new board from legendary shaper Barry Bennett at Brookvale. (Bennett Surfboards has been in operation longer than any other Australian surfboard manufacturer). In October, Walker buys a 1961 Holden panel van and fits it with a roof rack and wide wheels. In May 1967, he buys a surfboard from Gordon Woods Surf Board Centre (208 Harbord Road, Brookvale); another member of the Brookvale 'six', Woods shaped Nat Young's 1966 World Contest winning board.
Surfing received less prominence in the diaries of later years, as Walker returns to study and work, including a trip north to cut sugar cane near Edmonton, Qld (1968). In 1969, there is one final, epic road trip to Western Australia, driving across the Nullarbor (photographed in colour) to surf the coastline along the Great Australian Bight, travelling on to Western Australia, and ending at Dampier on the North West coast.
By this time Walker had met Judith Audrey Thew. The couple later married and moved to the NSW North Coast, where John worked as a labourer in the Coffs Harbour Plywood Mill for more than ten years, before opening Coffs Harbour Bumpers & Chrome, an electroplating and bumper bar exchange service. They raised two children, Nathan and Nicole; John continued to surf and take photographs until his death in 2012.
Reference: Library acquisition file

Series 1: John Philip Walker desk calendars and ephemera, 1960-1969, 1972-1974

Series 2: John Philip Walker photograph albums, approximately 1956-1969

Series 3: John Philip Walker photographic prints, approximately 1956-1969

Series 4: John Philip Walker negatives and slides,approximately 1956-1969

Copyright holder:: Any residual copyright in photographic material passes to Lucan Johnathan Walker (son). Copyright in the manuscript material is assigned to the Library.
Copyright status:: Photographs created before 1955 are out of copyright. Photographs created after 1955 are in copyright for the life of creator plus 70 years
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales