WELCOME
Welcome to the Winter edition of
the Surfing Australia Magazine.
All change presents opportunity
and Surfing Australia continues to
experience rapid growth and trans-
formation in all areas of our busi-
ness and organization. Our CEO,
Andrew Stark has kept the stoke alive, navigating his way
through rips, currents and closeouts, keeping us focused
and extremely well positioned for future success. I also
wish to acknowledge the support provided by our board
of directors and the commitment and patience of all staff,
stakeholders and partners as we traverse our way through
these changing tides.
The most significant changes you will read about have been
in the High-Performance sector. Firstly, I wish to sincerely
thank the State and Federal Government for their belief and
support of our program, providing substantial investment
to enable us to expand on our world leading Hurley Surfing
Australia High-Performance Centre that will future proof the
development of Australia’s surfing talent for many genera-
tions to come.
The Olympics are less than 3 years away and of course we
are aiming for Gold in Tokyo 2020 so there is plenty of work
to be done. We are so incredibly fortunate to have Bede
Durbidge accept the role as the new Elite Program Manager
to coach and guide our athletes to achieve World Champi-
onship tour success and Olympic glory.
Enough from me. Turn the pages and enjoy reading about
how much we love what we do, creating a healthier and
happier Australia through surfing.
Happy Surfing! Welcome to the winter addition of
Surfing Australia’s digital magazine.
It has been an extremely busy
winter period with a lot of change in
our organisation as we head towards
the 2020 Japan Olympics Games.
The opportunity to win the first ever
Olympic Gold Medals for Australia in Japan is something our
organisation is taking extremely seriously and this has result-
ed in major structural changes at Surfing Australia.
While we say farewell to some fantastic people who have
given a lot to the organisation over many years we also wel-
come new team members to Surfing Australia included Bede
Durbidge who has announced his retirement to come and
take up the critical role of Elite Program Manager at Surfing
Australia and head up our Olympic Campaign and Kim Crane
as our new National High Performance Director. We will be
making several more announcements in coming weeks.
Our sport development pathway has been bolstered with
the announcement of Woolworths as a major partner of
Surfing Australia across various junior surfing programs
included the name rights to all the State Junior Surfing
Titles across Australia.
As summer approaches our major event programs will
start to roll out at beaches Australia wide and we look
forward to unearthing more great surfers through these
events and programs and offering our surfing community
the best possible competition platform to thrive and grow
their surfing.
I would like to acknowledge and thank the great work
of our staff and state branches also sincerely thank all our
valued partners for their commitment to ensure we continue
to deliver quality sport programs and deliver on our purpose
to create a healthier and happier Australia.
Enjoy the magazine and see you in the surf.
Layne Beachley AO – Chair Andrew Stark – CEO
002 | Issue 16 // Winter 2017