Talk:Monty Webber
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As an encyclopedia article, this needs to begin with the words "Monty Webber is..." and explain who he is and why anyone should care before giving his biographical details. Angr (talk • contribs) 10:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Background to be edited before placing back into the article.
Monty left school in year 11 - or 5th form as it was known at the time - to study Art at East Sydney Technical College. He majored in sculpture, studying under Michael Snape on a grant provided by the National Visual Arts Board. This resulted in his first solo exhibition of abstract welded steel sculptures at the Australian Centre for Photography, in 1982.
After years of surfing the east coast and Lord Howe Island with his two elder brothers, in 1983 Mont and his younger brother Dan travelled to Bali and G-Land with a couple of their Bondi surfing mates. They returned to Indonesia annually for the next half dozen years, producing a series of films along the way. From one of these films came his legendary quadruple tube at G-Land, which became the title wave in Billabong's first surf video, Surf into Summer, which was released in 1987. Sandwiched annonymously between Sunny Garcia and Wayne Bartholomew, Monty's G-Land tube captured the imagination of a generation. As he soul-arched into Speedies, the American voiceover whined, for the very first time, "Only a Surfer Knows the Feeling".
During this period, Monty continued to exhibit his Art in some of Sydney's most reputable galleries, including Rex Irwin Fine Arts and Art Empire and Industry. Mixing mediums, he crossed over from stone carvings to ink drawings, and from bronze to film. It was, however, his avant-garde experimental movies that attracted the most response, with films that included nudity, drug abuse, political messages and surfing.
In the late '80s, Monty backpacked through Europe, labouring on building sites in London's East End, exhibiting ink drawings in France, even working for a couple of months in Paris' oldest circus, spotlighting the performers' acts. The waves he scored in Portugal that year were some of the biggest and best the area had seen in years. He then travelled home through Thailand and Malaysia.
Back in Australia, Monty returned to the film industry, constructing sets, driving location vans and assisting photographers. Around this time, he started freelance writing for a variety of surfing magazines, interweaving social commentary with comedy and adventure. Soon, the lure of the waves pulled him away from the film business and off on the road once more, shooting many of the best surfers of the times at locations on the Great Barrier Reef, in New Guinea, Indonesia and Hawaii. Monty filmed for most of the Aussie surfwear labels, as well as contributing footage to, and cutting three of Sarge's Surfing Scrapbook videos, water photography being his specialty. On one job, shooting water footage for Hot Tuna, he was the only person to witness the 2am G-Land tidal waves or tsunami. As the ocean sucked back out, Monty crawled into the wreckage that was Rob Bain's hut and lifted the roof to prise Rob out from under his collapsed bungalow. This near death experience proved to be a life changing one as well.
After his television camera work took him to even more exotic locations, including Chile, Bolivia and down the Amazon in Peru, he abandoned the new Bondi Beach, opting for a peaceful country lifestyle at Angourie Point with his wife Amelia and two young children, Flynn and Beatrice. Maradja 03:07, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
