Michael Peterson (surfer)

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Michael Peterson (born 24 September 1952), known as MP, is an Australian surfer. He was among the best Australian surfers in the early to mid 1970s, noted for his deep tube riding skill, especially at Kirra on the Gold Coast. He was Australian champion in 1972 and 1974 and won many other major surfing competitions. Schizophrenia (only eventually diagnosed) and drugs cut short his career and his surfing became the stuff of legend.

Many of the details of Peterson's life remained obscure until Sean Doherty's biography MP: The Life of Michael Peterson was published in 2004 (on which this article is primarily based).

Contents

[edit] Youth

Peterson's family lived in several places when he was very young before settling at Tweed Heads and Coolangatta on Queensland's Gold Coast. He grew up there with his mother Joan, younger brother Tommy, and younger sisters Dorothy and Denice.

As a boy he was in surf lifesaving and in the Greenmount Surf Life Saving Club won many junior titles for swimming. Being a clubbie was uncool in those days but when he got old enough to be worried by that sort of thing he stayed because it meant a locker and a warm shower at the beach. The price was a half-day a month on surf patrol, dressed in sluggos, watching swimmers. He had no patience for sitting around and he and Tommy would arrange to be on patrol together for company.

Peterson got started surfing first on surf-o-planes, then polystyrene Coolites. Money was very tight for the family, his mother Joan worked long, long hours peeling prawns and all sorts of jobs just to make ends meet, so the boys couldn't own a board (of any kind), only hire or borrow, either from Billy Rak at Greenmount or Johnny Charlton at Kirra who ran tourist hire businesses. The boys ended up working for Rak for two summers, setting up and lugging boards around for tourists etc.

The first boards Peterson owned, in early 1966, were ones broken so badly when washed over the rocks at Greenmount (before the days of leg ropes) that their owners didn't bother collecting what remained. The boys would take them home, make rough repairs and head back out in the water on them. They also found surf club membership had another advantage – weekend surfers from Brisbane would leave their boards at the club during the week, so there was a great choice to sneak out and ride.

In September 1967 around Peterson's 15th birthday the family moved to units in Tweed St, Coolangatta and the boys setup a board shaping bay underneath. They figured it'd be cheaper to make boards than to buy, and got resin and fibreglass offcuts from local factories. For blanks they used cut-down old longboards. A lot of the local kids couldn't afford new boards either, so the little business flourished, expanding to Peterson's friend Pete Townend's garage too.

Unknowingly, the cut-downs they were making and surfing put them right in the middle of the shortboard revolution. 8 foot boards would be cut down to 6'8", or to 6'0 or right down to 5'1, though they soon found that they'd gone too far with 5'1 when they got crunched at big Kirra. The shortest they ever got to was 4'3 for friend Kerry Gill, who actually found that board went well for him.

Peterson's first new board, a proper board to his mind, came in 1968. His mother offered that if he won the Greenmount Surf Lifesaving Club championship then she'd buy him one. With his always competitive drive spurred on by that prize he was a convincing winner, and two weeks later got a 7'11 board from local shaper Ken Gudenswager.

[edit] Morning of the Earth

In February 1971 young Alby Falzon was on the Gold Coast filming for Morning of the Earth during one of the best runs of swell ever seen there (12 continuous weeks rarely below head high). He'd earlier run a picture of Peterson in his magazine Tracks with an article about the underground Gold Coast scene, and on a particular day happened to be filming at Kirra while Peterson was taking the place apart.

The result was a 3 minute sequence in the film, and many stills printed in Tracks. The shot of Peterson that stood out became known simply as "the cutback", it had Peterson tall and muscular, long hair flying, doing a big cutback at Kirra. That shot became the cover for the July 1972 issue of Tracks too (after the film was released).

Peterson didn't go to the local premiere of the film (10 January 1972). His mother Joan drove him up to the hall at Miami High (his old school) but he balked at being the centre of attention and they went home again. His nervousness at presentations and gatherings would be repeated many times in the future.

One of Peterson's secrets for surfing barrels at Kirra was the rocker (underside curvature) on his boards. Instead of having the nose start to lift from somewhere close to the end of the board, he moved the apex back near the middle and would ride it with one foot either side. By shifting weight onto the back foot the board would be on the back part and would stall, slowing down to get back deeper in the tube. And by shifting weight forward onto the front part it'd shoot forward. He told Mike Perry who shaped alongside him for a time "It's just like cheating, man."

[edit] Early contests

In 1971 Peterson won the Kirra Pro-Am contest, the first Queensland contest to offer any prize money ($150), and following that the Queensland Titles which had its final round at Kirra. That title earned him a start in the Australian Titles held at Bells Beach (incorporated into the Bells Beach Classic). He did poorly there, with his narrow 5'9 board unsuited to the fatter waves.

Back in Coolangatta the police had an unofficial campaign to clean up the beaches, getting rid of marijuana and the undesirable types who didn't suit the family-oriented tourist destination the local chamber of commerce wanted to promote. Surfers were on the top of the list of targets (and on occasions they weren't carrying anything the police were not averse to planting something). Peterson had been a heavy pot smoker for some time and on 24 January 1972 got arrested for possession and supply, but was lucky in court and got a $500 fine instead of 3 months jail.

That bust curbed his habit for a time, but not very long. He found pot relaxed him, one of the few things that could dull a growing whirlwind of thoughts in his head (almost certainly an early symptom of his later diagnosed schizophrenia). In coming years he was well known for having a couple of joints before or after surfing, even before contests. Others might have found pot made them unable to concentrate properly at a contest, but Peterson had no such worries. What he didn't do, incidentally, was get drunk, neither when young nor when older. At a nightclub he might well have had some acid, or be stoned, or whatever, but while everyone around would be drinking he'd just have lemonade.

[edit] Australian champion

In 1972 Peterson successfully defended his Queensland Title, narrowly beating friend Pete Townend. (Townend ended up with an unenviable record for second place finishes in his career.) The win put Peterson into the Australian titles again, but he almost didn't get there.

Paul Neilsen was the reigning Australian champion but hadn't made the Queensland titles final and so hadn't qualified as such to defend his Australian title. His club "Windansea" from Surfers Paradise hatched a plan to bring up Peterson's drug conviction (as if any of them had never indulged) at the inter-club meeting and get him ousted, in favour of Neilsen. The meeting descended into chaos and the selections were put to a vote, with the result Billy Grant was sacrificed. Over the years Peterson's schizophrenia would make him imagine all sorts of plots, this was perhaps the only time there really was one.

The Australian titles were held that year at North Narrabeen in Sydney. In the second round Peterson surfed with energy, but also some luck, getting practically the only good waves that came through, and making it to the final. For the final the ocean went completely flat and the organisers had to cancel it, instead declaring Peterson the winner (with Pete Townend second, yet again).

That win then sent Peterson to the 1972 World Titles in San Diego. It was a wild time, with surfers practically taking over the Travelodge hotel there. Peterson made it through his first round heat, then in the second round in 1.5x head high waves at Oceanside he got a full 5 second tube ride, which one judge saw and scored 19 out of 20, but the other two didn't. Only later when they compared scores did they realize the other two hadn't seen him go in, and had only scored what they saw at the end. But it was too late, the scores stood and Peterson was eliminated.

If fate had meant Peterson to get a world title then 1972 would have been the year for it. As it happened though his most dominant year, 1974, fell in between this last 1972 amateur world title and the first professional title in 1976.

[edit] 1973

The Bells Beach Classic in 1973 offered a $1000 prize, which was very substantial at that time, and was to be run under the new "points per manoeuvre" system which had been trialled at the Hang Ten event in Hawaii a few months earlier. The idea was to eliminate subjectivity from judging, it was to be just a matter of counting moves completed. In the first few rounds in big messy conditions Peterson didn't do well and was outside the top ten on total points.

On the last day he had a bit of luck when the leader Midget Farrelly came down with a bad flu and had to withdraw. Peterson was still well behind but he got a bigger board and started bouncing around making turns like crazy. By the end he thought he hadn't done enough and didn't hang around while the judges did their arithmetic. In fact he'd won and was amazed when told. The presentation was supposed to have been on the beach but it was so cold the organisers moved it to the local pub. Peterson's speech was characteristically short, "I just want to thank everyone", before he disappeared to the back of the room.

The 1973 Australian titles were held at Margaret River in big surf. Peterson was right up with the leaders through the early rounds, but it was fellow Queenslander Richard Harvey who got the win (and Pete Townend second, again).

Back on the Gold Coast Peterson did more board shaping, with Furry Austen enticing him away from Joe Larkin's factory with the offer of more money.

[edit] 1974

1974 was a big year for Peterson, his most successful in contest results. It started with a second place finish to Rabbit Bartholomew in the Queensland titles though. Peterson had a bit of a feud going with Bartholomew in those years. It started, as these things do, over a trivial enough thing, Peterson hadn't paid Bartholomew back for a cab ride they'd shared in Hawaii in early 1972. But with rivalry in surf competitions, it all escalated to the point where Peterson thought Bartholomew was stalking him or somehow out to get him (which wasn't the case). They patched up their differences in later years, but in 1974 it really burned Peterson to lose the Queensland titles to Bartholomew (for a second year running).

Peterson then won the Kirra Pro-Am, the start of a remarkable run of wins. The next event was the Bells Beach Classic where instead of the come from behind win the previous year he was well in control and won by a big margin. The contest was still under the points per manoeuvre system and he milked it, even slipping in old school longboard moves that were still on the scoring card. This contest was also where he found that showing up from nowhere just minutes before a heat really played with his opponents heads and made his blitz in the water even more effective.

The inaugural 2SM/Coca-Cola Surfabout was held in May 1974. Coke didn't just dip their toe into surf sponsorship, they went into it in a big way, offering a $2400 first prize, which was a new record for an Australian contest. It drew surfers from around Australia and the world, including some like Nat Young who had otherwise become disillusioned with the contest circuit. Pete Townend lead all the way to the final day and it was looking like Townend first and a young Mark Richards second. But Peterson just kept gaining and gaining and it played on Townends nerves. Townend slipped back (to fifth in the end) and Peterson came through the winner.

The Australian titles for 1974 were held at Snapper Rocks and Burleigh Heads. Peterson started slowly then crushed his opponents in tubes at Burleigh. On one tube he disappeared for so long the judges thought he'd fallen, until the crowd went wild when he popped out almost at the beach.

It was also during 1974 that Pete Townend gave Peterson the nickname "MP". Peterson used to call him "PT" all the time, so Townend in turn coined "MP" and used it in newspaper columns he wrote, and it stuck. Peterson didn't much like "MP" in later years, associating it with hype and image, though it's still how he's most often known.

[edit] Peterson Surf Shop

In September 1974 Peterson started his Michael Peterson Surfboards business, with a factory in Currumbin next to the Burford Blanks factory, and a shop at in Musgrave St, Kirra, right opposite the Kirra beach. His name by then was so big it seemed a sure winner. A caption in the Brisbane Courier Mail wondered if he could be "Australia's first millionaire surfer".

He had a rather inflated idea of his own business acumen, but did have the sense not to try to go it alone, he brought in Peter Hallas as a partner. Hallas was a fellow Kirra surfer and had worked alongside Peterson at Hohensee's factory. They had a total of seven staff and would sell boards up and down the coast, often delivered by Peterson himself in his panel van.

Orders for boards soon flooded in, more than they could fill. The boards they supplied were actually more designed for Peterson's level of skill than the average surfer, but the "MP" label certainly made them sell. The problem was that Peterson wasn't very business minded and would too often sell stock out the back door or treat the business like a personal bank when it was going well.

Eventually Hallas despaired and by mutual agreement let himself be bought out by Peterson's mother Joan for just $1000. If run well the business should have been a gold mine, but he thought getting out was the smartest thing to do, and he remained friends with Peterson. Joan took charge better, but couldn't much improve the overall operation. She ended up walking away in 1977 when Peterson brought in a girlfriend who Joan strongly disapproved of, and shortly after that the business folded.

[edit] Moonrocket

Meanwhile back in 1974/75 at his factory Peterson shaped for himself a 6'6" six-channel triple-flyer pintail which became known as the Moonrocket, or the Fangtail, or the Christmas Tree. His staff laughed when they saw it, wondering how anyone could possibly surf it. The fang-like flyers at the back and finger-deep channels also made it a glasser's nightmare (so Peter Evans, who had that job at the factory, wasn't laughing).

The board was Peterson's secret weapon for the Pa Bendall contest at the start of 1975 at Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast. There was a lot of general weirdness on the beach at that contest, like Keith Paull going around with his head shaved and painted purple and blue. But Peterson's board brought him victory (and a $2000 prize) in knee high slop, continuing his run of success from 1974.

Later the board passed to a young Peter Harris who worked at Peterson's factory, in lieu of wages owed when the business shut down. Harris surfed it until it became hopelessly waterlogged and then gave it to a friend's son on the Sunshine Coast, where, so the story goes, a famous piece of surfing memorabilia finished up as landfill.[1]

In 1995 Tommy Peterson made a replica of the board. It was presented to Kelly Slater when Slater won the peer poll in Australia's Surfing Life magazine that year.

[edit] White lady

Peterson first tried heroin some time in 1974, and later in 1975 got into it in a big way. The Queensland Police had done such a good job cleaning up the pot on the Gold Coast that they'd created a vacuum, which was filled by a far worse drug, heroin, cheap and very pure. Many local surfers got into it, and, with everyone naive, many died from overdoses. Rabbit Bartholomew has written about that time too, he lost twelve friends to overdoses.

Peterson had a phobia about needles, so he didn't inject, instead he'd chop the heroin up and snort lines. His brother Tommy (who himself wrestled with heroin addiction over the years) thought that was the only thing that saved Michael from an overdose, the fact he couldn't get enough up his nose at one time to be fatal.

All this time Peterson's schizophrenia was gradually getting worse too, he became ever more erratic, hostile to friends, and imagined plots against him. These were classic symptoms in retrospect, but at the time those who knew him just thought it was the drugs, certainly he'd done enough to make anyone act weird. His friends later wished they'd done much more for him at the time.

[edit] Late career

At the start of 1976 Peterson went to New Zealand for the first event in the new IPS professional world tour. There weren't many big names there, they were in Hawaii for the much more prestigious Duke contest, and Peterson got the win. There was a certain irony in the first event of the new professional era being won by a man who was in so many ways the opposite of budding professionals like Pete Townend (the eventual winner of the series that year).

In 1977 the inaugural Stubbies contest was held at Burleigh Heads. It was organised by Peter Drouyn and he devised the "man on man" heats system fot it (which is used in ASP World Tour contests today). Just two surfers in the water suited Peterson, he could focus all his psyche-out energy on just the one poor bloke in the water with him. He got through to the semi-finals comfortably where he came up against Rabbit Bartholomew.

In front of a huge crowd the two took on 6 foot freight trains. Peterson went deep in the tube and took chances from way out on the point. Bartholomew made high-percentage moves in the pocket. Scoring was based on the whole heat and it split the judges with Peterson getting the win. Just who surfed better that day was a hot topic of debate for many years. The final was then Peterson against a young Mark Richards, MP versus MR. Richards thought he couldn't match Peterson's wave hassling and decided just to take whatever came through while Peterson paddled back out. It was still quite close, with Peterson getting the win and the $5,000 prize.

That turned out to be his last major contest victory. He spent the next few years as something of a nomad, hardly known to anyone, taking erratic surfboard shaping jobs, sometimes dealing, and alternating time on and off drugs. To get himself clean he'd go camping to a favourite spot at the base of Mount Warning with big bags of health food like fruits and nuts and just be by himself. Later in court (below) his solicitor told the court he'd tried about 30 times altogether to get clean. He surfed intermittently during those years, and got into windsurfing as recreation instead, just in a small way, perhaps attracted by its solo nature.

[edit] The chase

On the evening of 9 August 1983 Peterson was on his way to Noosa to go windsurfing the next day and had pulled up at Beenleigh south of Brisbane to sleep. A police car with siren blaring came by and it set him into a panic and he drove off as fast as he could. He hadn't realized the police car was actually going the other way. The policeman saw him and took up a pursuit.

The pursuit turned into something straight out of a Hollywood movie, 20 police cars following, two side-swiped, and pedestrians nearly killed when he mounted the footpath at one point. The chase went on at high speed all the way to Brisbane where a further 15 police cars setup a roadblock on the Story Bridge, at which point Peterson stopped. It made national news and became known in surfing circles simply as "the chase".

He was held in a cell overnight at Beenleigh then taken to Boggo Road Gaol. The police assumed he was on drugs and took his car, The Falcon, apart looking for them. All they found was some vitamin C, part of his health kicks. The car ended up in so many pieces it was sent to the wreckers.

Peterson's luck with the law had come to an end and he was sentenced to a year's jail, and his driver's license permanently revoked. The judge recognised heroin alone couldn't explain Peterson's sorry state and ordered a psychiatric report, but it didn't provide a diagnosis and didn't help him. Peterson started his sentence at Boggo Road, and in fact was there during some of the infamous riots (but stayed in his cell).

His mother Joan lobbied her local state MP, the justice minister and the prisons minister for medical help for Michael, and eventually he was moved to Wacol Prison Hospital on 25 December 1983 for psychiatric treatment. His schizophrenia was, at long long last, diagnosed and he received Mellaril medication. He also took two electroshock treatments in the hope they would help (giving his own consent for that).

At the end of his sentence Peterson returned to the Gold Coast and lived either at care facilities or with his mother. His medication helped considerably but he lived those years almost as a recluse, rarely seeking out former friends. A poor diet and the medication (especially Clozaril) saw his weight balloon, to the point where those who knew him in his lanky muscular prime in the 1970s could scarcely recognise him.

Like most schizophrenics Peterson heard voices, but he was one of the lucky few whose voices are friendly and he could chat away to them, or sort of marshal the troops when trying to keep to a diet.

[edit] Today

Through 2002 and 2003 Peterson cooperated with surf writer and Tracks editor Sean Doherty on a biography of his life, bringing light to many aspects life that had only been the stuff of surfing legend.

Peterson had been well enough in recent years to attend a few surf functions, including a contest organised by his old Kirra Surfriders club in 2002 called the MP Classic in his honour. It raised about $10,000 to support various local mental health services like those who looked after him over the years.

He hasn't surfed since some time in the mid 1980s, but told Doherty "I haven't given it away! Who told you that? Is that what's getting around?". His friends have hopes that maybe on a mini-mal somewhere away from prying eyes his spark might be rekindled; many of his peers (Rabbit Bartholomew say) still surf.

[edit] References

  1. ^ [[Tracks (magazine)|]], December 2005, [[Sean Doherty (surf writer)|]] as editor replying to a letter.

[edit] External links