Queen Elizabeth at an Australian Surf Carnival in 1954

Yes Liz the Sequel and hubby Phil the Duke get the right royal treatment from the Aussie lifesavers at a packed Bondi Beach on a brilliant Sydney day in 1954. 

As this was only nine years after the end of WWII, the March Past by the Aussie and Kiwi clubs was a big deal and was looking more than a little para military. 

The Malibu surfboard was still two years away from being introduced to Aussie beach culture, but the kook box boys sure give the solid Bondi surf a pretty good crack – as do the surfboats.

This was sent to us by Archive Detective Ian Lording who located it somewhere in the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, who added “How good is the colour!”

 Watch it HERE

Notes from the NFSA:

The Queen in Australia: Surf Carnival at Bondi Beach

Summary

At Bondi Beach, the Queen observes an Australian surf carnival, a gathering of teams from surf clubs around the country and New Zealand, all wearing the traditional neck-to-knee surfing costume that was required just after the turn of the century, when Australian surf clubs began.

After the traditional march past, the lifesavers take to the water to give a demonstration of rescue techniques, using both hollow surfboards and surfboats, but the heavy seas play havoc with their plans.

This is by far the most exciting sequence in The Queen in Australia (1954), which is probably why Stanley Hawes chose to place it near the end of the documentary, as a kind of climax. The surf conditions are significantly rough, making it difficult for the surfboats to get beyond the waves. The camera operators do some of their best work in this milieu. Placing a camera inside the surfboat is very unusual, and it appears that both the camera and its operators may have gone into the water at one stage. This sequence adds a sense of danger to the film, and the kind of sunny location that audiences in Britain had come to expect.

The Queen in Australia had its first public screening at Leicester Square in London, rather than in Australia.

It was made for international consumption, as well as for Australians. Indeed, its production was a fulfilment of a promise from the Australian Government to provide a record that the Queen could show her children on her return to England.