Pittwater Life November 2020 Issue

swamp and I remember as a kid there was
a property owner running around on a
horse, a stockman with a stock whip who
chased us off his property a few times.”
They later moved to the Adelaide Hills
and for a time lived in a magnificent
160-year-old house at Mount Lofty owned
by his grandmother.
The Creative Bug
By the time he was 12, the family had
moved to Sydney where his father opened
the Hungry Horse Gallery in Paddington
and Tim was attending Cranbrook School
in Bellevue Hill, where he met well-known
shaper Greg Webber and his brothers, who
in those days were Bondi locals.
“Because of all the creative things going
on around me when I went to Cranbrook, I
was trying to create things I could sell and
make money out of. I saw opportunities
all around me,” he says. “And we were
hanging out a lot with the Laws family,
John and Caroline, because John and dad
were good friends.
“John had a Super 8 movie camera
sitting on the floor and I kept on eyeing it
off for many, many months and I said ‘hey
John I’ve seen that movie camera on the
floor, any chance I can borrow it?’
“He looked at me and said, ‘you know
what, I don’t use it so if you can put it to
good use you can have it.”
From that point on Tim started shooting
Super 8 footage, partly inspired by the
Webber boys who were making films of
their own. “So that was the beginning of
my film career.”
A business model born
By 1981 Tim was back in Adelaide,
working as a DJ. “I was still shooting
surfing on the Yorke Peninsula and a few
other spots for the fun of it,” says Tim.
“Then I hit up a guy by the name of Peter
Victorsen – his nickname was Punk –
who owned the Top o Taps surf shop to
sponsor me to go to Sydney and shoot the
1981 2SM Coca-Cola Surfabout.”
After some haggling Punk agreed and
on the same long trip Tim made it to Bells
Beach for the annual Easter comp. The
timing could not have been better.
The waves at Bells reached a perfect 15
foot while Narrabeen’s Simon Anderson
won the comp on a three-finned board
known as a thruster, a revolutionary
design that changed surfing.
It was a seminal event – and so was the
movie that resulted for Tim.
“We had a line a mile long to see the
film because the only way you’d see
surfing in those days was a 30-second
bulletin on the news,” Tim says. “I
suddenly realised I could live a dream on
Continued on page 38
Surf’s
Life Stories
Up!
Into his fifth decade behind the
lens, Avalon film-maker Tim
Bonython tells of his career
documenting big wave surfing.
Story by Martin Kelly
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: With surfing’s original ‘Gidget’ in
Malibu; with legend Kelly Slater; back in his early DJ days; with wife
and business manager Sandrine and sons Tristan and Maxim; with
dad Kym; after a heavy knock, with jet ski driver Campbell Farrell.
Life Stories
Tim Bonython can trace his family
tree back to 1370 but he very much
lives in the moment, so fast it’s
often hard to keep up, both with his
conversation, which jumps from point to
point, and movement – he’s always doing
something.
Later this month, Tim, a timeless
showman and acclaimed surf
cinematographer from Avalon, will once
again be packing his bags and heading
up the coast for the latest instalment
of the Australian Surf Movie Festival, a
moveable, changeable feast he started
back in 2002.
Eighteen years on, media production
and consumption may be radically
different – streaming, internet, mobile,
COVID – but in essence the surf movie
game remains the same. Entertainment.
For Tim this means getting exclusive
shots of the best surfers in the largest,
heaviest, scariest waves possible, cutting
and editing the footage before taking it
out on the road.
The drill is the same as it ever was: travel
from surf town to surf town, promote the
hell out of the product, charge a fair entry
fee, set up in a local cinema, put on the
show for the local crew.
Then move on and do it all again,
following the path laid down in the 1960s
and 1970s by surf movie pioneers such as
Bruce Brown, Bob Evans, Paul Witzig, Albe
Falzon and others.
Early days
Tim’s story begins 1400km from Avalon
in the city of Adelaide, where he was born
61 years ago into one of the city’s bestknown
families. Paternal grandfather,
Sir John Lavington Bonython, was a
journalist, businessman and former Lord
Mayor of Adelaide. His dad Kym achieved
a certain fame as a World War II squadron
leader, jazz aficionado, concert promoter,
entrepreneur, speedway racer, art gallery
owner, politician and man about town.
Tim is one of three children from
Kym’s second marriage to former Miss
South Australia Julie McClure, and grew
up by the water in the Adelaide suburb
of Tennyson, a long way from the surf
towards the crook of Gulf St Vincent but
right on the beach.
“The front door opened onto the street
but the back door straight on the beach
and so I would just kinda wander out
the back door and the ocean became my
playground from day one,” Tim says.
“Literally just half a ‘kay’ up the road
was the sand hills that ran up to Largs
Bay. Then on the other side was the
36 NOVEMBER 2020
The Local Voice Since 1991
The Local Voice Since 1991
NOVEMBER 2020 37