New exhibition to celebrate how surfing has shaped Taranaki

MEDIA RELEASE

19 November 2013

New exhibition to celebrate how surfing has shaped Taranaki

With more surf breaks per kilometre than anywhere south of Hawaii the Taranaki coastline has always enticed surfers to its shores and many call it home as a result. This summer at Puke Ariki museum Surf: Shaping Taranaki will celebrate how surfing has helped shape the local community.

The exhibition, which runs from 13 December 2013 to 4 May 2014, features a lineup of personal stories and personalities, kiwi ingenuity and high-end technology as well exploring the science behind our wild west coast waves.

As surfing gained popularity around the world in the late 1950s, a small number of enthusiastic Taranaki surfers also took to the water and while waves weren’t in short supply, surfboards were. As a result a few enterprising locals took to making boards in their backyards.

Spotting a gap in the local market Dave Littlejohn collaborated with Australian board maker Nigel Dwyer to set up New Plymouth’s Del Surfboards in 1965, which is still going strong today.

Taranaki has continued to produce world-class board shapers including Cain Aldridge of CSA Ltd, currently one of the largest surfboard manufacturers in New Zealand.

Aldridge, who hails from Opunake, attributes Taranaki’s thriving surfing industry to both local support and our surf’s reputation.

“Taranaki has been able to support the number of quality board shapers over the years through a combination of things, locals riding local boards and also the number of people that travel to Taranaki from around New Zealand and the world for our surf.”

It is the contributions that these surfers have made to the community that prompted Puke Ariki to hold a surf exhibition.

Puke Ariki Director Kelvin Day believes that many people are unaware of how surfing has affected the community and how surfers have helped to shape Taranaki.

“Surfing has bought people to Taranaki and encouraged people to stay, there are a growing number of professionals whose lives could take them anywhere in the world but they choose to settle here.”

He adds that Taranaki is well known for its farming, the oil and gas industry but also the surf.

“Surfing contributes to who we are as a community; it is part of the fabric of Taranaki. It’s a story we haven’t told and it is worth sharing and celebrating.”

Behind these epic Taranaki waves is the perfect storm of science, geography and a hefty dose of luck which local company Met Ocean Solutions are working with Puke Ariki to create displays to help explain.

Peter McComb, Met Ocean Solutions oceanographer explains, “The hemispheric nature of the Taranaki coast provides a range of swell exposures and wind orientations and the nature of the lahar deposition from the volcano have created a diverse range of reefs and other subtidal structures that produce favourable surf”.

But he is quick to point out that it’s not all geography.

“Despite everything we remain at the mercy of the arrival of distant swells to combine with the right wind conditions”.

Notes to editor

•          Surf: Shaping Taranaki opens 13 December 2013 and closes 4 May 2014
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•          Puke Ariki is an award-winning facility where museum, library and visitor information centre are combined to tell the stories of Taranaki’s past, present and future.
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•          The exhibition will include a short documentary ‘Shaping Taranaki’, a series of video interviews profiling the achievements of surfers who have shaped the cultural landscape of our region.
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•          Met Ocean Solutions involvement includes creating ‘Wave Play’, an interactive which allows you to modify the Taranaki seabed at two well known surf breaks to see how it changes wave patterns. The fundamental principles behind the core wave transformation processes can be tested with the tool, including wave height, period and direction. They have also created a 34-year animation showing the wave and wind conditions on Planet Earth and around NZ, plus what the surf is like in terms of surfing wave quality around the Taranaki Peninsula.   
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•          Science and folklore will combine in another interactive which uses Met Ocean Solutions data of 20 carefully chosen surf breaks to explain the conditions the break works in, while giving voice to the grass roots surfers up and down the coastline about these world class waves.
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•          An Xbox Kinect-styled game will feature which allows kids aged 5-95 (and wheelchair users) to surf Bogworks, New Plymouth’s downtown right hand wave or Rocky Lefts, one of State Highway 45s legendary rock strewn breaks.

ENDS

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