Isabel Letham

Who was Isabel Letham?

Isabel Letham was an Australian pioneer surfboard rider and swimming instructor, renowned as 'the first Australian to ride a surfboard'. In 1915 at Freshwater Beach, Sydney she experimented riding a board in the Hawaiian tradition in tandem with Duke Kahanamoku.

Kahanamoku had been invited to Australia by the NSW Swimming Association. He hadn't brought a board so Letham's father William Letham helped him make one from sugar pine. At Freshwater Beach Kahanamoku gave a 3 hour demonstration of "Hawaiian-style surf shooting" to a crowd of several hundred people. Australians had been bodyboarding on wooden boards, and bodysurfing, but not standing up.

At the end of the session Kahanamoku invited Letham from the crowd for a tandem surfing demonstration. Letham was 15 at the time, but an accomplished swimmer and bodysurfer, and known as something of a tomboy. On the first few waves they paddled for she yelled for him to stop because it felt like going off a cliff. Being a gentleman Kahanamoku did stop, but then ignored her cries, went anyway, and hauled her up. They rode four waves that day and Letham was, as she later said "hooked for life".