Dick Hoole - Surfing Lifestyle Images
Dick Hoole is an Australian surfing icon who has had a 50 year career as a professional still photographer, magazine publisher, 16mm film cameraman, film producer and film distributor. He has a huge archive of stills and 16mm film footage from the golden era of surfing in Australia, Hawaii and Indonesia. In 2000, he was awarded the Australian Sports Medal by Prime Minister John Howard for his contribution to Australian Surfing.
Here are clips from three of his films, 'Tubular Swells', 'Storm Riders' and 'Asian Paradise'.
All of his film clips and still images on this site are available for commercial licensing.
Dick Hoole-Cinematographer/Photographer
Dick Hoole is one of the Gold Coast's original surfing Photographers and Cinematographers who made it possible to document and remember the legacies of the early legends of the surf. He relentlessly captured the action at the surfing competitions during the 70’s and 80’s all the way around Australia and to the shores of Hawaii. He's captured endless historical shots of world class talent and was Queensland's first filmmaker to produce a feature film,'Tubular Swells' (1975) with Jack McCoy and followed up with the 80s movie 'Storm Riders'. Dick’s contribution to preserving early Australian surf history and culture on film will endure as his legacy.
He started his career as a surfboard sander/laminator in Byron Bay where he moved to from Sydney in 1967 as a 18-year-old.
His first photo published in Australia was the cover of ‘Surfing World’ in 1971, an image of Tom Stone at Pipeline in Hawaii that he shot in 1969.
The first film Dick co-produced and shot on 16mm film premiered at the Sydney Opera House in February 1976. 'Tubular Swells' was the first feature film made in Queensland, "it was more incidental because there was no film industry up there," Dick said. "All the processing and sound mixes were done in the facilities of Sydney, but the film was actually made in Mermaid Waters in Queensland."
They followed 'Tubular Swells' with 'Storm Riders', starring surfers like World Champion Mark Richards, World Champion Wayne 'Rabbit' Bartholomew, Gerry Lopez, Wayne Lynch and World Champion Tommy Carroll.
Dick said he was glad of the opportunity to document surfing history "because after all, we were just living our surfing dream".
