Merewether's long and storied surfing history was given another shot in the arm last month, when local lad Jackson Baker secured his place on the 2022 men's world championship tour for the first time.
The 24-year-old, who grew up just a couple of minutes away from the beach on Curry Street, nabbed one of the last available spots on the championship tour after finishing well in the World Surf League's Challenger Series.
While Baker's story of dedication and success rightly took all the headlines in the days after, a perhaps more impressive story was behind it: with three competitors in Baker, Ryan Callinan and last year's world number five Morgan Cibilic, Merewether will have more representatives on this year's men's tour than any other town in world. More than heavyweight surfing nurseries like the Gold Coast and Hawaii's North Shore. Not bad for a suburb of about 11,000 people.
But this success isn't just restricted to the men. Merewether's Philippa Anderson has been competing in the second-tier qualifying series for a decade, and only narrowly missed out herself on a place in this year's championship tour.
With such heavy representation on the professional tours, coupled with a rich history of elite surfers that includes four-time world champ Mark Richards, former world number two Luke Egan, and world tour event winners Nicky Wood and Matt Hoy, just to name a few, it begs the question: just what is in the water at Merewether?
"We still don't have an answer, and we've done this a bunch of times," says Tim Ryan, a patron and long-time administrator of the Merewether Surfboard Club. "There's a whole bunch of elements."
Richards, Merewether's most elite of elite surfers and the son of inaugural board club patron Ray Richards, also says it's difficult to pinpoint. "It's hard to put your finger on it. It's not like there's a magic potion in the water or anything," Richards says.
Good waves, even better surfers
Asking around, one of the first explanations for Merewether's success comes down to the pure fundamentals.
"I think it first starts with the fact that Merewether is a very consistent wave, if we get down to the super basics of all of this," says Egan, who spent 20 years on the world tour from 1985 to 2005. "Merewether's probably more consistent than any other beach in Newcastle. On any given day the waves will be rideable, even if it's big and stormy."
So, just like seagulls to a carton of hot chips, it's probably no surprise that with the most consistent waves, Merewether also attracts the best surfers.
It's not unusual to see the likes of Richards, Egan, Hoy, Callinan, Cibilic, Baker, Merewether-based tour veteran Julian Wilson, Philippa Anderson and her brother Craig, one of the most celebrated and respected free surfers in the world, out in the line-up.
For the record, that's four world titles, around 30 championship tour wins, dozens of surf videos and a hell of a lot more professional heats' worth of competitive surfing experience packed onto a couple of peaks - talent seen at very few breaks in the world.
"If the best guys are all out at Merewether and the waves are good, it's like paddling out an hour before a world tour event starts - it's close to that at Merewether," Egan says.
"That had a lot to do with me being successful as a world championship surfer. Every surf, there are other people out there, some who aren't even on the tour, who do things and you think, 'Wow, that was good; they rode that wave well.'"
Newly-qualified Baker agrees, pointing out that it's not just the big-name pros and sponsored surfers who light up the waves.
"Regardless of our top echelon of surfers, we have such a high level of everyday surfers and the board club is full of them. The Australian Boardriders Contest comes around and you pick your best team, but we could have three or four teams that would just blow other clubs out of the water."
And according to four-time world champ Richards, herein lies another key reason for Merewether's elite surfing output.
"I think what happens is, regardless of your ability, if you surf with better surfers, you're more inspired to try and surf well and to improve your surfing," Richards says.
As a kid in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Richards was in awe of the ability of local surfers such as Jimmy Newburn, Robbie Wood, Peter Cornish and Peter Thomson, just to name a few.
"There were some really really good surfers. It was a very enlightening environment that I came into, because originally I surfed at Blacksmiths, so I graduated from surfing at Blacksmiths to surfing at Merewether and it was a way more competitive kind of line-up in the water," Richards says.
This dynamic was also clear to see for Philippa Anderson when she moved to Merewether from Port Elizabeth in South Africa as a 12-year-old.
"There were so many more guys who surfed and who were sponsored, and when you see those who are professional and you get to surf with them each day," Anderson says. "It creates an environment that pushes you to the next level.
"I'm super blessed that we ended up in Newcastle. It's been so amazing for our family and our careers. I'm very thankful for that."
The board club
But if consistent waves and talented surfers are the raw materials, then the Merewether Surfboard Club is the factory that shapes, moulds and ultimately pumps out the seemingly never-ending production line of top surfers.
Founded in 1964 in the front yard of original member Bob Gunter's house in Frederick Street by a bunch of young, surf-loving renegades, the club has in many ways provided the glue that has held the local surfing scene together.
"I think it was more of a mateship thing than the competitive side," says Peter 'Thommo' Thomson, who was standing in the front yard as a 14-year-old when the club was established.
"Everyone wanted to surf against their mates but not necessarily win a contest, if you like. It was seen as a social outlet, an extension of surfing with your little group on the beach."
But far from being the pride and joy of the community like they are today, Thomson says Merewether's surfers were eyed with suspicion back in the early days.
"It took quite a while before surfing was accepted as an honest sport in its own right. We were seen as a rebel group who should be doing better things, like going to work instead of surfing."
But now, with close to 60 years of local club contests, surf trips and good old-fashion bonding sessions, the club has helped to create a tight-knit surfing community and provided a structure that brings world tour professionals and local grommets together under the one roof.
"Getting to that elite level, for me, was by surfing with Mark Richards," Egan says.
"Hanging out at the board club on Sundays, letting us surf against him.
"When I was in my mid-teens I was surfing against a four-time world champion in board club contests. No other kids got that opportunity."
While that experience was invaluable for Egan, it's clear he wasn't the only one who benefitted from the local club contests.
"I needed to surf in them to keep my competitive instincts sharp, and they certainly helped me when I went back out on the tour," Richards says. "I probably lost more club events than I won. They were super competitive, no one gave you any latitude at all and everyone you surfed against would bust their gut, trying twice as hard to beat you."
Whether by competing in club contests, chatting about surfing on a Sunday at the board club or picking up young kids for a surf trip up the coast, Tim Ryan says this sense of mentoring and nurturing the next generation is something that has been embedded into the club's DNA from day one.
"That's been something that has happened since Ray Richards did it," he says. "Robbie Wood did it, Thommo has done it, Roger Clements did it, I did it, Luke Egan did it. And I think that's one of the real key elements . . . this nurturing thing."
Recent revival
Although from the outside it might seem like a perpetual conveyer belt of pro surfers, Merewether's success isn't something that happens automatically.
In fact, Merewether didn't have a representative on the championship tour from 2005, when Egan finished up professional career, until Callinan first broke through in 2016.
But now with the stocks replenished, one of the reasons put forward as to why the board club and Merewether itself are enjoying a purple patch is literally a rather dry one: good administration.
"I think it's fair to say that we did lose our way a little bit," club president Craig Long says.
"But I think it's also probably fair to say that every surfboard club in Australia saw surfing as very much an amateur sport and didn't feel the need to move into that professional era, whereas this was something that we noticed and definitely wanted to lead the way."
With some of Newcastle's leading business figures involved, the Merewether Surfboard Club has over the past 15 years become a seriously professional outfit.
From top-class monthly surfing events, to special annual contests like the Ray Richards Memorial and the King Of The Rocks competition, to the deep pool of financial support and surfing royalty to draw on, the black and blues are the envy of just about every other board club in the country.
The hard work behind the scenes has translated into plenty of recent success, on both a collective level - with the club winning the Australian Boardriders Battle team event in 2019 and Merewether being declared a national surfing reserve in 2009 - and an individual basis.
"Morgan [Cibilic] turned up when he was around 12 or 13," Long says.
"He'd come down [from the NSW North Coast] with a big reputation and we were able to support his development. He was competing in junior events, and we were supporting him financially to get to them. So there are a lot of things behind the scenes that the club does."
Spirit of '64
And while the club, with its professional set-up and focus on elite, competitive surfing, might look very different to its early days, Baker's progression to the championship tour is living proof that the spirit of '64 lives on in the sense of mateship and camaraderie that remains part of the fabric of Merewether's surfing community.
"I was lucky, Ryan [Callinan] is that couple of years ahead, so when he had his licence he would actually drop by my place, pick me up and take me surfing," Baker says.
"He kinda took me under his wing. And I was there thinking, 'Wow, how lucky am I? I'm going surfing with Ryan Callinan!'"
While Callinan might have pulled out of this weekend's season-opening event in Hawaii with a wrist injury, it won't be long before 'Jacko' will be surfing with his mates Ryan and Morgs again, just like he's always done.
Except this year it'll be different. It won't be at their local break, and he won't be waiting for Callinan to pick him up in his car.
It'll be in Portugal, in Indonesia and at Bells Beach, in this year's men's championship tour, where the three of them will look to write another chapter in Merewether's extraordinary surfing history.
