Michael Peterson: a man of the shadows
Searching for Michael Peterson
In 1977, in front of 20,000 people, Michael Peterson beat future four times world champion Mark Richards to win the first event of the surfing world tour. It was his last competition and he was only seen occasionally until 1983 when he was arrested in a 15-car police chase from Coolangatta to Brisbane. He never surfed again and, after years in Boggo Road gaol, he was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
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In a Banora Point duplex, Michael Peterson stares into the bathroom mirror, adjusting a pair of gold aviator sunglasses, his signature look.
Heart attack claims surfing legend Peterson
His balloon-like gut is just contained within a fresh white Rip Curl T-shirt, a lifetime sponsor. His hair is thin with early cameos of grey. He slicks it back with a comb. Man alive, he's nervous! Kelly Slater is coming!
Just 20 years earlier in 1974, Michael Peterson was the undisputed best surfer in Australia, and as good as anyone in the world. He became known only by his initials and it was these initials, MP, that would symbolise a type of surfer a long, long way from the polished athletes we identify with the sport today.
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Michael Peterson ...the Kelly Slater of his era.
MP was performance and perfection but it was a dirty performance, a dirty perfection.
This was a surfer who could build world-class equipment with his own hands and then ride it to victory the following weekend. For three consecutive years he won the most prestigious surfing contest in the country, at Bells Beach.
A man with a luxury of gold hair, coat-hanger shoulders and a genuine psychotic need to win. MP owned the beachside town of Coolangatta, held in awe by the men and adored by the women.
At the sparkling righthand pointbreak that breaks from the northern apex of Coolangatta Beach and through Kirra in one long cylinder, he perfected the art of tuberiding; a somewhat mystical part of the sport that made it transcend, if superficially, the line between sport and art.
Nineteen seventy-four was also the year MP snorted heroin for the first time.
But here, in 1994, we find Michael Peterson, in the house he lives in with his mother Joan and her partner. He is a medicated schizophrenic, a diabetic and a former prison inmate, naturally reclusive, who still smokes the occasional joints secretly delivered to him by his little brother Tom.
As the editor of a surfing magazine, I wanted to put the current world champion together with the Shadow of Australian Surfing, a man who famously hadn't been seen in the water since being released from Boggo Road prison in Brisbane in 1984 after a car chase that only ended when the cops set-up a roadblock on the Story Bridge.
His brother Tom agreed to make a replica of a single-fin Michael had ridden as a gift to Kelly for winning a best surfer award for the magazine.
I was surprised when his mother agreed; she'd refused every other request. But, this was a coming out for Michael. Soon, the family would be working with a screenwriter on a movie and it wasn't long before a clothing line and a signature surfboard model were created.
Kelly Slater arrives, not yet 22 and with only two of his 11 world titles in the bag. The pair nervously circle each other. The banter is forgettable, banal. Two great surfers, sure, but split not just by 20 years, but by a cavernous difference in lifestyle. Kelly doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke and while his need to win has been described as psychotic, he harnesses it in a way that doesn't destroy his life.
Still, it's a moment. Lisa Andersen, the four-time women's world champ, has also come but she fades into the background as the two men try to connect. Michael signs a poster and gives it to Kelly. He tells Kelly that "he might get back into it and surf again".
As we walk outside, Kelly whistles and says, "wow."
And the pair stayed in touch.
"I would get little messages from him through his sister," Kelly said today.
"I felt like we had a special friendship... I was nervous to meet him and I'll be recounting my memories of him and looking up old photos I got to take with him.
"I was supposed to go over and see him over the last month and am very upset I didn't. Dot (his sister) called me this morning to tell me she'd found him"
Three years ago, the quasi-documentary Searching for Michael Peterson did the rounds of bowls clubs and RSLs up and down the coast. A stylised take on his disappearance from professional surfing, it painted a picture of a genius who had vanished off the face of the earth.
A Nick Drake, a Jim Morrison. Tortured and magnificent. MP's reputation grew among a new generation.
But, MP wasn't dead.
Ironically, the night after I saw Searching for Michael Peterson I flew to Bells for its yearly Easter surf contest and, goddammit, who's the first person I bump into at Rip Curl's opening night party ?
Fricken Michael Peterson!
Even after all the years, even after his decline, he can still make a surf fan nervous. My conversation blows into the wind. I do say, "I found you" as a joke and Michael, who makes the connection, smiles and says, "Yep..."
Australian surfing has a terrible hole in its heart today.
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opi...rson-a-man-of-the-shadows-20120329-1w0b8.html
