THE DARK KNIGHT BY PETER CRAWFORD

SURFER: MICHAEL PETERSON

LOCATION: STUBBIES CLASSIC, BURLEIGH HEADS

DATE: March, 1977

Few photos capture the extraordinary physicality and competitive fire of Michael ‘MP’ Peterson like this classic water shot by master photographer Peter Crawford. In today’s parlance, both Michael and Peter would probably be considered “neuro-divergent”, and seemed to bond through their shared eccentricities, connecting in uncanny moments of synchronicity like this one. The 1977 Stubbies was the brainchild of another great surfing eccentric Peter Drouyn and marked the birth of both the professional world surfing tour in Australia, and the man-on-man format Drouyn devised that is still used today.

Peterson had just dominated surfing competition in Australia for three years from 1973 to 1975, but by the ’77 Stubbies his star seemed to be on the wane as a new generation of clean-cut professionals like Peter Townend, Shaun Tomson and Mark Richards strived to make pro surfing respectable. MP was surfing’s counterculture hero, the Dark Knight at odds with this new professionalism. But MP rallied for one last hurrah, dominating the ’77 Stubbies with his fierce competitive hunger and other- worldly skills. In front of a packed headland, he defeated Mark Richards in the final, before retreating into obscurity for many years.