From our Tuesday rippers

Pam Burridge

Pam Burridge started her long love affair with surfing at the age of ten when she attended the Warringah Shire Council Surf School. Armed with a home made surfboard and not much else she joined the class of boys and loved every minute of it. Despite the metre high seaweed and the less than friendly locals that inhabited Collaroy in the 1970's (not all of you of course).

In that two weeks Pam got the best start she could have hoped for at the time. Kids in the class all rode fibreglass boards and were discouraged from using a legrope ("if you have to swim in you'll blinkin well think about why you fell of now wont cha?"). Things like that wont happen today in the age of risk assessments and insurance demands but she did survive this colourful start and was well on her way to a future career in professional surfing that would last 20 years and bring with it world travel mnay career vicories and a long fought for world title in 1990.

In the ten years since her retirement from Professional surfing Pam has begun the cycle again and runs her own learn to surf classes on the South Coast of New South Wales.