PASSING THE PASSION

When Frank Adler was pioneering the use of hollow plywood boards in Australia in the 1930s, he could hardly have imagined his grandson Dru would one day make a career launching skywards on tiny slivers of foam and fibreglass.

Frank’s son and Dru’s dad, Ken Adler, won a Queensland title in 1964, made the final at the 1965 World Titles in Peru, was one of the first Australians to make an impression in big surf in Hawai’i, and learnt to shape in California from some of the masters of the booming US board industry.

The Adler family lineage neatly encompasses the entire history of surfing in Australia. Yet, for all that, the Adler name is strangely under-acknowledged among Australia’s great surfing dynasties.

Frank was born in 1913, a year before the legendary Hawaiian champion swimmer and surfer Duke Kahanamoku introduced boardriding to Australia. And over 100 years later, his great-grandson Axel Adler is taking to the waves as a surf stoked four-year-old under the proud tutelage of his dad Dru and his wife Angie, herself a former NZ surfing champion.

Dru carved out a career as one of the leading aerialists of the early 2000s during the air show era. His long lanky frame consistently launched him high above the Gold Coast beach breaks when most of his peers just wanted to get barrelled at The Superbank. There aren’t too many fourth-generation surfers in Australia, especially where each generation surfed at an elite level, but young Axel Adler could be well on his way to achieving that status.

When it comes to bragging rights in the Adler family, it’s hard to know who wins. Frank was captain of the first surfboard club in Australia, formed