Remembering Kevin Brennan: teenage master of Bondi’s waves but a drug-fuelled disaster on land

‘Kev the Head’ won two state surfing titles on the same day in 1965 at the tender age of 15. But fame and drugs dragged him into a maelstrom he never escaped

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He was the first lost genius of Australian surfing. The tiny 15-year-old Bondi kid who won the New South Wales junior and senior titles on the same day, beating the incumbent and future world champion. A “little master” whose exploits, good and bad, entered the mythology of 1960s Sin City and whose tragic end – drowned on dry land opposite the beach he loved – went largely unmourned.

The cracked ballad of Kevin Brennan won’t rate a mention at Bondi over the 2025 summer. Fifty years after his death, his story, like the beach he made his own, is almost unrecognisable.

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