Surfers today relish the thought of discovering deserted breaks, pioneering new spots and living purely for the surf, surrounded by their closest friends and nary another soul.
The pristine coastline of northern New South Wales in the late 1960s and early 1970s was precisely this Shangri-La; long, reeling, right-hand point breaks producing jaw-droppingly perfect, barreling waves and only a pod of resident dolphins with which to share them.
When I was a kid, I had an infatuation with the Swiss Family Robinson and the Johnny Weissmuller, black and white era of Tarzan: the bamboo cabin slung high in a tree, living, as we so crave now, entirely self-sufficiently and off the grid.
Thor Heyerdahl encapsulated this and my imagination, a true-life figure existing without Western constraint or dogma and denying the so-called education society had inflicted upon him.
My plan this week was to follow the hype-trail, a swathe of recommendations and requests gravitating me towards Danny Boyle’s latest flick, Trance, and as a great fan of many of the director’s creations (Shallow Grave, 127 Hours, Trainspotting – although I must draw the line at The Beach), it is definitely on the hitlist.
But the presentation of options saw my heart calling instead to Rust & Bone, a minimal-budget, Palm d’Or-nominated French film – no big names, no big budgets – celluloid simplicity.
Mosquitoes Suck
For all its diminutive insignificance, the humble mosquito is an agent of misery the world over.
The vampirish bane of barbeques seems to be sent only to challenge us. For bush walkers and gardeners they present a challenge of endurance impaling their victims with slender proboscides, injecting anti-coagulant into veins to create that all-too familiar and incessantly infuriating agitation we regrettably know so well. Continue reading
Albert Einstein once said: “To look to the future we must first look back upon the past. That is where the seeds of the future were planted.”
We as surfers have continually looked toward the future, striving for advancement since the birth of our sport in the islands of Hawaii those many, many years ago.
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Cyrus Sutton made an impression on the international film circuit with his 2003 breakthrough movie ‘Riding Waves’. Now the EMMY award-winning documentary maker has turned his attention to the divergent surf scenes of Australia’s Gold Coast and Byron Bay…
Acoustic Surf
The notion of finless surfing has been around for as long as the sport itself.
The iconic image held at Hawaii’s Bishop Museum of a ‘native’ gazing out to the Waikiki lineup, Diamond Head looming in the background, finless alaia board clutched behind him, is now as integral a part of surfing’s photographic history as Greg Noll’s Waimea drops, Tom Carroll’s Pipeline cutback or Laird Hamilton’s ‘Millennium Wave’.
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