Innehållsförteckning för #350 Travel från Surfing Life

What a time to be putting out a Travel issue. As we go to print, the continent has just finished burning to the tune of 12.35 million acres, 33 human casualties, over 2000 houses gone, and an estimated billion wildlife dead. The threat of fires, however, has been instantly replaced by torrential rain and flooding along much of the east coast. In the face of a looming climate catastrophe fuelled by mostly man-made carbon emissions, it would be irresponsible for us to encourage you to continue gallivanting around the globe unnecessarily. That leaves us in a bit of a quandary because surfing requires travel. There is no getting around this. In order to offset our philosophical carbon footprint, we’ve worked extra hard with a little help from our friends to…

When I was six to eight years old, I spent 18 months driving around Australia with my mum and her partner, Max, who’s like my old man. I was homeschooled along the way and that’s where I learned to surf, fish, tie knots, and spent all this time outside experiencing the true culture of Australia. That sparked a journey that Ishka and I took driving around Australia to begin the Lost Track series. CIRCUMNAVIGATING AUSTRALIA BY LAND ROVER I’ve got this photo of Max and I, when I was a kid at our camp in the desert looking at Red Bluff and you could see the wave in the distance. I hadn’t been back there since, and I’d always wanted to retrace that journey. So when we were in South…

“This place is the next Bali!” screams a young Australian as he slams a Jager shot amidst a sea of backpackers and deafening house music. It’s late and I’m at Bravo Beach Resort, the premier nightclub on the wave-rich Filipino island of Siargao (pronounced: shar-gow). The comparison with Bali is undeniable. Cheap drinks, great food, tropical weather, cranking waves, comfortable accommodation, and an intoxicating local culture. Siargao is on a collision course with global tourism. Whether it descends into the quagmire of unchecked development, irresponsible tourism, hedonism, corruption, pollution, inflation, overcrowding and cultural ruin that has beset large swathes of Bali is the multimillion-dollar question. It’s impressive that this attention has bloomed from the discovery of one iconic wave. Such waves possess the power to change the environment around them.…

When Wade called and asked if I wanted to come to film the European leg of the Championship Tour (CT) and check out Ireland afterwards, I dropped everything. That time of year on the east coast of Australia usually suffers from small swells and the dreaded northerlies. So I happily said, “Goodbye Gold Coast and bonjour France,” as I imagined a month of sipping fine red wine, dabbling into some cheese platters, and guzzling a few pints of Guinness. While we were in Europe, the whole Ireland thing was up in the air. It wasn’t until we were in the sardine-rich town of Peniche that we met with Wade’s sponsor and talked all things Irish. A few days later, myself, Wade, and tag-along friend Ben Jones, farewelled the CT circus…

NOTOX's essence is to combine high-performance board design and ecology in the manufacture of our surfboards. Despite the popular perception of the sport, as being a natural, quasi-spiritual experience, the surfboard industry is responsible of known environmental impact. For over 50 years, boards have been constructed through the same resource-intensive, unethical process. They’re built from artificial and toxic materials. They’re then slathered in hazardous chemicals and travel even further to their sale point. Our goal at NOTOX is to create the most environmentally friendly board we can… we are aware that not everything is perfect yet and there are still steps to take before we see a completely environmentally friendly board, but we are continually searching and changing the way surfboards are made. At the NOTOX factory, recycled expanded polystyrene…

In an age of catastrophic climate change where all efforts should be directed towards reducing carbon emissions, what is the responsibility of travelling surfers? That’s a good question and something I struggle with. I travel a lot and this last year I got really serious about needing to pick and choose. It’s a time where we all need to evaluate our choices and take responsibility for where we can do better. So, it’s about exploring more at home and doing our best to reduce long travel trips. If we’re going somewhere for a long period of time, maybe that’s okay, but strike missions where we’re flying across the world for a couple of days, maybe we can try and limit those. What constitutes ethical and sustainable surf travel in your…

The Straddie Assault, Jim Beam Surftag, the ASP Banquet … all essential annual torch-ups required to keep the Australian surfing ecosystem in balance. So too is the Australian bushfire season. The occasional fire is an essential part of this ancient estate. Charred old growth provides essential nutrients for the dormant seed bank. Seedlings get sunlight and rain through the reduced canopy. Fauna can freely graze the emerging shoots. Death, rebirth, fire and floods are all finely balanced elements in this challenging ecosystem. But now, it’s a different game entirely. Unprecedented drought, clearly symptomatic of climate change, has increased our nation’s flammability to SMP polyester tracksuit levels. Weather is more volatile, forests are drier and bushfires are more cataclysmic than ever. It’s changing the continent in a very permanent way. The…

The immigration desk can often provide a telling insight into the country you’re about to enter. The United States, for example, has all the fear, intimidation and severity of a nation under siege. A place where, if you fit the bill, you might be asked by the immigration official whether you smoke marijuana or not? And if you answer “negative” and they don’t buy it, they’ll seize your phone, go through your texts to see whether you’ve lied or not. If so, send you to lock up and put you on the first flight out of the country. (True story—happened to a dreadlocked friend of mine.) Arriving at the immigration desk at 5.30 am in Johannesburg, you’re greeted by a KwaZulu female official cradling a cup of coffee, singing traditional…

Handing down information from generation to generation isn’t a new thing but handing down surf travel information certainly is. It’s only in the last six or so decades that we’ve really been casting off our bow lines and setting off on adventures to remote places of the earth, searching for perfect uncrowded waves. The sport of professional surfing is hardly more than two generations old. If you look at the pioneers, like Rabbit and Nat, their sons are only at that stage now and we haven’t seen the generation after that yet. So the handing down from Master to Apprentice in this age of surf travel is still very young. With that thought, we grab the affable Mick “Lowey” Lowe and his 12-year-old son Sammy and head off on a…

Beyond the Propaganda Machine Nobody knows who they are in their teens, but I had a thirst for knowledge and experience. You can always learn so much from listening to someone else tell their story, and failure is an especially good teacher. You gotta go experience it for yourself and throw yourself into the fire. You’re not raised being told how much propaganda is being fed to you. That is, the system is a machine that you’re supposed to be a part of and contribute to, so society can run as a whole. I guess that’s the draw for somewhere like Indo. It’s the wild west. There’s corruption on every level so it’s almost fairer. If a guy wants to rip you off for a bowl of noodles and the…

These are deeply challenging times and it would be remiss of us to encourage you to bury your head in the sand and continue with business as usual. Surfing is not an escape at this point. At best, it is fuel for the fight. Harmony with nature has been written into our creed since 12th century Polynesians first synched up with a low-pressure system on wooden boards, and now more than ever we must stick to those core values. In the words of Captain Liz Clark, “We have to recognise that the ship is going down and whatever you have to do to turn it around or fix the hole, you’ve gotta do it.” So, if you have influence, use it. If you have resources, use them. You have a…

Mt Woodgee is more than just a brand name. It's a mountain found geographically on the map of southern Queensland. It's a unique place; a place with its roots entwined at the very core of some of surfing's richest history. Once a tropical fruit farm, at 365 feet above sea level, the old farm house built in 1914 stood on old hardwood poles milled from the land. With its weathered yellow timbers and tarnished rusty iron, it had an aura as real as the 360-degree view spanning from Stradbroke Island in the north, to Fingal Headland in the south. With the Gold Coast's classic point breaks all clearly visible at the front and the majestic Mt Warning as a backdrop, the farmhouse with its 33 acres of tropical rainforest made…

You know we’re living in strange times when surfers no longer own the poster children for the surf industry—the big apparel brands. Those days are long gone. With Rip Curl selling to outdoor business Kathmandu in 2019, and Hurley currently being sliced and diced by their new owners, Bluestar Alliance, these latest surf industry developments are hurtling us rapidly towards another precipice in the sport. Or are they? It feels like we’ve waltzed down this windy road before. Abusive squawks of “sell outs” yelled from the back of rusty surf utes while passing old corporate head offices. That @dudewithsign (look it up) nailing yet another silent protest. The wind-beaten old farts down at the local still wearing a faded ‘80s Bong tee with a stretched-out neck, grumbling about … well…

We landed in the middle of the night on Kaadedhdhoo Island, where we were met by the cruisiest Maldivian local you’ll ever find. In the morning after a short sleep, just enough to get us functioning, we were at our first destination and bleary-eyed when we met our surf guide properly—Rob Hoaja or “Hoobx” (Hoobs). He looked after the World Surfaris’ boat, Maavahi. After we were briefed with the run down of ship operations, et cetera, we hit the water. During our time with Hoobx, he told us some of his stories. He’s such an interesting guy—you wanted to know more about him. His story was simply crazy. He was born on the 10th of January, 1991—not in a hospital but on a dhoani in the middle of the Indian…

We think managing your expectation is the most important part of surf travel. So many people head off on their first surf trip picturing empty, perfect reef passes, only to get there and find out it’s quite the opposite. In fact, sometimes it’s more crowded than the beaches back home. You shouldn’t go on a surf trip hoping to have the best surf of your life. Chances are, the best surf of your life will have been at your local when everything lines up perfectly and you are on the spot ready to go. We believe you should go on a surf trip to experience different waves, different countries, different cultures and to get yourself out of your comfort zone. As it has often been quoted “T ravel is fatal…

Flights are booked. Quiver is sorted. Clothes are jammed into your board bag. Sleepytime has been occupied with dreams of perfect barrelling reef breaks. You have been surfing six hours a day, five days a week for the last six weeks to get yourself ready—hold up, what? Every surfer dreams of having indomitable paddle fitness and a professional surfer, skill set leading up to their surf trip. But, how often does your pre-surf trip preparation go to plan? The more realistic scenario goes a little something like this: 1. Huey shrinks the surf and turns the wind northerly for a whole month.2. You need to work more hours to make up for all the time you are taking off.3. That niggling injury has come back and you have reduced your…