Innehållsförteckning för # 23 från White Horses

What lies at the heart of our desire to travel and explore? What makes us follow the paths we take? Do reasons exist that run deeper than mere curiosity about what lies beyond the next headland? Is it a desire to leave our everyday selves behind? Or, instead of leaving that part of us behind, do we bring our restless selves along with us on our travels and trials? And when we return home, what then? Has anything changed? Do we hope to shake off our disquiet somewhere – on the road, under the stars, over a reef pass? Or do these experiences teach us how to exist happily alongside our human condition, no matter where we are? Horsies doesn’t know the answers to these questions, but this issue is…

Waylon Jennings’ Can’t You See crackled through the speakers. The hum of the road joined in with the country melody as if it was the missing instrument in the ensemble. I smiled as I listened and watched the outside temperature climb on the dashboard thermometer. It was only 8.00am and it was already 40 degrees outside. Behind us, our surfboards hung out of the bed of the truck. A long way in front of us, white painted lines were converging on the horizon at a point that seemed to push endlessly forward, pulling us with it. It felt good to be on the road. We’d crossed the border a while back. Before passing that line, my thoughts had been tangled up with all the dramas and worries that had recently…

My two older brothers are bodyboarders and I followed in their footsteps from a young age, right through my teenage years. We would often go on reef missions up the coast around Bawley Point, throwing ourselves into the thickest barrels we could find. I found I had enough courage to paddle in, but not quite enough skill to come out! The number of times I got squished onto a reef platform was truly ridiculous. In the end it took a fractured L3 vertebrae, commonly known as a broken back, to convince me that this wasn’t my calling. I did, however, develop a very sound understanding of the ocean and an ability to read waves. I was 17 when I bought my first camera and that’s where my passion for shooting…

From the window seat of the small aircraft, the islands 13,000 feet beneath us looked like uncut emeralds poking out of an azure pool. I pressed my nose up against the Plexiglas to study the contours of each one. Dense forests covered the isles, bisected by winding rivers. The only signs of human development here in this remote region of the Solomon Islands were small clusters of houses along the palm-fringed coastline, their corrugated tin roofs reflecting the sun back at us. Across the aisle from me, my friends had their eyes glued on trails of whitewater below. They were pointing out the seemingly endless number of breaking waves, feverishly tapping on the windows at the sight of any potential setup. “Mate, look at that one over there,” yelled Torren…

I first laid eyes on her on my thirteenth birthday. My mother had hinted at a surprise when I returned home from school, and I couldn’t wait. I left at lunchtime and snuck into the house using the spare key. Curious, I began to snoop around. I heard a strange whining noise coming from the laundry, and when I opened the door a bundle of tan and black fur ricocheted out into the hallway. I sat there, engrossed, playing with my soonto- be puppy until I heard the front door open. Shit. My mum was home. I wasn’t supposed to be here for another half hour. I quickly bailed out the laundry door and over the fence, and hid in a nearby park until I was due to arrive. I…

It’s always been a dream of mine to do a loop around Australia and really experience this place we call home. I also had to get out of my daily routine of work and living for the weekends, which was killing me. That’s what planted the seed. I knew I would need a decent vehicle; preferably something my girlfriend Katy and I could live in while we were on the road. Then, during a “why not?” moment a few years ago, I bought a bus off Gumtree. It was a Toyota Coaster, an ex-courtesy bus, purchased from a bowling club. I was working at our family’s fuel depot at the time and spent the next couple of years fitting out the vehicle. By no means am I a carpenter, but…

My job is to make and fit prosthetic limbs. I love the practical side of prosthetics and orthotics, of making and fabricating devices that have to serve a function mechanically, as well as cosmetically. I also love surfing. Back in 2006, I heard some stories about people travelling from Victoria to places like Kiribati, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. My sister said, “Why don’t you go and do prosthetics and orthotics? You can do some development work, you can do a profession that uses tools, and you can go surfing in the Pacific.” I heard those stories and I hung onto that idea. My first posting was Samoa. I did an 18-month volunteer placement there and helped set up a mobility device service at the hospital in Apia.…

Since I was eight years old, my parents were always going off on feral missions to South America or Scandinavia and I’d be along for the ride. Looking back, it was pretty incredible, but it also meant it screwed up my chances of leading a normal life. I still have the itchiest feet, and even though I followed a traditional path of school and uni, I spent the next twenty years travelling after that, give or take, and have never really had a proper job. Seven years as the editor of a surf mag doesn’t count. What I have acquired, however, is a growing responsibility to stop shooting and writing and making films about all the good bits of surf travel, and start turning my camera and thoughts on what…

I learnt to swim when I was a little kid, around four years old. My father was a great diver; even my mum was a great diver. My dad started throwing me coins to retrieve underwater; the deeper it got, the more valuable the coin. I would struggle to dive as deep as I could, that’s how I became a good diver from a young age. When I was seven or eight years old, I got a job with the guy who ran the casino in the yacht club on Scorpion Island, which is home to waves like El Gringo, Toro Viejo, La Isla and El Brazo. People were drinking sodas and throwing bottles into the ocean, and that cost the manager money. He said, “You’re a good diver, I’ll…

Janine, mother My husband Daniel and I first set sail in 1971 on a very small boat that we were delivering from Martinique to San Francisco. It was my first time on a boat, and I knew it would become our life. From that point, I knew I always wanted to live on the water with Daniel, surrounded by nature. It was a lifestyle and we could earn a living without stress, without needing to hustle or fight. We sold our smaller boat, which was also a wooden schooner, and we bought the Scame in the Antilles. We hadn’t planned to buy a boat as large as the Scame, but the opportunity came up, so we jumped on it. Our plan was to sail around the world and have a…

The joy on their faces as they dragged their heavily battered, waterlogged boards over the muddy tidal waters was intoxicating. It was also very familiar to me. I sat watching them from our motorised canoe and listened to their whoops and cheers as their mate managed to get going on a small river mouth wave. Watching these boys from a remote Sumatran village made me reflect on my own community, Surfing Mums. Carly, Keira, Clare, Penny and I had just enjoyed seven uninterrupted days deep in Indonesia. These women have been a part of my life since my son was born four years ago and I discovered Surfing Mums. The premise is simple: a group of like-minded mums who need to balance the responsibilities of motherhood with our love of…

Looking back on these photos, it’s hard to reconcile the tranquillity of the island I’d experienced with the recent scenes of devastation in the wake of Hurricane Irma. It’s been five years since they were taken, and hardly a day passes that I don’t yearn to be back there. It was my old man who had first told me stories about an island he and my mum started visiting when they were much younger. They’d been so taken with its unspoilt beauty, peaceful atmosphere and friendly locals that they’d returned almost yearly for nearly three decades. The part I found really interesting was the waves he spoke of. He talked about a sandy point with very heavy, shallow barrels. As a keen bodysurfer back in the day, he’d considered giving…

When we first saw our Chevy, there was blood on the floor. The guy who had put the 1994 Suburban up on Craigslist in Tucson, Arizona, just shrugged and said he was a hunter. He did ask with suspicious frequency, though, if we were really going to take the truck to Mexico. It seemed he rather liked the idea of having it out of the country. We gave it a quick and dirty conversion – a crazy paint job and a very basic camping set-up. We couldn’t wait to hit the road but in a Suburbanturned- home, space is invaluable. We got in a little quarrel about what to bring on our trip. Do we really have to haul half a hospital around the world, on top of all our…

I just never considered that particular road when I had the Kombi. Heavy, with rattles and squeaks, I hated driving the vehicle on normal roads, let alone the gravel one. With two kids and three dogs, we had purchased it for all the space and it served its purpose well, up to a point. Eventually the daily grind of bouncing around the potholes and enduring a number of blowouts in the process got the better of me, and I got rid of it. The new ute changed my life. There was still plenty of space for the kids and the dogs, enough space for my boards, and loading up bicycles and other such toys was a cinch. All I regretted was not making the change sooner. The car was built…

Speed blur photos are often a risky proposition when it comes to how they translate in print, let alone speed blur photos taken underwater. First the image has to be technically impeccable. Then it involves a lot of back and forth with the printers to make sure it comes out just right. Horsies is sure you’ll agree though that Luke Shadbolt’s dreamy cover image was well worth the undertaking. A number of amazing individuals graciously shared their life stories for this issue, like war photographer Nic Bothma, Chilean pioneer Renato “Pelecho” Aguirre, and self-taught Lebanese shaper Paul Abbas. While sending some pitches our way, Ula Majewski told us she’d heard of this fella who bounced around the South Pacific, building prosthetics and getting suitably barrelled at the same time. “I’m…