Innehållsförteckning för # 24 från White Horses

Way back in the day, more than 35 years ago, my mate Brian Stapenel showed me some fuzzy snapshots of beach break heaven. The photos left an indelible impression on me, so that when I first visited King Island in 1991, it felt strangely like a homecoming. It was very much a low-key country community with genuinely friendly folk, devoid of airs and graces. One guy stood out to me from the rest on that first visit. His name was Jeremy Curtain, known to everyone simply as “Wire” because he was kinda tall and skinny. I could immediately tell Wire was a good bloke with a dry and hilarious sense of humour. We hit it off from the get-go, just as he did with many crew that I introduced him…

Joson and Kea loaded their spearguns into the back of the box-like Karimun and we headed down the hill to the beach, as we often did after school. It may seem odd to allow 12-year-olds to handle potentially lethal weapons, but the parents in our neighbourhood had agreed that the boys were competent to dive in the calm waters of the three-kilometre lagoon of Nusa Dua. They were not allowed to go beyond the reef us parents surfed a kilometre out to sea, but they did sometimes when it was calm. Boys will be boys. They unloaded the wooden guns that were longer than they were tall from the boot. “You know the rules; stay inside the lagoon. And come in as soon as the sun sets behind the hill,”…

No one knows the actual number of people who have died attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from Africa to Europe. The figure is sure to be in excess of 20 000, making this the deadliest border crossing in the world. The larger disasters are reported in the media with numbing regularity – rickety vessels packed with hundreds of desperate men, women and children capsizing in the open sea, often as a result of mass panic but not infrequently due to the targeted actions of ruthless human traffickers. One can only guess at the number of small vessels that have left North African shores, never to be seen again. In order to save as many lives as possible, a number of international NGOs have been operating rescue boats off the…

THE MERMAID FISH 5’8” x 201/8” x 23/8” This is a super small wave board made for the Japanese market. It’s got an Epoxy X Core with an entry concave coming into the V at the tail. The ski tail design goes back to Rodney Ball, who adapted elements of snow-ski design into his boards in the ’70s to make them more manoeuvrable while still having drive. In 1992 I got introduced to the Japanese surfing scene by Kazumi Nakamura. I was 22. Kazumi gave me the chance to shape and I spent six months there. He was making CHP surfboards in Chiba, east of Tokyo, and was an amazing shaper with a planer – he could pretty much shape a whole board with a planer – and to watch…

{captions by the photog rapher} King Kelly, King Island, 2001. I got a last minute invitation to join Derek Hynd, Kelly and Eddie Vedder on King Island. Turned out to be a great little trip. SEQUENCE: We were surprised by solid NE swell straight out of the Bass Strait. It was a little lumpy due to its close proximity, but had some size at Martha. Kelly had to work hard on this wave and the joy shows on exit. PORTRAIT: I mentioned to Ed that he could use my camera, so he grabbed it and started focussing on Kelly with my 50mm lens. Kelly then grabbed Eddie’s cigarette for the picture and voila! A really strong portrait of Kelly, photographed by a rock legend. BONFIRE: Derek announced he was going…

I've been volunteering as a boatman on Tavarua for the last five years. Looking back, I really lucked into my position. A good friend of mine convinced me to join him on a trip right after I finished my apprenticeship as a carpenter, and I immediately fell in love with the place. We went twice that year and the second time around I shyly approached the manager about volunteering. Five years later, here I am. Dad first got me into surfing and everything else water-related when I was five or six years old. We'd surf, fish and snorkel together. There are lots of people over the years who have inspired me, both in the water and out, but Dad still inspires me the most. He had a surfing accident when…

I ended up in the Telos thanks to my boyfriend, Jared Neal. He’s a builder from Oz and when we got together he had just started building a resort out here. It was a long project, about two and a half years, and during that time I would spend months at a time in the Telos, surfing, fishing and baking in the sun while he was at work. My only job was to make sure he had cold Bintangs when he knocked off for the day, which suited me just fine. In that time, I learned a lot about the breaks – what tide, swell and wind direction each one likes. Out here we are surrounded by something like 12 islands, so every break is really different. There are about…

We kick off with a huge thanks to legendary Tasmanian photographer Sean Davey, who made multiple contributions to this issue. Along with King Island local Charlie Subbs, Sean is driving the campaign to save Martha Livina beach from having a fish farm established there, which he writes about upfront. It’s also an absolute privilege to feature a selection of Sean’s work spanning four decades in our Vintage portfolio. Massive thanks go to Pam Burridge for sharing a few of her favourite things, as well as Adrian Bradbury, who generously contributed his sublime artwork. If you want to get a (highly recommended) look-see at more of Adrian’s paintings, his full body of work for Darkness and Light on the Tasman Sea is on exhibit at the Makers Space Gallery in Burnie,…

In 1980 I went to Hawaii to surf in the big events at Sunset, where the World Cup was held that year. I was 15 years old and Australian Women’s Champion at the time, and was invited by Randy Rarrick and Fred Hemmings. It was terrifying! The sets were 10 to 12-foot, bigger, massive. I broke my leg rope and then my board and came second last in both my heats, thank god. The big girls like Margo Oberg, Lynne Boyer, Brenda Scott Rogers and Debbie Bowers went well. Margo and Lynne in particular charged – they were pulling into inside Sunset closeout barrels. I just thought, what are they doing! I came back to Australia after surfing in those two events. I didn’t win any money, but because they…

Show us a surfer – or a spearo, or a diver for that matter – who doesn’t pee in their wetsuit, and Horsies’ll show you a liar. Yet despite that familiar warm feeling we’ve all come to love, it’s a commonly held belief that the golden shower flowing down your leg may attract sharks in the vicinity, making you a homing beacon for a hungry predator. It’s not entirely clear where this myth originated, but there’s no doubt that it was perpetuated by the American Navy back in the 1960s when there was a campaign to protect young crewmen from shark attacks. You’re not about to find it on YouTube, but the Navy made a video showcasing some interesting techniques to ward off an attack. This included sticking your head…

Ever since I first saw photos of Apocalypse, I wanted to surf it. The perfect tube spinning off the point, the thick jungle headland – it all screamed ultimate surf fantasy! Back then it was all hush-hush, but the wave is hardly a secret nowadays. It has since featured on the cover of magazines and was the starring attraction in the closest thing to a snuff film surfing has produced, the aptly named Second Thoughts. Its exact whereabouts and the mission to get there is still a world away from the G-Land milk run, though. There is a core crew of guys who live and die by this wave buried deep in the jungle on a remote island. Timmy Turner had to have a chunk of his skull removed after…

THE PINK BANANA REPLICA 7’10” x 181/2” x 3” This is a replica of the board I did for Shaun Tomson in the early ’70s, his Pipeline gun. Shaun was always so stoked. He used to surf Bay of Plenty all day long. The day he ordered this he walked into the shop still wet from surfing and said to me, “Hey Spider, make me a 7’10” for Hawaii!” The great thing about working with Shaun was there were no rules. So I said, OK, how wide should I make the tail, and he said, “Pull the tail in!” So I said, how much rocker should it have, and he said, “Give me rocker!” He was shouting because he was so stoked. I hadn’t been to Hawaii so I said,…

Up pulls this Nissan ute and an angry man jumps out and goes straight for Dad, poking a finger right up in his face. He’s shouting, “Put your money where your mouth is!” It’s Sunday afternoon, all we were doing was watering the new plants outside the boundary wall. Dad calmly carries on, watering left to right, left to right, making sure the Clivias get an even soak. “PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS!” he demands, then gets back in his Skyline and off he goes. Two weeks back we’d moved to this town and they’d put me in the new school. On the second day some kids beat me on the playground. All I was doing was playing the balance beam game – you had to see who…

Surfboards. Never been interested in them, they bore me, a bit like cars and spark plugs. But I love to watch people on them, especially Hawaiian Barry Kanaiaupuni and another 20 or so surfers from various eras. Most of my early boards died from arthritic ailments, overuse and bubbled decks caused by the former. There are, however, a few that stand out. In 1975 I bought a vintage 1964 Hayden board in near new condition for $18, which I found in the rafters of a second hand store in Mooloolaba. I surfed the life out of it on small days at North Avalon and eventually dropped it off at the Kimbriki tip in northern Sydney for palliative care, as euthanasia wasn’t an option. Driving away from the tip, I noticed…

All I have to go on is a hand-drawn map and a dodgy alias. Greg couldn’t pronounce the name of the surf spot he’d stumbled upon, so he drew a cross on the map where he thought I might find it and labelled it “Venom Bay”. “It sounds like Venom Bay,” Greg shrugged, “but I can’t be sure. It was a long time ago. But the wave, mate, the wave is just awesome. You can’t see it from the road because it’s behind a dune. Find the dune, and you’ll find the wave.” Two days later, sitting on a beach in Fort Dauphin, I unfold the map and try to orientate myself. Fort Dauphin is a small, peninsular outcrop at the south-easternmost corner of Madagascar. North of here the coastline…

{with captions by the photographers} Diogo d’Orey Mason Ho, Desert Point The rip was crazy this session, so I was pretty lucky to connect with Mason on this wave. I love how calm he looks and how he always brings his happy vibe to any lineup, which definitely helps ease the tension when surfing overcrowded Desert Point. Ricardo Bravo Nazaré, Portugal This was taken at Praia do Norte during the huge swell in January. Besides the surfers, the ocean provided a beautiful show with massive waves and strong winds. I’ve been shooting at Nazaré for a long time now and until a few years ago, no one wanted to go there, not even for surfing – most people simply considered it too dangerous. Warren Keelan Sunrise, Wollongong Dawn is my…

I grew up playing the blues and rock music with my dad, who armed me with all the basic skills to grab a guitar and go. I idolised bands like The Living End, Good Charlotte, Blink 182 and Kisschasy, and would learn the songs that I’d listen to while skating with my mates. After I graduated with a degree in Marine Science at Griffith Uni on the Gold Coast, I chased my dream of playing music. This dream became a reality when our band, Nine Sons Of Dan, began touring with the likes of Kisschasy, Simple Plan, The Screaming Jets, Yellowcard and Grinspoon. We worked hard for years to climb our way up the fickle ladder of the Australian music industry. It all culminated in record deal negotiations with Universal…

I had been watching the cams from my home office all morning without seeing much that interested me, but I rang a buddy of mine, Butch, just to be sure. Butch was busy packing up his gear so I carried on working. When I spoke to Butch a couple of hours later he hadn’t left because he was watching it rise and, yeah, I should probably get down there, he said. I rock up 20 minutes later in the pano’. The ocean has that frenzied look about it that it gets in Hawaii when the swell is on the rise, sort of like a cat that’s just been in a fight. It has enough chaos going on for me to know I must set up straight away, before it starts…

For a split second I think we’re about to lose all control of the moto and go hurtling through the rain into the sludgy quagmire that’s almost got us stuck. “Hold on, brooo!” Olenk yells and rips the throttle. Our typically pleasant ride through a mountain pass is being transformed into a slippery labyrinth of muck and manic motoring as another wet season storm engulfs us. I grip the seat with white-knuckle intensity, ruing the fact that we have one bike between us. I squint into the rain and try not to breathe in, hoping that my unflinching pillion heroics will keep us balanced and safe throughout the ordeal. The back wheel stutters and slides, grappling for grip and threatening to hurl us off. I’m still sporting some open wounds…

For all the attention we give waves, we don’t spend much time thinking about where their names come from. Perhaps this is because many of us don't actually get to name them. After all, naming rights go to the pioneer, and in a world that gets smaller by the day, that’s become a most rare privilege. So when you do happen to stumble across something noteworthy – say a new, untouched slab that is as heavy as it is beautiful – that creates a whole new dilemma: how do you decide what to name it? Looking back, the name we chose might have had something to do with the 20 reef passes we pored over on Google Earth – passes that faced every possible direction, ringing a large lagoon like…

“Like a golf ball, right?” “Yes, exactly. Dimpled like a golf ball, it’s meant to reduce drag.” Pete pauses, scrolling excitedly on his phone before leaning over to show me a YouTube video of a rubber-clad man awkwardly carrying a dimpled, Mini-Simmons style board through the Gloucestershire countryside. I imagine Pete Abell is like this all the time, a fizzing ball of energy and enthusiasm. He invited me over for a coffee after I told him I wanted to pick his brain about the tools of his trade. See, Pete is a surfer like you and me. But unlike you and me, he didn’t learn to surf in the ocean. Nor did he learn to surf on waves generated by the myriad weather systems that are spawned by energy released…

ENTITY QUAD-FIN 5’6” X 20” X 21/2” This board was first designed in collaboration with Dave Rastovich back in 2006. The deck is made out of Paulownia wood, which is light, durable and has a very balanced flex. It has a quad-fin setup and featured in Taylor Steele’s film Castles In The Sky. Dave had the coveted last section in this movie, an epic session in India back in 2010, which has since become pretty famous in the annals of surf films. I remember talking with Taylor about the shoot. He told me that Dave had two boards over there but Taylor kept sending Dave out on this 5’6” quad because it just looked like so much fun to surf, and that really came through in the film. COSMIC VEHICLE…

’60s SINGLE-FIN “A bit over nine foot” I made this board with a 12-inch planer in an old tin shed at Eastwood around 1964 or 1965. I shaped it and did everything – the glassing, sanding, finishing – there was only me. I get people calling me all the time nowadays about boards like this, asking “Do you want to buy this board? It comes from way back and I only want $800 for it!” I say, “Mate, I’m sorry but I would find it very hard to pay $800 for something that I once sold for $60.” That usually shuts them up. SHANE SURFBOARDS BIG BOY MODEL 6’10” x 20” x 25/8” This is the last board I surfed and was designed for big boys, or the older boys…

Grant has been a buddy of mine since high school. He qualified first as a builder, then as a schoolteacher in Mount Maunganui, a major New Zealand surf town, where he tutored carpentry and design. Some of his classes were made up of boys from poor, working class families who had low self-esteem and limited job prospects – the kids politely described as “at risk youth” who don’t readily fit into the system. With each class, Grant would come up with a project to get them all involved in producing something that they could take pride in and grow their confidence. The school provided funding for materials. The hard part was hitting on a project that grabbed the boys’ attention. A keen surfer himself, one of the projects Grant invariably…

In early 1974, I came back from the North Shore having spent the season staying with Jeff Hakman, the undisputed king of Sunset Beach. Jeff rode an 8’0” Dick Brewer-shaped gun, which I carefully photographed. I wanted a similar board for the next winter, so I dropped the photos off with Spider and the following October he began working on a synthesis between the flipped-up down-rail nose that Brewer was doing for Hakman and the 7’0” tube-riding pintail he’d made me for macking Bay of Plenty, J-Bay and Cave Rock. At that time, I had made no impact internationally. I knew I needed a magic board to help me in my quest to become a pro, so I asked Spider to make my board magic red – testosterone red –…

2018 kicked off with an absolute stinker of a Saturday on the south coast of Australia. It was so hot that once you walked out of the ocean, your hair was bone dry before you’d even got to the car park. Tourists were morphing into lobsters within minutes. Surf wax was melting all over the show – on the floor of the boot, onto the inside of your arm. That blistering old northerly screamed across the dunes, sending beach tents cartwheeling down the sand at breakneck speeds. Up in the car park, the newsreader on the radio was crackling out words like “43 degrees” and “wind gusts” and “80km per hour”. It was cooking. You could smell what the desert must smell like; feel the hot dust slamming into the…

The M/V Milo was literally a dream come true. My best surfing buddy Mike McCune and I had spent our fair share of years working at sea on commercial fishing boats around Alaska. We’d seen a lot of untapped potential just out of reach during that time and would daydream about visiting those same locations on our own agenda one day. Perhaps the Milo was thinking the same thing. A 58-foot Alaskan limit seiner, she was built in 1966 and spent 40 years fishing the North Pacific before being decommissioned. The owner put her up for sale just as Mike was ready for a new chapter in his life. He sold his house and bought the vessel, and so our journey began. The idea was simple – refurbish the boat…