Innehållsförteckning för #26 från White Horses

Today was pretty flat, or finally flat enough that I could find other interesting things to do but surf. I put a few hours work in, then grabbed my goggles and ran down to the reef. I threw myself in the water at the same spot I use to paddle out, where the gremmies hit it. The keyhole at the top scares me for a lot of reasons and I prefer to avoid it, especially when it’s big. I’m flat on the reef and small waves roll over me. It may look sketchy, but it’s not. I try to swim out to the peak, grabbing the reef to pull myself ahead, but the current is gushing at seven to eight knots and as hard as I swim, it pulls me…

I’ve had Wollie for 15 years now; he grew up on the beach at Supertubes. I trained him so that I could leave him on the beach when I went surfing, but he used to howl like crazy at first. He would follow me along the point, up and down, up and down. The waves break pretty close to the shore here so he’d come stand on the rocks and cry and cry and cry. People would freak out! I’d come back from a surf and there’d be voicemails on my phone from all kinds of strangers who got my number off his tags and thought I’d abandoned him. Once there was a voicemail from this lady who said, “Your dog’s on the beach and he’s crying! He loves you…

When my daughter Emma was born and parental responsibility kicked in, there was a moment when we thought about slowing down on travelling and living a more conventional lifestyle. Thankfully, that moment was brief. My wife and I decided instead we would just take her along on our adventures. At 12 years old, Emma is now a veteran road warrior who is equally as comfortable in the back of a Cairo taxi as she is having lunch with her grandparents at home. I am grateful that the travel gene was passed down, but l never dreamed that my magical place would become even more magical for her. When I was younger I had been more of a traveller than a surfer – catching waves was an afterthought, rather than the…

Bob was with me when I received the news that my dad had died. We were anchored in the shadow of Krakatau, off West Java in Indonesia. Barrenjoey was en route from Bali to Sumatra on the last leg of her voyage from Australia to begin her inaugural year of surf charters. It was late when we dropped the pick and Bob dived overboard and swam to the edge of the rocks. I followed, and we sat on those rocks and looked up at a 300 foot precipice. Reverse vertigo beneath the half volcano that was left after the massive eruption of 1883. I felt weird and mentioned it to Bob. He agreed, and we decided to swim back and find a better anchorage for the night. The next day…

The first time I went to Nazaré looking for waves, it was flat. We were on a road trip scouring the coastline for something to ride and somebody suggested the beach of Praia do Norte, where a headland juts out into the Atlantic Ocean just north of the village of Nazaré. I’d been to Nazaré before when I was younger. It was a place I went with my parents on lazy weekend family trips. I remembered its cobblestone streets with old ladies wearing layers and layers of traditional skirts; the fishermen drying their fish close to the road, and the funicular that goes to the top of the promontory overlooking the village. I remembered all of these things, but not waves. We ended up surfing another beach further north and…

{family} I don’t know why we call it The Scrub since it’s really just an old quarry. Dad paces up and down the corridor like a madman, muttering under his breath. “Why won’t someone tell us what the hell is going on?” On a sunny winter day when the grass is green and long and smiling families with clean hair ride their bikes like they’re in a Big W catalogue, The Scrub looks like paradise. But now in summer when the grass is brown and the earth is cracked and caked with angry un-killable weeds to your armpits, it’s easy to imagine you’re stuck alone on Mars. Keep an eye out for snakes, Dad always said to Wes and me when he knew we were going there in summer. We…

{witness} I get my kid off to school and I hit it straight down to the beach. As I rock up, Rob runs up the sand breathless. He has already broken a leash, swum one kilometre after his board and run another kay up the sand. He runs straight to his backpack and rummages for a second leash. At the same moment, Sylvain rocks up. “So am I on it?” I ask. “You’re on it. No current,” Rob replies. “How big?” “Big. Ya got the 8’6”, right? You’re good.” “Yeah…” Rob and I share a tumultuous past, so I question his motives sometimes. I look to Sylvain, who nods in agreement, and realise I share a tumultuous past with him as well. I wonder what they both ultimately wish for…

I’m a proud Torres Strait Islander and water and the ocean is something my people have been connected to for thousands of years. It’s a source of food, a means of transport, the bridge between generations and a way to connect to country. This is why we are known as Saltwater People. Painting is something my culture has been doing for thousands of years too, as a way of telling stories visually. When I paint I feel connected to my Indigenous heritage and love the fact that I can tell my own personal stories and dreamings in a similar manner through art. I can’t really pinpoint a time in my life that I became aware of all this. Growing up in Wollongong, I was surrounded by the ocean and my…

Mum worked full-time as a pharmacist, so Dad was at home with me from when I was little. He started out doing ding repairs just after I was born, and then moved onto shaping. My childhood memories are filled with running out to the “shaping room” – our shed in the backyard – and eventually there was a well-worn path between the shed and the house. These memories are still drenched with the smell of resin. Dad converted our garage into a glassing room and the fumes were always creeping out, thick and heavy, but I loved it! When I was around six, Dad did a stint with Jeff Bushman in Hawaii. My mum and I went over to join him and stayed in a tent in a sugar cane…

I was born in Auckland and in 1973 the family moved to Wollongong, when I was eight. Dad’s a professor of accountancy and was brought out to Australia to help set up the Economics Department at the University of Wollongong. I had a purely organic impulse to draw when I was young. If it was raining I would happily draw all day, make things up in my head. Strangely I was attracted to drawing tall ships – I loved all that rigging and the sails. I just guessed how it might look. In the early days of my art I had little bumps where I made a lot of money and then made nothing and struggled. Then 18 years ago at age 35, our first child arrived and I realised…

It was one of those blistering hot days in Kuta. Dogs yapping, incense lingering in the air, motorbikes buzzing through the chaos sending offerings flying everywhere as shirtless Scandinavians attempt to wander off the haze of the night before. Casting an eye inside the busy Goku BBQ restaurant one might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but if you’ve spent any time surfing in Indonesia you’d quickly gather that the collection of laughing locals down the back, attacking plates of flame grilled chicken and ribs, are Balinese surfing’s very own royal family. Wayan “Ganti” Gantiasa is the patriarch of the clan, who all live within a few blocks of each other off the notorious Jalan Benesari, the back alley that snakes from Kuta Beach and continues down to Poppies…

Saltwater dreaming at dawn, swell lines wrapping in around the point. One of those mornings when the ocean stretches out forever, when it seems like anything could be possible. Those big old jarosite cliffs breathing slow, moving in geological time. A lone albatross displaces the last little bits of winter air, swooping low in great arcs, while on the beach the smells of yellow wattle and sand collide. Rachael Parker picks up her board and looks out at that big red sun shimmying up over the horizon line. She starts to talk about Ocean Mind. Just saying the words make her smile. She traces a hand along the edge of the sea and slides into the beginnings of the day. Ocean Mind is a therapeutic surfing programme for young people…

Three questions. 1. Do you want to surf the best waves of your life? 2. Can you keep a secret? 3. Are you able to meet me at the airport at 6am tomorrow? What would you do if the same questions were pinged to you by a famous surf photographer on a Monday morning at 5am, precipitating a sea change in your quiet life? The answers were all yes, of course, although the overspill into other lives was significant. Bailed on my girlfriend mid house-reno, bailed on my job, bailed on the plethora of neatly packaged responsibilities that you only realise you have when you turn your back on them. Instead I suddenly found myself stuffing possessions into a board-bag whilst trotting out lies down the mobile to the most…

It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly the first seed was sown. Looking back, I would say many seeds were gently planted over the years, knowingly or not. But it wasn’t until 35 years into life that the perfect conditions finally presented themselves to take up the challenge and sail the South Pacific. Germination was amazingly quick. Nick needed no encouragement and the idea was instantly alive. Six months later we were the owners of our very own 40-foot yacht in Tahiti. All that was left was the small detail of learning to sail her. We decided to shun superstition and renamed our newly acquired yacht Te Mana, with Te meaning “our” in traditional Polynesian culture, and Mana referring to the soul, spirit or life force that can be embodied by…

{witness} We were nearing the end of our boat trip and weighing up our precious last sessions like gamblers down to our last chips. The previous four days had been one long losing streak, with tiny blown out conditions and crowds. We decided to exit stage left and go somewhere else. It was also blown out and tiny, but it was empty at least. But then the wind changed! And the swell was on the rise. So we returned to the circus. Our surf guide, let’s call him The Maldivian, was unrelentingly patient as we entered into round after round of obsessive analysis (sometimes you’ve got too much time on a boat). Smiling, always smiling, he humoured us by discussing all of the options, when really there were only two:…

{witness} In sixth class I became friends with Peter Trimnall-Richards, whose family was living in their Bongin Bongin Bay weekender whilst their other house, the Railway Hotel at Hornsbym, was being renovated. Pete’s dad bought the weekender in 1956. There were no houses on either side of it, just sand dunes, and the surf used to wash up either side in a big swell. He was also offered the neighbouring blocks for 500 quid each, thought it was a totally ridiculous price and refused the offer. My earliest memory of Peter is getting a lift home from Newport Primary School in 1958 in his dad’s Jaguar SK140, one of two in Australia. Not that I would have known. The house was strategically placed in the middle of Bongin Bongin Bay,…

I’d always wondered what the wax I put onto my board was made from and if it came off in the water, what those little flakes would do? I knew there were petrochemicals involved and that it surely could not be good for the environment, but like many surfers, didn’t think there was much I could do about it. That all changed when we moved to a farm out in Noosa. My wife Fallon and I had been living in New York before that, the end result of a career in the surf industry that led to the advertising world. It was good while it lasted but with the imminent birth of our son, I knew it was time to move back home to Oz and a simpler way of…

I was 14 years old when I discovered photography. I found an old camera my father had at home. I thought it was really beautiful and interesting, the shape and feel of it in my hands, the sound it made when you pressed the shutter. I bought a few rolls of film and started playing with it. Of course I ran to the beach soon after and started taking photos of waves and my friends surfing. Being from the southeast of France, waves were pretty small and rare where I grew up but there was always plenty of wind, so I started windsurfing too. Photography fused the things I loved doing most all together. When I was 19 I bought a ticket to Hawaii and landed on Maui with my…

Yeah, we all love double-ups, those sucky, two-for-the-price-of-one nuggets. Usually these anomalies are accompanied by collective whoops from the lineup as some punter paddles into the wave – or the beating – of the day. A simple look-see tells us that double-ups are created by one wave catching up with another, but why then are they a random occurrence rather than the norm, and what exactly is responsible for this strange sorcery? The Hoss investigates! Let’s start with what a wave really is. Ocean waves are undulations of the water’s surface, caused by the transfer of energy. The water that makes up a wave does not actually advance with it across the sea. Rather, these water molecules make a circular orbit with the passage of each wave, and then return…

Dad was a photographer and I was about 13 years old when I decided I wanted to follow in his footsteps. He was going on a shoot with Belinda Baggs and I remember asking him a bunch of times if I could come help him. We finally came to an agreement: I would be assigned the position of holding the flash. I still remember to this day the joy that I got from being able to come along and do what Dad was doing. I was stoked beyond belief! Looking back I was probably a bit of an inconvenience on that assignment, but Dad must have seen how keen I was. I like to think it gave him joy to pass down something he loved to me, as he had…

It is impossible to reconcile the breathtaking beauty of Micronesia with the greatest slaughter of human bodies in history. And yet, it happened. Though the memories are fading, the Pacific theater of World War II was fought so inhumanely in Micronesia, with such horror, with such blood, with so many men, women and children burnt and eviscerated and blown to rags, that surfing in these graveyard waters seems almost blasphemous. But history marches on, on to new historic horrors, one bloody thing after another, and the battlefields and the spilled guts and the reeking blood are forgotten. And perhaps this is best. Because the fact that men actually chose to beat the hell out of Bikini Atoll with atom bomb testing even after blasting the Japanese to kingdom come is…

“You do not have permissions. This is not for you.” The conflict flashing in the fisherman’s eyes was painful to witness. This was an area mired in poverty and we’d paid his crew a week’s salary to take us to a secluded stretch of coast for the day. The money was already tucked away in a plastic jar tied with a string around his neck, and he was clearly having trouble stomaching the thought of giving it back to us. But the local authorities had found out about our recon mission the night before and put the kibosh on any boat trips. Fishermen could do what they liked, but tourists were grounded – something about a handful of local sightseers sinking and drowning a few months before. The risk of…

{family} It’s mortifying when the uglier parts of your personality come to the fore. It seems these aspects of myself have become more apparent since becoming a mother. I have born witness to the best and worst parts of myself, amplified to greater extremes than I have previously known. A year ago I had some rare one-on-one time with my eldest daughter. It was a gorgeous day and there were small, friendly waves around. I convinced her to come surfing with me despite the fact that it was not her activity of choice. Quite the opposite. This lack of enthusiasm had often confused and frustrated me. On some level it’s been hard to conceive that my three kids aren’t nagging to go the beach. I mean, I would’a killed to…

Dad was a fisherman and snorkeler who lived in the ocean, not a surfer. From a young age I was always in the water, either at Perth or Margaret River. My mum was quite the entrepreneur and had a catering company. In the early 1960s my future brother-in-law had a 9’6” in the garage. Oh my God, look at that! I thought. I could smell the board, the wax, the resin. I wanted to surf it so badly. To this day I can still smell it. When I was 12, I wrote away to California to get a book on board making. I bought a blank and started shaping in Dad’s garage, an hour and a half from the beach in eastern Perth. Dad was a carpenter by trade and…

I clearly remember the first time I watched footage online of the memorial paddle out for Andy Irons in Hanalei Bay. In the first 30 seconds Bruce Irons and a profoundly pregnant Lyndie Irons lean from their boat and empty the container of Andy’s ashes into the middle of the bay surrounded by more than 2 000 people in the water and even more on land. The videographer then sinks beneath the surface and we see the ashes spiral and dart as they head downward. The moment is mesmerising and beautiful despite the haunting melancholy on Lyndie’s face. People are splashing, chanting and throwing leis as they sit on their boards whilst being showered by petals from a helicopter. Those images stayed with me for some time. Mainstream media seemed…