Innehållsförteckning för Issue # 30 Spring 2019 från White Horses

I moved to Culburra Beach from the western suburbs of Sydney with my parents when I was 11 and that’s when I started to surf. I’m 60 now. I started a plumbing apprenticeship and then married my wife Kerry, who now works at the Aboriginal Health Services at South Nowra. Plumbing is a prick of a game, you’re in the trenches and no one appreciates you, and they all think you’re earning a fortune. So there was an almost surf shop for sale; it only had a few surf brands. We bought it in 1997 when my son Josh was three and we kept if for 13 years. It was hard work to build it up–seven days a week–and we took nothing out of it, but it supported our family…

I came to Hawaii on a boat with my dad and mum in 1952, the same time that the first guys from California came out to the North Shore. Greg Noll, Fred Van Dyke, Flippy Hoffman, Peter Cole and those guys My parents knew some of them, so they took me under their wing when I started surfing around the age of nine. When I was 14, I started surfing spots like Waimea and was lucky enough to have the local Hawaiian pioneers like George Downing and Wally Froseith take me under their wing, too. That was crucial to my development, having these veterans as mentors who looked after me like I was one of their own. The Hawaiian community valued my mum and dad because they were working-class folk,…

We´re Latin American; family always comes first. Before money, success or fame. We lived–and still live–in Maresias, a small district on the coast of Sao Paulo where everyone knows everyone. I was originally born in Sao Paulo city, where I studied architecture and was a triathlete. I had always loved surfing though, and later moved to Maresias so I could work and surf. I opened a surf shop and a lodge rental and led a simple life, working and surfing in my free time. I first met Gabriel’s mother Simone when Gabriel was just a baby boy. We reconnected years later after she was divorced, but before I started to date Simone, she asked Gabriel if it was okay. He was only seven years old at the time but it…

I was four years old when it happened. We were at Four Mile Beach for a family day out. My mum stayed on the beach with my baby sister. I followed my dad out onto the point, a rocky outcrop that caught the swell and shaped it into waves that ran along the reef towards shore. It was bitterly cold and windy that day, and I can’t recall seeing any surfers in the water. My mum had a hard time trusting my father with me. He’d already proven a pretty unreliable parent: when I was just a few weeks old, he had drunkenly placed me, swaddled in a blanket, on the rear bed of our VW camper with the boot open while it was parked on our steep driveway. I…

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” A. A. Milne, from Winnie-the-Pooh I've been riding boards at the longer end of the spectrum for more than 15 years. My good friend Tom Wegener introduced me to 12 and even 16-foot D-Fin hollow timber boards, as well as his finless 16-foot Bill Wallace wooden toothpick and his gargantuan 16-foot-long, six-inch-thick, upward of 70 kilograms, solid paulownia timber Olo. I've also had several foam and fibreglass boards in the 12-foot range, shaped by Paul Joske and Eden Saul, in my personal quiver over that time. These boards belong to a family of their own, and riding…

Rain was hammering the factory roof and I was soaked by the time I got to the car. The sky was a strange greyish-green, which reminded me of the rusted Chrysler Valiant I had when I was 17. A long time ago now, I thought. Bang on nine hundred bucks it was and my mate Bongo was obsessed with it. We used to drive all over the Gold Coast in that car. Boards on the roof, windows down, cigarettes, pot, girls. We called him Bongo because he loved to pound away on the bongo drums. Strange cat my mate Bongo, but he had a heart of gold and that’s all that mattered. I missed him. I’d been thinking of those days in the Valiant a lot lately, for some reason.…

{White Horses 30} 1 | Gerry’s shooter “Gerry Lopez shaped this board for Baddy–probably in the Wilderness house–in 1970. The two of them spent alot of time together on the East Coast that year. Here’s what Gerry has to say. ‘David and I had an absolutely wonderful time together, pretty special to both of us. It set a direction for our lives from that point forward. He was the best of storytellers! I can’t even remember some of the stories but I’ll never forget the animation of the telling… It still makes me smile.’” – Dan 2 | Keys to the kingdom “Baddy kept his keys on this manky old float. Which was pretty sensible for someone who spent so much time on the ocean.” – Dan 3 | The…

I poke my head through the raised shed doors of Mat Manners Surfboards, tucked deep inside the industrial area of Margaret River. I’m surprised at the size of the place as my “Hey Matty, ya there?” echoes back at me through the rabbit warren of shaping bays. Just then Mat strolls out of a dark corridor, removing his earphones as he greets me warmly. One of WA’s revered underground chargers and shapers, Mat has an ease of being that permeates the room. We make a bit of small talk as he finishes laying cloth on racks of freshly carved blanks. Boards prepped, we move from the bay to settle into the quintessential white plastic pool chairs found in all shaper's foyers across Australia. A table is covered in scraps of…

My mum is from Molokai. Her parents, my kahunas, were fishermen. My uncles, aunties and other elders on Molokai were farmers. Dad grew up on Oahu, he’s half Hawaiian and half Portuguese, and there’s a little bit of English blood in there somewhere too. He was more of a cowboy, rancher and a motorcycle guy. Mum got sent to high school here in Oahu and she stayed on, making Honolulu her home. I grew up on the South shore at Kalihi and Dad taught me to ride dirt bikes and threw me on horses when I was young. My uncle was the big influence when it came to surfing. Dad took me to the mountains; my uncle took me to the ocean. It was the best of both worlds. I…

I grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Cape Town, in the middle of agriculture and wine country. My dad was a vegetable farmer and my mum was a nurse. Everybody in our community played rugby. I was always terrible at it. In my teen years we moved to Kuilsriver, closer to the city, where everyone played soccer. I was terrible at that, too! Then, when I was about 16, I made friends with a skateboarder. He worked at a surf shop in the city and it was there that my interest in surfing began. Hanging out at the shop we’d go through old magazines and we’d see those pictures of Tahiti with the perfect line-up and the boats in the water. I’d never ridden a wave before…

My father is James Hart, Chief 7idansuu (Edenshaw), and my mother is Rosemary Hart, Xidwan Jaadaa (Flying Woman). My father is from Haida Gwaii, a group of remote islands off Canada’s West Coast, and my mother is from North Vancouver. They raised my siblings and me between these two worlds. My father is a Haida artist, so I was fortunate to be raised around art all my life. I've been swinging an adze since I was two, but it wasn't until early high school that I found a real interest in carving and practicing our Haida art form. There's so much more to our art than just creating aesthetically pleasing pieces to look at–they are representations of our Supernaturals and intricate narratives that display personal identities and the greater histories…

In Vanuatu, it’s not just your blood relatives that you call family. Family is a connection to your community and everyone that lives together in your area. Growing up as a child, the village looks after you. You eat together, live together and borrow what you need from each other. This carries on your whole life. Even though my siblings and I are grown up, our home in the village is still our family base and we have a very open house where people are always dropping over–cousins, friends, neighbours. Anyone can come around and use our surfboards, eat with us and feel at home here. Like most Ni-Vanuatu, our daily life revolves around the sea. Fish and other meat from the sea is our main source of protein. We…

Twelve, maybe 15 foot of raw groundswell arrives late in the afternoon, accompanied by a haggard, cross-shore wind being distorted around the cliffs. This swell is a mere precursor to an even larger swell forecast to arrive tomorrow. Surfers on balconies look towards the waves and towards other balconies of surfers doing the same thing. Ninety minutes of muted light remains before all that is left is beer and could-haves. Clouds bloom from the horizon in a peachy hue as warm shadows spread amongst the cliffs, elevating the scene into something out of a Renaissance-inspired fresco. Dad and I sit on our terrace overlooking the scene, drinking tea and watching the fury of these wind-ruffled waves garble down the point. We hoot and shout at the biggest ones–an instinctual response…

{White Horses 30} It all started with a busted point-and-shoot camera about 25 years ago. I was with my girlfriend Fiona, who is now my wife, and we were travelling down to Tasmania. I had brought a small instant camera along and was taking loads of photos, determined to document the beautiful things we were seeing along the way. When we got to Tassie I went to get the photos developed and found out that the camera was broken–not a single shot turned out. I was gutted but headed straight to the nearest pawnbrokers and purchased my first SLR. I spent the rest of the trip playing with all the settings and writing down the details of each exposure I took, which became an invaluable learning curve. By the end…

The earliest New Zealand Maori were East Polynesians who arrived in large ocean going waka (canoes) about 800 years ago from the Hawaiki zone, thought to be the islands of northern Tahiti. It is unclear why they chose to do this; it may have been due to overpopulation on existing islands, or fleeing inter-tribal warfare. They knew they were voyaging to colonise a new land, because they took with them live vegetable plants and sacred marae stones collected from a southern Tahitian island en route, which they used to establish new marae (sacred tribal meeting grounds) on arrival. These ordinary looking blocks of volcanic scoria stones have since been found on different ancient archaeological sites at the bottom of the South Island, and are the oldest sites of habitation found…

Want to know the Champ? Then you need to know his one-of-a-kind mama. How about we start at the beginning. Back in 1986, when Alex Florence from Ocean Grove, a Christian seaside community in New Jersey (yeah, the not-so-glam part of New York), told her parents she was going to the North Shore and asked if they’d, like, mind, driving her to La Guardia airport? The surfing thing had been in her ever since she was 12. By the time she was the sweetest of sixteens, she was soaking her brain every day in surf movies like Beyond Blazing Boards, riding skateboards all over town and surfing in oversized wetsuits. With a backpack and a skateboard and a couple of c-notes in her purse, the lil’ blonde teenager landed in…

My great grandfather moved to Palm Beach, New South Wales, in 1911, shortly after the area was settled. We’re the fourth generation of Roberts’ to live in this area. The original family home was destroyed by fire in the 1980s, but we’re now lucky to call Avalon home. I was at the beach before I could walk and started Nippers at Whale Beach with Barton Lynch when I was five years old. My first surfboard was given to me when I was 10, made by my cousin Timmy Rodgers, who learnt how to shape boards under the tutelage of Midget Farrelly. I started surfing Little Avalon in 1970 when I was 12 and still surf it to this day, 48 years later. Growing up in a surf town forges a…

We moved to Lennox Head six years ago, seeking a smaller beach community to raise our infant daughters. I joined the local All Girls Surf Riders Club for inspiration to get back into the water and as a means to make new friends. With the club came an instant family. The scene was always more of less the same: a kaleidoscope of children’s toys would be scattered amongst an assortment of surfboards. A simple shift system meant a few women would play with the tribe of enthusiastic naked toddlers while the other mothers grabbed their boards and made their way into the ocean for some remedy. I still cherish the time spent with my mothers’ surf group, not to mention the fact that it was instrumental in keeping me sane…

I’m from Cimaja, a small fishing village in West Java that’s about four hours from the capital of Jakarta. I come from a big family–four brothers and two sisters. We’re all still close and live near each other, right where we grew up. As a Muslim I believe in Allah and Mohammad as a messenger. The Koran guides us in leading the right life and teaches the importance of family. We believe there is another life after this. Many people nowadays seem to think Muslims are terrorists, but if you know Islam it is actually about peace and brotherhood. There is a lot of conflict in other religions too, where people do bad things, but they aren’t called terrorists. I think this has a lot to do with politics in…

I started bodysurfing at Fairhaven on the Victorian coast when I was a kid, but I spent most of my holidays visiting relatives on the northwest coast of Tasmania. Later, I met Sonya, my boys’ mum, on the Great Ocean Road. We had a house at Fairhaven and Sonya’s parents had a weekender at Aireys Inlet. Sonya was 12 when I met her and was a Hodgman surf mat rider. Her parents, the Hollmers, were post World War II immigrants from Hamburg, Germany and Friesland, the Netherlands. My grandparents were from the Tassie Midlands and my mum’s relatives, the Irish Cooneys, came out on convict ships in the 1830s. When I was 17 and Sonya was 15, we hitchhiked around Tassie for two weeks. We got married a few years…

In the 1990s my parents bought a block of land down at White Beach, a quiet coastal area on the Tasman Peninsula. Close to fun waves, our bush block was the place where we would escape the city to camp, surf and enjoy sitting around a fire at night. Some years later, in 2001, during one of these trips my best mate Tom and I had jumped in the car with my old man to check a nearby beach we usually surfed. Standing alongside Dad that morning, we stared out to sea as we watched clean, end-to-end closeouts march into the bay. It was uninviting and Tom and I were both quietly relieved when Dad suggested we look “elsewhere”. My dad, a long-time surfer, was privy to some inside knowledge…

Amber Jones and Riley Elliott are storytellers and kind humans. Protectors of sharks and other wild, ocean-dwelling things. They move through their days with salty hair and grace; surfing world-class beachies with their mates, spearfishing for dinner, free-diving in impossibly turquoise waters, and sharing a powerful story of hope and conservation through their photography, science and film. The couple live with doggo Kona in two tiny handmade houses, lodged high on the volcanic slopes of Mount Paku on the Coromandel Peninsula. Each morning, they wake up to the dreamy blues and greens of the Pacific, the jagged geography of the Alderman Islands, shimmering way out there on the horizon. “Life in Tairua is definitely life in the slow lane,” says Amber. “We’ve got chickens, vegetable gardens, our dog, and we’re…

I started skating when I was five years old, before I started surfing. My big brother Colin and my dad would skate together and it looked so fun. I just wanted to do what they were doing. I tried surfing properly for the first time when I was six-and-a-half. Before that, Dad would put me on the nose of his longboard and take me out, but then I wanted to stand up on my own. Dad has always helped me but I don’t exactly like to listen when he gives me advice! I like to figure stuff out on my own, but he’s been the best influence ever for my surfing and I love to try gets barrels or do airs like him. He doesn’t worry about me too much…