Innehållsförteckning för Issue 36 från White Horses

SURFING’S FUNDAMENTAL REWARDS SEEM PRETTY BASIC: FUN, GRATIFICATION, DOPAMINE, STOKE, JOY EVERY SURF CHECK IS AN ASSESSMENT OF THE POTENTIAL FOR THE FUN WE CAN EXTRACT BUT COULD SURFING’S BIGGEST GIFT ACTUALLY BE WHAT IT CAN BRING OUT IN US? CAN IT LEAD US TO GREATER CREATIVITY & GENEROSITY OF SPIRIT? A WILLINGNESS TO EXPLORE, TO TRY, EVEN TO FAIL?…

“Are you ok? Do you need a push?” asks a concerned woman atop the Collaroy cliffs. Ollie Dousset, holding his paraglide wing, peers over the cliff edge and laughs. “If you push me now I’ll probably lose my other leg.” I chuckle watching this unfold. Ollie’s waiting for the Southerly to hit. Next minute the ocean snarls into whitecaps and Ollie stretches his helmeted head before launching over the edge. He soars upwards like an Albatross in an updraft. The woman’s mouth twists from worry to wonder. Unknown to her is that Ollie is an elite paraglider. While in Hawaii last year he and a team of pilots flew across the treacherous mountain ranges of Maui – the same trip that Jaws welcomed him with a two-wave hold down. I…

Russ, on origins Using a remote flash for surf-related photography in the water has been around for years. I’m not exactly sure who the pioneer was but no doubt it was inspired by other sports such as skateboarding. I recall a particular photo by Tom Carey at the start of the digital age that had these amazing contrasts between the wave and sky. It made me wonder what a remote flash could add to the blood-red WA sunsets. After many miserable attempts, I landed a Creed McTaggart cover when he was 10 years old, using a remote flash covered with red cellophane paper. That was 17 years ago and it was more by luck than knowing the pure science behind the technique. After an unexplained hiatus from even attempting remote…

{Three photographers, four locations} RYAN MILLER 3/3 After an extended period on the North Shore, shooting the best surfers day after day, I developed an appreciation for the uniqueness of their styles and approaches. The benchmark for high performance surfing is a standard they all reach, but each gets there in their own way. This is a case study of the cutback; three distinct approaches to a manoeuvre that has been a staple since Tom Blake stuck a fin on his board. John Florence does it with power and style, Filipe Toledo with speed and precision, and Mikey Wright with sheer Aussie grunt. Their rail work is sublime. It’s all about the carve – always was, always will be.…

Don “Scrubbs” Blakeney spent decades in the white collared suit and tie world of corporate finance in New Zealand’s capital city of Wellington, where he gained a reputation amongst his peers for being very clever. Perhaps a little too clever. “There was some professional jealousy, and I also began to attract a lot of attention from Inland Revenue, to the point where I felt compelled to have a career change,” he tells me wryly, some decades later. Blakeney went on to help establish the New Zealand Film Commission and served as the CEO for its formative years, before he left to produce Utu, the Maori word for revenge), a gritty tale set in the New Zealand Land Wars of the 1860s. The film is widely credited for bringing New Zealand…

I’ve never ordered a custom board. Never felt like my surfing deserved it. And after being denied my original addiction for the better part of a year, I figure it’s about time I got myself a little somethin’ special. You know, a reward for keeping the stoke alive in the concrete jungle all this time. I’m after a magic board. Yeah, I know. Those mystical indefinable things only come along when the stars and planets align and your soul is open and your chakras are all feng shui’d, or whatever. I’m not here to have my cards read, mate. But I figure if someone’s going to mow some transcendental foam, you’re the one. I’ve heard good things. I had a magic board once. It was my first proper fibreglass job.…

The first time I visited The Pines was in December 2015. My friends and I were doing a summer tour around Australia, and it was the perfect excuse to leave the mainland, go surfing and play a unique show in the middle of a 50-something gig tour. The Pines is a small island, roughly eight by five kilometres, a few hours off the east coast of Australia. The waves are fickle so you don’t always get to surf, but when it’s on the main waves are a left and a right in the same bay on the far side of the island. The right is a wedgy, A-frame beach break, while the left comes out of deep water and then runs along a point lined with huge boulders. The waves…

Not good enough for you, eh? he niggles, as he skips down the Ninth Avenue stairs, board underarm. I’m walking up the stairs buzzing after a 10 minute body bash. I feel bloody amazing, what’s he on about? It takes a few seconds to register that he thinks I’ve deemed the conditions sub-par because I didn’t surf on a board. Not good enough for a proper surf. Well, I’ve had a bad hip so I haven’t surfed for a while, I say. Oh well I won’t rub it in then, he says with a grin and sprints off. The guy is a school dad. One of the talk-it-up types; surfing eight footers, getting barreled and the like, yet surfs like he’s hanging a bog. Fucken kook. I’m a hack, but…

George Greenough • Hugh McLeod • John Young • Royce Leu • Gerry Lopez • Marlton Family • Kurt Avouris • Nick Greally • Rex Gillard • Julia White • Shannon Platt • Gary Saunders • Adrian Peirce • Adrian Peirce • Mick Rudder • Simon Connolly • Faye Gray • Adam Taylor • David Shannon • Steve Cottee • Julia Heasman • Ben Crowe • Paul Newman • Steve Hops • Maike Kaufmann • Elly Baker • Elisa Hammond • Alex Brooks • Andrew Barr • Richard Kumnick • Warwick Hallett • Brandon Howerton • Morgan Stedman • Tim Jennings • Georgia Lang • Kent Pinel • Alexander Leo • Tom Raw • Phillip Robertson • Gavin Lewis • Troy Vandermeer • Kahlil Messer • Selena Fros • Jan…

I got heckled so bad growing up. I wasn’t part of the surfing clique on Maui, even though I was a surfer first. Maui is very windy, so I took up other sports that weren’t popular amongst my peers, like windsurfing, SUP, kiting. I was using those experiences to help propel my ability in traditional surfing. Even at my home break, I never felt comfortable. I felt like an outsider. But that gave me a sense of knowing who I really was as a person, and I didn’t mask it to fit in. I think people started giving me respect when I started catching bigger waves than them at Jaws. I was sitting deeper and there was no denying that I was willing to put myself into scary positions. But…

I come from a small city called Salta la Linda or “Salta the beautiful” in Argentina. Its real name is actually just Salta but you can’t help falling in love with the Spanish colonial architecture, Andean heritage and the valleys that lie to the west. I was raised in a Catholic family, and like any good Catholic family there were a lot of us – eight siblings, with six girls and two boys. I’m the oldest and we are almost a year apart from each other, so growing up was never boring, or quiet. Even though there were eight of us, my parents were always supportive and caring. I wasn’t one of those kids who grew up knowing what they want to do but I always seemed to enjoy making…

{Three photographers, four locations} BEN THOUARD ⅓ Tahiti, and especially Teahupoo, has shaped my obsession with the aesthetics of waves, light and water. If you put your head underwater, you will be amazed by what you see there. The silhouettes of surfers as they glide past, the waves rolling over the reef, and of course the reef itself. Everything feels alive, crackling with energy. Above the surface, the mix of light and natural shapes and textures is like nowhere else on earth. Photographing this place is a way to share what fascinates me most about the ocean. It’s a challenge to capture the emotions that I feel out there but it’s what I’m always striving to achieve.…

I’m early and they haven’t arrived yet, so I pull the surf mat out of the boot of my rental and begin to blow it up. It’s been stuffed at the back of a shelf in my garage since my second pregnancy. I’m hoping that today — as I no longer have a mound for a stomach — it will prove easier to balance atop this bag of air. I spot Cher and her husband, Steve, pull into the carpark. They’ve travelled from their California home to spend a month here in Byron. They try to make the trip every couple of years to catch up with old friends, like George. Cher’s smile is as much of a beacon as her long red hair. We greet and chat as more…

My fascination with surfboards had an inauspicious start. It was the early 1970s, I was 15 years old, and the shortboard revolution had been storming the coast for the past few years. Dad helped me fashion my own prototype by cutting down an old Malibu in our backyard shed. It wasn’t pretty, but it was mine. We lived in a suburb of Perth, just south of the river, and like most grommets in the area I grew up surfing the Perth metropolitan breaks. But as soon as I had my driver’s license, I was off on the long drive south nearly every weekend, exploring the Yallingup to Margaret River coast. This would become the testing ground for all my experimentation with surfboards in the years that followed. The late ’60s…

The contrast when crossing the border from California to Baja is as clear as night and day. The classic cookie-cutter lifestyle of San Diego immediately fades away as you head for the first Mexican town of Tijuana. For someone not used to the transition, it may seem like driving into a different dimension. The highway narrows down into a potholed single-lane. Towering piles of burning trash dot the road, while abandoned old cars with California plates lie encrusted in rust. And then there’s the cop in your rear view mirror who may or may not be a cop. But the silver lining is the thousand miles of untouched desert coastline ahead that boasts point break after point break. At this section of coast, the dirt road on the map veered…

15 years, almost to the day. That’s how long it’s been since I first set my eyes on sweet Aileen. That frigid February morn in 2005, Tom Gillespie and I sat in the spongy grass atop the towering cliffs of County Clare’s coast and watched as Dave Blount, fresh from his job in Dublin and John ‘Mac’ McCarthy, tackled a burly groundswell. Watching from 700 feet above, the scale was so mind-boggling that at first it was hard to even make them out. It would not be an exaggeration to say they looked like termites attempting to surf next to a termite mound. Even the jetski was just a speck – and skis never look small. Irish slab surfing was still in its infancy. A couple of years previous, a…

First day of February, 2020. It’s ridiculously early – the day’s just a faint ochre promise on the horizon when I pull into the cove carpark, and with the mildest nocturnal chill in the air I can almost convince myself the relief of Autumn’s just around the corner. Optimism gives way to a reflex grumpiness when I see a small but dense column of smoke wafting up from somewhere down the stone stairs that lead to the beach. I assume at first it’s some entitled instagram-road-warrior – this carpark gets used as a cheeky campground by people who perhaps consider themselves too groovy for the civic laws that bind us daggier mortals (and it’s not uncommon to have to clean up after ’em either) but the carpark’s empty. No #vanlyfe…

I wake up to the sound of waves crashing against the rocky shoreline. Searching for my watch, the time reads 6:15 am. High tide. It is pitch black outside and I contemplate attempting to fall back asleep on my partially deflated air mattress. Then I hear the shuffling sound of someone getting out of their tent. After a moment of silence, there’s the comforting sound of cedar being delicately split with a hatchet. I immediately know it’s Pete and decide to rise and help him get a fire going; the lifeblood of every surf trip up the coast. There’s a reason Pete’s always the first one in the water on these excursions – it’s because he’s always the first one to wake up, too. He’s been coming out to camp…

A woman, grinning, in the sunlight. A 6’8 single fin and a perfect turquoise wave, moving at speed. These are some of the sweeter shapes that joy can take. The unique salty calligraphy of this particular flight pattern is in constant motion, inscribed across the ocean’s surface, silhouetted against the dawn sky. Sometimes, the movement of the human body becomes poetry. How it must feel to dance like this, to traverse the contours of all that liquid light. This is Leah Dawson. Waterwoman. Maverick. Trailblazer and progressive. Co-founder of the Changing Tides Foundation, which connects communities and transforms women’s lives through surfing and environmental protection, from the Dominican Republic to El Salvador. She is a free surfer and cinematographer, music maker and facilitator. A joyful frother with a particular gift…

{Three photographers, four locations} BRYANNA BRADLEY ⅔ I often question my sanity. It’s a normal physiological reaction to being submerged in 7°C water for hours on end. The winter months in Canada can do this to you. Yet the cold water, wind, rain and the unique Pacific North West environment of British Columbia is where I feel most at home and at my creative best. Don’t get me wrong – there are tears, too. Hypothermia and hour-long brain freeze is par for the course. But it’s this frigid environment that makes me appreciate international travel even more. After a winter in the North West, the tropics are such a contrast. Frolicking in an ocean that feels like bathwater, sun on your near-naked skin… It’s like being on a different planet.…

The granddaughter of Duncan McPhail, Ashley McPhail, commissioned the restoration of her grandpa’s original 1963 Cordingley surfboard. The idea was that Ashley would get to surf the board, after which it would eventually be displayed at their Yallingup beach house as a prized family heirloom. The board was dropped off at the workshop in extremely poor condition and I confess that at first, I thought I’d perhaps bitten off more than I could chew. Almost all the fibreglass on the deck had delaminated off the foam from rail to rail, and there was significant water damage to the blank. The board was basically rotting from the inside out. The nose had been patched up before but was badly mangled, along with numerous unrepaired holes around the tail, rails, and across…

The deep-blue ocean starts pulsing before our eyes. It’s building in size with each set. Serious discussions are taking place regarding board dimensions. “It’s bigger than it looks,” José Lucio advises. 55 years old, he was one of the first people to surf these waves. Underlining the point, he starts waxing up a lengthy, yellowed gun – serious artillery – dwarfing Hugo Vau’s initial choice of a simple step-up. Hugo disappears, sprinting back to camp, and returns some 20 minutes later with a board more appropriate to the circumstances. he Gulf Stream splits just offshore from here, one half forming the Azores current that swathes the islands in balmy waters, maintaining a subtropical climate year-round. Often referred to as “the Hawaii of the Atlantic,” it’s easy to see the similarities…

It’s our fifth surf check of the morning, and my first day of the trip. I had arrived late the night before, raring to go. Now the five of us are sitting on the beach watching the tide move in, exhausted by the heat and waves. La Bamba, as the locals call it, is a right-hand point that breaks in a tiny bay between two manmade jetties. The main take-off zone sits in front of a large cluster of rocks and boulders, so falling is not an option. From there the wave sets up for a brief barrel, then backs off slightly into a variety of turn sections before the final encore onto the beach and the inevitable runaround back up the point. The current is so strong that it’s…

It’s a smoky spring afternoon and my girlfriend Emily and I are at Pine Tree. The nearby Cape Le Grand National Park is ablaze and visibility is poor, but we have the beach to ourselves. And I’m surfing! Well, sort of. For months I’d endured an on-again-off-again relationship with this beautiful yet mostly thankless endeavour that had, to date, given me little in return. But persistence pays off, as they say. Every second upright on my ancient orange foamy – on loan from the school where I work as an English teacher – is a victory. The waves I’m riding are small, but they’re a step up from the whitewash with which I’ve become too familiar. To my left, a wave begins to take shape and is breaking towards me.…

Sometimes, only sometimes, there are things which are more important than surfing. We’re still here in old Melbourne town. Enduring one of the world’s longest lockdowns. Abandoned and ostracised by closed borders, rings of steel, an imperceptible microbe that has torn through our community beyond our control. Most of us unable or unwilling to risk a trip to the coast. Unable to do so without becoming a law-breaker. Unwilling to expose the coastal communities we hold in our hearts to the risk of transmission. It’s been months and months of vacillation between boredom, anxiety and despair, punctuated only briefly by rare moments of lightness. And we’ve endured it all because sometimes, on very rare occasions, some things are more important than surfing. The isolation has made me think of old…

What a pleasure it is to make a magazine. The process is time-consuming and intimate, and the relationships that form along the way are often life affirming. We first met Brian Ison over a respectful exchange about our Take a Moment issue. Brian wasn’t into philosophy and wanted the yarns back. We assured him that Blue Minded (Issue 28) and Take A Moment (Issue 32) were an exception and not the rule. We kept up the correspondence because we could see Brian’s a straight shooter and if the magazine went off course, he’d be first to let us know. Over a few more friendly exchanges we came to discover his two new loves. Making art from beached organic matter, and his new partner Tracey. That’s how Beached Art happened. Turns…