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56 Articles

My mum loves telling the story about how, when she was pregnant with me, she would head down to the beach and dig a hole at the waterline, then let it pool up with water to take the weight off her and cool down. She believes that’s when my obsession with the ocean began. The town I grew up in had plenty of slabby reefs, perfect for bodyboarding. That played some part in it, too. I had a bit of an interest in taking happy snaps after sessions but it wasn’t until I was recovering from a busted knee that I spent a few dollars on a decent camera rig to help with the healing process. It hurt missing out on so many good swells but shooting my mates while I…

MOONLIGHT DRIVE

It’s Easter full moon in March, two weeks out from a hernia operation I’m due to have, and I wake up at 4am. The moonlight outside my bedroom window is incredibly bright but the silence is deafening. Even the birds are quiet, waiting for daybreak. I know the tide is perfect for Crescent Head. The swell was predicted to rise another one or two feet from the east, so there should be some head-high and bigger sets coming in. I imagine the beautifully long, liquid walls peeling from the Pandanus trees down to the track. I’m in the car an hour later, heading towards the ocean. Driving down the old Pacific Highway is a sweet journey – probably one of my favourite drives anywhere along the east coast of Australia. With…

MOONLIGHT DRIVE

Taz first showed up on our radar a few years ago along with his twin sister, Paumalu, when they were four-week-old pups. We had just lost our beloved 15-year-old dog, Junior Boy, and it was devastating coming home to a dog-less home. So when our friends posted a photo on Facebook of a bathtub full of little chug pups and I spotted this chubby little fella, we couldn’t resist. Chugs, as you might guess, are what happen when you cross a Chihuahua and a Pug. We called him Taz not because I’m from Tassie, but because he really likes to stir shit up – much like Taz, the Tasmanian Devil from the ol’ Looney Tunes cartoons. Looking at this furry whirlwind in full force, it’s hard to imagine that Taz almost never…

When it comes to naming the Mentawai Islands’ premium right-hander, arguably the finest surf discovery of the modern era, surfing’s traditional power brokers see things a little differently. “Lance’s Right mate. It’s fucken Lance’s… right?” I’ve just been put in my place in no uncertain terms by the authoritative growl of Doris. Tony ‘Doris’ Eltherington is something of an Indo legend, first as a prodigious bowl-cut teen surfing Ulu’s Racetrack section in 1973’s Crystal Voyager, more recently as a charter boat captain in the Mentawais. Not a skipper, the skipper. He’s the one who found Brett Archibald, the South African who fell overboard in the Strait at night and spent 28 terrifying hours alone at sea. He’s seen as many perfect waves break as anyone alive. When it comes to the Indonesian surfing experience,…

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

The caravan’s mine, I bought it about four years ago. At the time I was travelling back and forth, paying what I thought was silly amounts on rent that was just going into a bottomless pit while living in shared houses, which I wasn’t really enjoying. So I was kinda on the lookout for a place to live and spoke to a few friends in the area. A mate of mine, who I went to school with, his family have a property out the back of Broken Head. They’ve been there for about 40-odd years. It’s about half a dozen acres or so, and he kindly extended the offer that if I got a caravan, I was welcome to put it out there. I quickly got on the hunt and picked…

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

My mum loves telling the story about how, when she was pregnant with me, she would head down to the beach and dig a hole at the waterline, then let it pool up with water to take the weight off her and cool down. She believes that’s when my obsession with the ocean began. The town I grew up in had plenty of slabby reefs, perfect for bodyboarding. That played some part in it, too. I had a bit of an interest in taking happy snaps after sessions but it wasn’t until I was recovering from a busted knee that I spent a few dollars on a decent camera rig to help with the healing process. It hurt missing out on so many good swells but shooting my mates while…

THE RISING ISLANDS

Funafuti Atoll’s main coral road is bustling. Sputtering motorbikes and cackling kids dart across the late afternoon heat while unamused adults watch on from their fusis, or shops. We seek refreshment at Tefota Mini-Mart where the young clerk, Katalaina, is dressed in a tight “BEAUTIFUL SINCE 1992” T-shirt, her hair yanked into a brown bun. A crude sign outside had advertised an “amazing beer garden” with a green arrow pointing the way. But the amazing place isn’t open. Instead, Katalaina sells me a sixer of Victoria Bitter (illegally, she claims). Daniel, Nico, and I each crack a can. Then another. Seeing this, Katalaina demands we file into the shaded area behind her fusi. “Might we get arrested?” I ask. She laughs. “Probably. The police here don’t have much to do except arrest guys…

THE RISING ISLANDS

WORTH THE DRIVE

I’d been looking forward to crossing the border from Europe into North Africa for a long time – 10 years, to be exact, after my first proper trip overseas had come to an abrupt end. I was fresh out of high school back then and travelling on the funds I’d earned from packing boxes in a warehouse. We’d bought an old $600 station wagon in Frankfurt and the plan was to drive down to Morocco over the course of six months, living on peanuts and surfing our brains out. The plan was going good until my first surf in Hossegor, when my board went one way and I went the other. I blew my knee out and had to bail home for an operation. My mates dropped me off at the Lisbon…

WORTH THE DRIVE

MOONLIGHT DRIVE

It’s Easter full moon in March, two weeks out from a hernia operation I’m due to have, and I wake up at 4am. The moonlight outside my bedroom window is incredibly bright but the silence is deafening. Even the birds are quiet, waiting for daybreak. I know the tide is perfect for Crescent Head. The swell was predicted to rise another one or two feet from the east, so there should be some head-high and bigger sets coming in. I imagine the beautifully long, liquid walls peeling from the Pandanus trees down to the track. I’m in the car an hour later, heading towards the ocean. Driving down the old Pacific Highway is a sweet journey – probably one of my favourite drives anywhere along the east coast of Australia.…

MOONLIGHT DRIVE

Taz first showed up on our radar a few years ago along with his twin sister, Paumalu, when they were four-week-old pups. We had just lost our beloved 15-year-old dog, Junior Boy, and it was devastating coming home to a dog-less home. So when our friends posted a photo on Facebook of a bathtub full of little chug pups and I spotted this chubby little fella, we couldn’t resist. Chugs, as you might guess, are what happen when you cross a Chihuahua and a Pug. We called him Taz not because I’m from Tassie, but because he really likes to stir shit up – much like Taz, the Tasmanian Devil from the ol’ Looney Tunes cartoons. Looking at this furry whirlwind in full force, it’s hard to imagine that Taz…

A TRUSTED COMPANION

After falling in love with photography, it was somehow inevitable that my work would revolve around the ocean. Line-up shots evolved into water perspectives, then to marine life, and soon I was taking as many photos below the surface as I was above it. I became increasingly fascinated by coastal landscapes, especially the point where land and sea intersect. This has become my main focus over the past few years, pushing me around and around the circumference of Australia. My approach is probably a bit different to most other landscape photographers. I primarily like to shoot aerial perspectives and I don’t camp out in one spot for days on end waiting to get that one shot. Rather, I prefer to always be on the move. By exploring and becoming aware of…

A TRUSTED COMPANION

When it comes to naming the Mentawai Islands’ premium right-hander, arguably the finest surf discovery of the modern era, surfing’s traditional power brokers see things a little differently. “Lance’s Right mate. It’s fucken Lance’s… right?” I’ve just been put in my place in no uncertain terms by the authoritative growl of Doris. Tony ‘Doris’ Eltherington is something of an Indo legend, first as a prodigious bowl-cut teen surfing Ulu’s Racetrack section in 1973’s Crystal Voyager, more recently as a charter boat captain in the Mentawais. Not a skipper, the skipper. He’s the one who found Brett Archibald, the South African who fell overboard in the Strait at night and spent 28 terrifying hours alone at sea. He’s seen as many perfect waves break as anyone alive. When it comes to…

I had heard about this area of Alaska before. It’s known for its incredible natural beauty, with mountains that rise from the sea and salmon that hit dry flies like it’s their last meal. But unknown to most, there’s surf, too. Really good surf. My dear friend Mulcs – aka Josh Mulcoy – graced the cover of Surfer magazine riding a wave there in 1992, but he hadn’t seen the halfmile long wave break again since then, despite numerous trips back. It seemed like those waves he lucked into were nothing more than a happy accident. So when he invited me on a trip to Alaska in October of 2017, I stayed home. October is the best time of year in California and I wasn’t about to waste a perfectly good…

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

The caravan’s mine, I bought it about four years ago. At the time I was travelling back and forth, paying what I thought was silly amounts on rent that was just going into a bottomless pit while living in shared houses, which I wasn’t really enjoying. So I was kinda on the lookout for a place to live and spoke to a few friends in the area. A mate of mine, who I went to school with, his family have a property out the back of Broken Head. They’ve been there for about 40-odd years. It’s about half a dozen acres or so, and he kindly extended the offer that if I got a caravan, I was welcome to put it out there. I quickly got on the hunt and…

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

THE END OF THE ROAD

It’s been a little over a month since I’ve been home. And my mate Westy died less than a month before that. Cycling into town for a party in Warrnambool on a Saturday night, he was hit by a ute. A few excruciating weeks visiting the ICU and then the funeral. After that, once the hangover cleared, I packed up the car and headed up to the South Coast alone. Lay off the turps a bit. Get my head straight. Camp each night. Surf as much as humanly possible. As it happened, I lucked into a bit of swell that was hitting most parts just right. Westy was saying goodbye. I talked to him regularly on that trip. Bastard never answered back, of course. Not directly anyway. But there were moments…

THE END OF THE ROAD

My alarm sounds at 5:30am but I am already awake. A combination of sheer excitement, anticipation and a severe underestimation of how cold sleeping in a rooftop tent in the desert during winter would be. It’s my first night in Namibia and I’m in a town – more like a desert camp with a petrol station – called Sesriem, at the entrance to the Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert. In the six-hour drive south to get here from the capital Windhoek, the landscape had been impressively flat, the horizon clearly displaying the gentle curve in the earth. Dusty gravel roads, often ruler straight, only broke their course to get around low-lying but magnificent rock formations and gem-laden hills. Smatterings of thorn bushes and other desert vegetation added some greenery amongst the…

THE RISING ISLANDS

Funafuti Atoll’s main coral road is bustling. Sputtering motorbikes and cackling kids dart across the late afternoon heat while unamused adults watch on from their fusis, or shops. We seek refreshment at Tefota Mini-Mart where the young clerk, Katalaina, is dressed in a tight “BEAUTIFUL SINCE 1992” T-shirt, her hair yanked into a brown bun. A crude sign outside had advertised an “amazing beer garden” with a green arrow pointing the way. But the amazing place isn’t open. Instead, Katalaina sells me a sixer of Victoria Bitter (illegally, she claims). Daniel, Nico, and I each crack a can. Then another. Seeing this, Katalaina demands we file into the shaded area behind her fusi. “Might we get arrested?” I ask. She laughs. “Probably. The police here don’t have much to do…

THE RISING ISLANDS

I’d never seen a board break like that before. A jagged snap, vertical from the tail up, tracing the line of the stringer before blowing out from the rail like a tree branch. It looked like a lightning rod had struck it, rather than the lip of a North Atlantic wave. It was my first time surfing The Left and I had gone through two boards in rapid succession. An earlier wave had claimed the nose of my shortboard as I tried to whip round on one of the bigger sets of the morning. I ended up free-falling into the trough but somehow only got gently bounced along the dry shelf and escaped with barely a scratch. My board, on the other hand, looked like The Hulk had ripped the nose…

WORTH THE DRIVE

I’d been looking forward to crossing the border from Europe into North Africa for a long time – 10 years, to be exact, after my first proper trip overseas had come to an abrupt end. I was fresh out of high school back then and travelling on the funds I’d earned from packing boxes in a warehouse. We’d bought an old $600 station wagon in Frankfurt and the plan was to drive down to Morocco over the course of six months, living on peanuts and surfing our brains out. The plan was going good until my first surf in Hossegor, when my board went one way and I went the other. I blew my knee out and had to bail home for an operation. My mates dropped me off at…

WORTH THE DRIVE

It was sometime well past the middle of the night, past the car ferry between Bali and Java, but before the strange rivermouth beach with the stench of fish and the pre-dawn clouds of mosquitoes. It must have been the gamelan drums that woke me, or the sudden deceleration of the van as it cornered, but as my awareness adjusted, it was clear that we had ventured into some sort of screeching, jangling corner of a ceremonial circle of hell. With the road blocked ahead of us by god-knows-what-strange-lights-and-piercing-tinny-noise, we were not going anywhere. A fearsome, demonic apparition appeared at my window and a banging started on every panel of the van. My fellow travellers awoke to similar creatures at their windows; straggly matted hair over painted faces, framed jawbone masks…

A TRUSTED COMPANION

After falling in love with photography, it was somehow inevitable that my work would revolve around the ocean. Line-up shots evolved into water perspectives, then to marine life, and soon I was taking as many photos below the surface as I was above it. I became increasingly fascinated by coastal landscapes, especially the point where land and sea intersect. This has become my main focus over the past few years, pushing me around and around the circumference of Australia. My approach is probably a bit different to most other landscape photographers. I primarily like to shoot aerial perspectives and I don’t camp out in one spot for days on end waiting to get that one shot. Rather, I prefer to always be on the move. By exploring and becoming aware…

A TRUSTED COMPANION

I had heard about this area of Alaska before. It’s known for its incredible natural beauty, with mountains that rise from the sea and salmon that hit dry flies like it’s their last meal. But unknown to most, there’s surf, too. Really good surf. My dear friend Mulcs – aka Josh Mulcoy – graced the cover of Surfer magazine riding a wave there in 1992, but he hadn’t seen the halfmile long wave break again since then, despite numerous trips back. It seemed like those waves he lucked into were nothing more than a happy accident. So when he invited me on a trip to Alaska in October of 2017, I stayed home. October is the best time of year in California and I wasn’t about to waste a perfectly…

It’s not until you don’t get to say goodbye that you realise it’s not a given. When Mum died it was brutal: two years of watching her fade away in growing agony as the cancer destroyed her. But at least we could see the parting coming. At least we had time, a thousand times, to say goodbye. When I met Mark I’d been living away from Sydney for nearly ten years. He was one of those blokes who makes you realise what’s best about the place you grew up. He was from Dee Why, surfed the point, must have surfed the point well. He was a good surfer. I mean a good surfer. He was so competent – never fell, never dropped in, could get in late if he had to…

I speared my board into the oncoming whitewater, bent down and grabbed a big handful of sand and washed both my hands with it. Took a deep inhale and looked north, and then south. I normally reserve this kind of pre-surf routine for when it’s big and I’m nervous. But today was neither of those. Crumbly and weak with maybe the occasional two-foot set. A big, deep gutter sat where the bank was supposed to be. It was so dire that the only other person in the lineup was flailing around on an SUP. In a few strokes I was already out the back and sitting on my board. Looking back to shore was unrecognisable to 20 years ago. The character-filled fibro shacks that smelled of incense and once adorned the beach had…

THE END OF THE ROAD

It’s been a little over a month since I’ve been home. And my mate Westy died less than a month before that. Cycling into town for a party in Warrnambool on a Saturday night, he was hit by a ute. A few excruciating weeks visiting the ICU and then the funeral. After that, once the hangover cleared, I packed up the car and headed up to the South Coast alone. Lay off the turps a bit. Get my head straight. Camp each night. Surf as much as humanly possible. As it happened, I lucked into a bit of swell that was hitting most parts just right. Westy was saying goodbye. I talked to him regularly on that trip. Bastard never answered back, of course. Not directly anyway. But there were…

THE END OF THE ROAD

My alarm sounds at 5:30am but I am already awake. A combination of sheer excitement, anticipation and a severe underestimation of how cold sleeping in a rooftop tent in the desert during winter would be. It’s my first night in Namibia and I’m in a town – more like a desert camp with a petrol station – called Sesriem, at the entrance to the Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert. In the six-hour drive south to get here from the capital Windhoek, the landscape had been impressively flat, the horizon clearly displaying the gentle curve in the earth. Dusty gravel roads, often ruler straight, only broke their course to get around low-lying but magnificent rock formations and gem-laden hills. Smatterings of thorn bushes and other desert vegetation added some greenery amongst…

I am not a morning person, but as I stand on the boulder in the early dawn, my mind is sharp and alert. I am more than awake, concentrating on the vast endlessness below. There is a noticeable lack of early birdsong here; no hiss of offshore wind fanning the waves. The only sound is my breath, heavy after the scramble to the top. It is by no means a difficult climb, but I had to hurry to beat the sun. “If you stand at the top of Kubu Island just before sunrise,” said one of the returning visitors over the embers of a fire the previous evening, “You can see the curvature of the Earth.” He was right. From up here, across the unfathomable distance of the Makgadikgadi Pan, the horizon cuts not…

If you’ve found this note, I am dead. Figured I’d write this and leave it in my surfboard bag in case anything ever happened to me out in the water. I hoped it’d just sit here for years until I became an old fart, but obviously the big fella upstairs had other plans. If it was a shark that did it… bloody hell ay, hopefully I put up a fight. Please don’t blame the shark. It was only looking for a feed and I was in its backyard. If I knocked meself out on a rock, tell everyone it was a shark that did it. Don’t want anyone thinking I was a kook, heh. Also, maybe buy a Gath. Where to begin? I’m sorry I won’t be around to watch you grow…

I’d never seen a board break like that before. A jagged snap, vertical from the tail up, tracing the line of the stringer before blowing out from the rail like a tree branch. It looked like a lightning rod had struck it, rather than the lip of a North Atlantic wave. It was my first time surfing The Left and I had gone through two boards in rapid succession. An earlier wave had claimed the nose of my shortboard as I tried to whip round on one of the bigger sets of the morning. I ended up free-falling into the trough but somehow only got gently bounced along the dry shelf and escaped with barely a scratch. My board, on the other hand, looked like The Hulk had ripped the…

He puts the next cigarette in his mouth. It’s dry and stale. The filter sticks to his lip. The plastic lighter flares as he leans in, picking off a few eyebrow hairs. No matter. At ten cigs a week, he doesn’t smoke enough of the things to keep a pack fresh. He sits on a stool in a small cafe facing a busy backstreet shortcut for most of the scooters in Kuta. A motorcade of silky hookers, howling schoolies, pimps, hustlers, ladyboys and families of four all roar past on two wheels. A river of humanity. Mechanised. He watches it all like an adult would watch a roller coaster. Amused. But not in the way that makes you smile. In the way that makes you think of yourself when you were…

Surfing is mine. The car park spot nearest the path to the beach is mine. I’m always first. Occasionally a backpacker’s van might have spent the night. I park in the next spot and make as much noise as possible. They’re in my spot. The cobwebs that wrap around my face along the one-kilometre path are mine. Just after you descend the dune to the beach, on the left by the clear patch in the maram where the turtle laid her eggs three years ago, that’s where I leave my shit. Towel, keys… The footprints in the sand below the high tide line, they’re mine. Sometimes it’s so beautiful at that time in the morning that it makes me cry. Sometimes I paddle out on the first crisp morning of the year…

It was sometime well past the middle of the night, past the car ferry between Bali and Java, but before the strange rivermouth beach with the stench of fish and the pre-dawn clouds of mosquitoes. It must have been the gamelan drums that woke me, or the sudden deceleration of the van as it cornered, but as my awareness adjusted, it was clear that we had ventured into some sort of screeching, jangling corner of a ceremonial circle of hell. With the road blocked ahead of us by god-knows-what-strange-lights-and-piercing-tinny-noise, we were not going anywhere. A fearsome, demonic apparition appeared at my window and a banging started on every panel of the van. My fellow travellers awoke to similar creatures at their windows; straggly matted hair over painted faces, framed jawbone…

It’s not until you don’t get to say goodbye that you realise it’s not a given. When Mum died it was brutal: two years of watching her fade away in growing agony as the cancer destroyed her. But at least we could see the parting coming. At least we had time, a thousand times, to say goodbye. When I met Mark I’d been living away from Sydney for nearly ten years. He was one of those blokes who makes you realise what’s best about the place you grew up. He was from Dee Why, surfed the point, must have surfed the point well. He was a good surfer. I mean a good surfer. He was so competent – never fell, never dropped in, could get in late if he had…

THE SPACES IN-BETWEEN

We were just off South Cape when a voice came out of the long-wave radio and announced that Tasmania had closed its borders. Everyone stopped moving. Eyes like plates, jaws dropped to the floor. Coffee mugs suspended mid-flight. The whole catastrophe. Oscar spun the skipper dial right up and the formal vowels of the Coast Guard filled the wheelhouse. Words like “quarantine” and “state of emergency” crackled across the air. We just looked around at one another, eyebrows shooting up so fast they almost knocked out the roof. Used words like “fark” and “farrrrrrk!” We’d been completely out of range for eight days, cleaning up tens of thousands of pieces of dirty plastic from the World Heritage listed beaches of southwest Tassie. That wild little island at the end of the…

I speared my board into the oncoming whitewater, bent down and grabbed a big handful of sand and washed both my hands with it. Took a deep inhale and looked north, and then south. I normally reserve this kind of pre-surf routine for when it’s big and I’m nervous. But today was neither of those. Crumbly and weak with maybe the occasional two-foot set. A big, deep gutter sat where the bank was supposed to be. It was so dire that the only other person in the lineup was flailing around on an SUP. In a few strokes I was already out the back and sitting on my board. Looking back to shore was unrecognisable to 20 years ago. The character-filled fibro shacks that smelled of incense and once adorned…

We’d travelled west to go East – chased a typhoon to the far fringes of the Pacific looking for barrels breaking over river-fed sand. But typhoons are a fickle pursuit, just as likely to send you chasing your tail as they are to deliver the goods. They are unpredictable at best, changing course seemingly on a whim, turning what looks like a sure thing into an indecipherable mess. We spent days searching for a bank that could handle the swell but were ultimately plagued by too much of a good thing. Every day, the typhoon got closer and the swell got bigger, maxing out every setup we checked. By the time the sirens sounded, warning coastal cities that a direct strike was imminent, we’d resigned ourselves to the fact that we’d…

I am not a morning person, but as I stand on the boulder in the early dawn, my mind is sharp and alert. I am more than awake, concentrating on the vast endlessness below. There is a noticeable lack of early birdsong here; no hiss of offshore wind fanning the waves. The only sound is my breath, heavy after the scramble to the top. It is by no means a difficult climb, but I had to hurry to beat the sun. “If you stand at the top of Kubu Island just before sunrise,” said one of the returning visitors over the embers of a fire the previous evening, “You can see the curvature of the Earth.” He was right. From up here, across the unfathomable distance of the Makgadikgadi Pan,…

Hi darling. It’s me. It’s a quarter to eight so you’re probably out on your walk still. I’m down at Shelleys. Think I managed to get out of the house without waking you. It was pretty early, got the kayak in the water down at Spooks when the stars were still out and by the time the sun rose I was round the Point. Not a breath of wind, heaps of whales, and not a soul around. Hey so, fuck, sweetheart – I’ve been bitten by a blue-ringed octopus. There’s a fair bit of plastic washed up on the beach after that east swell last week, so I just did a lap picking up bottles and stuff. My hands got full pretty quick so I tucked a few bottles under my…

THREE DECADES IN THE DESERT

THREE DECADES IN THE DESERT

If you’ve found this note, I am dead. Figured I’d write this and leave it in my surfboard bag in case anything ever happened to me out in the water. I hoped it’d just sit here for years until I became an old fart, but obviously the big fella upstairs had other plans. If it was a shark that did it… bloody hell ay, hopefully I put up a fight. Please don’t blame the shark. It was only looking for a feed and I was in its backyard. If I knocked meself out on a rock, tell everyone it was a shark that did it. Don’t want anyone thinking I was a kook, heh. Also, maybe buy a Gath. Where to begin? I’m sorry I won’t be around to watch…

He puts the next cigarette in his mouth. It’s dry and stale. The filter sticks to his lip. The plastic lighter flares as he leans in, picking off a few eyebrow hairs. No matter. At ten cigs a week, he doesn’t smoke enough of the things to keep a pack fresh. He sits on a stool in a small cafe facing a busy backstreet shortcut for most of the scooters in Kuta. A motorcade of silky hookers, howling schoolies, pimps, hustlers, ladyboys and families of four all roar past on two wheels. A river of humanity. Mechanised. He watches it all like an adult would watch a roller coaster. Amused. But not in the way that makes you smile. In the way that makes you think of yourself when you…

Seven years ago I found myself looking at a picture frame and imagining a wave curling out of it. I wanted to recreate that sweet anticipation and pumping excitement you feel when you arrive at the beach and the waves are good, with the promise of uninterrupted surfing bliss. The process flowed naturally from there. I started by making custom wooden frames for the base and building the waves into this. After a while, I started using driftwood that I’d collect from a nearby beach as well. When I use driftwood for a sculpture, there is always an inner argument, a negotiation. The imperfection of the wood requires you to adapt to its shape in order to create a wave that looks realistic and harmonious. The driftwood guides everything, from the line of…

Surfing is mine. The car park spot nearest the path to the beach is mine. I’m always first. Occasionally a backpacker’s van might have spent the night. I park in the next spot and make as much noise as possible. They’re in my spot. The cobwebs that wrap around my face along the one-kilometre path are mine. Just after you descend the dune to the beach, on the left by the clear patch in the maram where the turtle laid her eggs three years ago, that’s where I leave my shit. Towel, keys… The footprints in the sand below the high tide line, they’re mine. Sometimes it’s so beautiful at that time in the morning that it makes me cry. Sometimes I paddle out on the first crisp morning of…

It started on a road trip in 2015. I drove from Margaret River to Byron Bay with a handful of friends for a video project called Real Axe. Creed McTaggart, Ellis Ericson, Beau Foster, Toby Cregan and myself spent six weeks driving and surfing our brains out in an ’80s series Landcruiser from west to east. We drove slowly against the rising sun, over the Nullarbor, around the Great Ocean Road and then up the east coast, stopping wherever the surf was good. We were packed into the Landie like sardines with all our filming, camping and surfing gear. We’d roll out our swags and camp wherever we stopped, and then move on again. It remains one of the best things I’ve done in my life and rewarded us with great memories…

THE SPACES IN-BETWEEN

We were just off South Cape when a voice came out of the long-wave radio and announced that Tasmania had closed its borders. Everyone stopped moving. Eyes like plates, jaws dropped to the floor. Coffee mugs suspended mid-flight. The whole catastrophe. Oscar spun the skipper dial right up and the formal vowels of the Coast Guard filled the wheelhouse. Words like “quarantine” and “state of emergency” crackled across the air. We just looked around at one another, eyebrows shooting up so fast they almost knocked out the roof. Used words like “fark” and “farrrrrrk!” We’d been completely out of range for eight days, cleaning up tens of thousands of pieces of dirty plastic from the World Heritage listed beaches of southwest Tassie. That wild little island at the end of…

We’d travelled west to go East – chased a typhoon to the far fringes of the Pacific looking for barrels breaking over river-fed sand. But typhoons are a fickle pursuit, just as likely to send you chasing your tail as they are to deliver the goods. They are unpredictable at best, changing course seemingly on a whim, turning what looks like a sure thing into an indecipherable mess. We spent days searching for a bank that could handle the swell but were ultimately plagued by too much of a good thing. Every day, the typhoon got closer and the swell got bigger, maxing out every setup we checked. By the time the sirens sounded, warning coastal cities that a direct strike was imminent, we’d resigned ourselves to the fact that…

It started with the shock of my father Ken’s death in 1988. Following this, I was handed his paintbrushes and oils one day while visiting my grandparents’ farm where my dad had spent his last days. Ultimately my father’s death lead me to depths of darkness I’d never experienced before, or even perceived could exist. I spiralled into 14 lonely years of depression. I tried to paint my way through it, and it was helping. But then suddenly one morning down in the shed, I had a realisation. The act of painting had become a double-edged sword: on one side, it would temporarily lift me out of the depression, but on the other, whatever was inside of me inevitably came out on the canvas and was a constant reminder of the…

A COSTLY WIPEOUT

It was the winter of ’82. Not a lot sticks out in my mind about that season, except the Pipe Masters contest and the story I’m about to tell. This was the year Michael Ho won the contest wearing a fibreglass cast on his broken wrist, a result of a skateboard run gone awry right before the event. We sat upstairs in the Pipe house watching all day long. During Michael’s heats, his brother Derek and I would signal the sets coming by waving a towel from the balcony. I had done some research into Genghis Khan and his Mongol army for a movie I’d worked on several years earlier and discovered that he was the first military leader to incorporate a signal corps so he could communicate in battle. Our…

A COSTLY WIPEOUT

Hi darling. It’s me. It’s a quarter to eight so you’re probably out on your walk still. I’m down at Shelleys. Think I managed to get out of the house without waking you. It was pretty early, got the kayak in the water down at Spooks when the stars were still out and by the time the sun rose I was round the Point. Not a breath of wind, heaps of whales, and not a soul around. Hey so, fuck, sweetheart – I’ve been bitten by a blue-ringed octopus. There’s a fair bit of plastic washed up on the beach after that east swell last week, so I just did a lap picking up bottles and stuff. My hands got full pretty quick so I tucked a few bottles under…

THE HORSIES LIST OF LEGENDS

George Greenough • Hugh McLeod • John Young • Royce Leu • Christian Reid • Marlton Family • Kurt Avouris • Nick Greally • Esra Aoukal • Shannon Platt • Rex Gillard • Julia White • Gary Saunders • Adrian Peirce • Adrian Peirce • Mick Rudder • Adam Taylor • Simon Connolly • Faye Gray • David Shannon • Yanik Tissera • Steve Cottee • Julia Heasman • Ben Crowe • Paul Newman • Steve Hops • Sandra Ahiquist • Maike Kaufmann • Elly Baker • Elisa Hammond • Jack Berry • Tricia Turner • Alex Brooks • Alex Brooks • Andrew Barr • Richard Kumnick • Carolyn Paten • Warwick Hallett • Brandon Howerton • Morgan Stedman • Jon Blackwood • Tim Jennings • Georgia Lang • Kent…

THE HORSIES LIST OF LEGENDS

Seven years ago I found myself looking at a picture frame and imagining a wave curling out of it. I wanted to recreate that sweet anticipation and pumping excitement you feel when you arrive at the beach and the waves are good, with the promise of uninterrupted surfing bliss. The process flowed naturally from there. I started by making custom wooden frames for the base and building the waves into this. After a while, I started using driftwood that I’d collect from a nearby beach as well. When I use driftwood for a sculpture, there is always an inner argument, a negotiation. The imperfection of the wood requires you to adapt to its shape in order to create a wave that looks realistic and harmonious. The driftwood guides everything, from…

It started on a road trip in 2015. I drove from Margaret River to Byron Bay with a handful of friends for a video project called Real Axe. Creed McTaggart, Ellis Ericson, Beau Foster, Toby Cregan and myself spent six weeks driving and surfing our brains out in an ’80s series Landcruiser from west to east. We drove slowly against the rising sun, over the Nullarbor, around the Great Ocean Road and then up the east coast, stopping wherever the surf was good. We were packed into the Landie like sardines with all our filming, camping and surfing gear. We’d roll out our swags and camp wherever we stopped, and then move on again. It remains one of the best things I’ve done in my life and rewarded us with…

It started with the shock of my father Ken’s death in 1988. Following this, I was handed his paintbrushes and oils one day while visiting my grandparents’ farm where my dad had spent his last days. Ultimately my father’s death lead me to depths of darkness I’d never experienced before, or even perceived could exist. I spiralled into 14 lonely years of depression. I tried to paint my way through it, and it was helping. But then suddenly one morning down in the shed, I had a realisation. The act of painting had become a double-edged sword: on one side, it would temporarily lift me out of the depression, but on the other, whatever was inside of me inevitably came out on the canvas and was a constant reminder of…

A COSTLY WIPEOUT

It was the winter of ’82. Not a lot sticks out in my mind about that season, except the Pipe Masters contest and the story I’m about to tell. This was the year Michael Ho won the contest wearing a fibreglass cast on his broken wrist, a result of a skateboard run gone awry right before the event. We sat upstairs in the Pipe house watching all day long. During Michael’s heats, his brother Derek and I would signal the sets coming by waving a towel from the balcony. I had done some research into Genghis Khan and his Mongol army for a movie I’d worked on several years earlier and discovered that he was the first military leader to incorporate a signal corps so he could communicate in battle.…

A COSTLY WIPEOUT

THE HORSIES LIST OF LEGENDS

George Greenough • Hugh McLeod • John Young • Royce Leu • Christian Reid • Marlton Family • Kurt Avouris • Nick Greally • Esra Aoukal • Shannon Platt • Rex Gillard • Julia White • Gary Saunders • Adrian Peirce • Adrian Peirce • Mick Rudder • Adam Taylor • Simon Connolly • Faye Gray • David Shannon • Yanik Tissera • Steve Cottee • Julia Heasman • Ben Crowe • Paul Newman • Steve Hops • Sandra Ahiquist • Maike Kaufmann • Elly Baker • Elisa Hammond • Jack Berry • Tricia Turner • Alex Brooks • Alex Brooks • Andrew Barr • Richard Kumnick • Carolyn Paten • Warwick Hallett • Brandon Howerton • Morgan Stedman • Jon Blackwood • Tim Jennings • Georgia Lang • Kent…

THE HORSIES LIST OF LEGENDS

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