Getting a job really messed with my surfing!

The time I had during the day for surfing while studying Phys Ed at UWA now no longer existed. It was ‘after work’ and weekends now and that meant I surfed less. Work really is a problem for those who love to surf… What to do?…

My first year of teaching in Wagin saw me surf maybe half a dozen times in total, but returning to Perth the following year allowed me a chance to get back into it. By 23 years old I had acquired the knack of being able to know pretty intuitively just what the waves would be like at Trigg and Scarborough often without a drive down. There was no ‘seabreeze.com’ or surfline to keep us informed. Just the old ‘phone in’ surf report which was out of date as often as it was updated.

Filipino Friends from a Trip to Catanduanes

Also at 23 I convinced two friends to come with me on a surf trip to the Philippines – a little island by the name of Catanduanes. We read about it in a Tracks mag and it looked like absolute paradise. Remote waves in warm water and no crowds… Well two out of three aint bad. We flew to Manila, got a plane to the island and then a 2 1/2 hr jeepney ride up to the town, followed by a trek thru the jungle, before we got to the lookout and saw 20 blokes in the water trying to catch tiny 1ft waves… We were just a bit devastated! We spent the week at Puraran and while the waves did show up for a couple of days, the best surf was probably at Maroubra in NSW, when our flight home got re-routed and we had to stop over in Sydney for half a day. We grabbed our boards and a cab and surfed winter waves in boardies for an hour before getting back on the plane. The lesson was that if you go on an overseas surf trip you need to make sure there are other things than just surfing.

As an interesting note I recently connected on Facebook (30 years later) with one of the small boys in the pic – ‘Genesis’ was 5 then. Now he is 35, surfs, leads a church and runs his own business – a cafe – in Virac Catanduanes. Maybe one day Sam and I will get back there.

The Fun-bus

I have been privileged to work jobs where I can get paid to surf. Its probably as close to ‘going pro’ as I have ever come! But as a youth worker and a Phys ed teacher I regularly ran camps for my kids where we would take off to Lancelin or down south in search of waves.  I owned a 9 seater Nissan Urvan that we packed to the gills and used for down south missions. Those were good days and the waves always seemed to turn it on for us. My favourite class while teaching at Scarborough High was Thursday morning surfing, where the students met me at the beach at 8.30 and we surfed thru to recess time – I still remember thinking ‘And I get paid for this!’

In my early 30’sI took up a job as the youth pastor in a church in Lesmurdie – the hills of Perth. When the they first called and asked me to consider the role I laughed and said ‘God will only ever call me to work in churches within 3km of coastline’. I half meant it. Oddly enough Lesmurdie ‘felt right’, so we moved from the house we had just built in Karrinyup 3 minutes from the beach and perfectly positioned for a lifetime of city surfing… and headed for the hills – 45 minutes from water. That really did feel odd. The Lesmurdie years were a fantastic time, but I could feel like I wasn’t ‘home’.  I would take Thursdays off and inevitably find the car being pulled back to the coastline in search of waves. I still surfed on holidays, but not so much during this 8 years.

As a result I started to become a bit more cautious and careful. Because it was a long time between surfs it took a while for the confidence to return and the courage to come back. I remember well being on holidays in Busselton and going surfing at Indijup carpark. I was 38 years old, it was a sizable day and I got held down by a couple of heavy waves in a row and came up gasping for air. It was a scary experience and while I had been through plenty of ‘hold downs’ in my younger days I was now conscious of my lung capacity declining so I paddled in and began to climb the steps to get out of there.  Half way up the steps I stopped, turned around and paddled back out. I had that realisation that I was letting fear shape me and it wasn’t a pattern I wanted for the rest of my life. I knew some stuff was well beyond my capabilities but I wasn’t going to wimp out of the stuff that I was still capable of. It was a significant decision and one I have made again several times since.

So began the challenge to find my identity as a slightly older surfer – a bit less capable – less fit and less adventurous… but still desperately passionate for the experience of the ocean that comes with surfing.

In year 12 I bought my first brand new board – a 5’ 9” ‘thruster’ by a backyard shaper called Wayne Winchester. In 1981 Simon Anderson changed the landscape of surfing with his 3 fin boards so I wanted to get off the twin fin and into the new thing. The ‘Winnie’ (above with my brother and the twin fin) was my pride and joy and it rode some great waves over its 3 year lifespan. I was starting to head down south by this stage, so the odd 6-8 ft wave got ridden on the chunky little 5’9”. It also got front seat of the car one day ahead of my girlfriend. Not such a savvy move as it would turn out…

Turning 17 and getting a license changed everything. Suddenly Lancelin was ‘just up the road’ and down south became a real option. In year twelve we discovered Edward Island at Lancelin and the left behind the Island. My Mark 1 Cortina did many a trip to Lano punctuated with 3 or 4 stops to refill the radiator. Not surprisingly that car’s engine had a short life and it was sold to a wrecker around 6 months later. From there I moved on to the red Galant that did its fair share of surf trips with a few less issues!

The Galant

We made our first trip south in Easter 1982 and I realised I had entered a new realm of surfing. In that time you could still camp at Indijup Carpark and there were still a number of waves that didn’t get surfed that often. Better days indeed…

I learnt a valuable life lesson on the first trip – and that was to never judge the size of the wave from above. As kids we had heard about the big waves ‘down south’ but had no idea what we were in for. As it turned out there was a sizable swell that weekend and for some bizarre reason we picked North Point as our first port of call. As we watched the waves from the top carpark we got super excited for our first ever surf in this place. It looked amazing and we guessed it to be a fun and manageable 3-4ft, but when we got in the water it turned out to be more like an angry, vicious 6-8ft and well beyond our capabilities. We came in with tail between legs and realised that we were a long way from Trigg… and while we might have been ok surfers in chest high beach breaks, this was a vastly different scenario.

North Point…

My teen years were the ‘push the boundaries’ years as we sought out ‘big waves’ and paddled into stuff I wouldn’t even consider today. That said I was never into the really heavy stuff. It just scared me. I wish it didn’t, but once it hit 6-8ft I was at my limit. The biggest waves I ever rode were at Southsides at Margaret River – around 8ft – or maybe that’s just what I remember… ha… While big waves weren’t my thing, a 3-4ft day at Indijup Carpark with a couple of mates was as close to heaven as I could imagine.

Indijup Carpark

In those teen years there were many, many surf trips with friends, sleeping rough, eating rough and trying to live up the image we had of ourselves (albeit poorly) as ‘surfers’. I remember well sleeping a Friday night in a half built house in Lancelin and being woken by the tilers in the morning because they wanted to start work… I guess you do those things when you’re a teenager…

My best surfing memory of that era was a solo surf at Hole in the Wall up at Lancelin – a 45 minute paddle from shore – but a magic wave on the right day.  On a 38 degree day I drove up from home and paddled out on my own. (Nope – I didn’t and still don’t worry about sharks) There were perfect 3-4 ft waves and I had to myself for 4 hours, before the muesli bars I had stashed up my wetsuit sleeves ran out, the seabreeze arrived and I had to come in for food.

In those days I was a surfer and a basketballer. I was a much better basketballer than surfer, but somehow surfing grabbed my heart more than basketball which is probably why I have never stopped surfing, whereas basketball ended just before I turned 40. As any surfer will tell you, there is a spiritual element to being in the water and something mesmerising about riding waves that is very different to a competitive team sport. In Breath, Tim Winton describes how Pikelet felt watching surfing for the first time : ‘“How strange it was to see men do something beautiful. Something pointless and elegant, as though nobody saw or cared.”

Of course we all cared that someone ‘saw us’, because we all wanted to be good surfers – to be noticed. In those early years surfing was largely about the thrill of pushing yourself into new spaces, of growing in courage and conquering fear. It was also about being part of a subculture and seeking to live up to the image we had of ourselves. That bit is not so inspiring but it was a reality – and still is for many – fitting the image… As the years have gone on the ‘courage’ aspect has faded, as has the need to be a ‘surfer’ while the ‘one with nature’ aspect now plays far more strongly.

In that time of life I only went to the beach when there were ridable waves. I wasn’t into the ocean for its own beauty, and I never went ‘swimming’ or just hung out at the beach. If I wasn’t catching a wave I was doing something else. The ocean was a wave machine and not much else.

That I had come to love surfing was something of a miracle anyway. Having immigrated from Ireland, I grew up with a dad who didn’t surf and had little interest in surfing. I also grew up not learning to swim until late primary school and I only discovered the beach when we came to Australia in 1974.  Irish beaches were hardly inspiring and it was rarely warm enough to get wet anyway. Unlike my son Sam who has been to Exmouth, down south, Bali and done a whole lap of Australia I thought myself fortunate if I scored the occasional morning at Ocean Beach Denmark while on holidays. Other than that my surfing was kept to the local beachies in rain, hail or shine. Until I got a car my breadth of experience was very limited.

That said I do remember at 12 years old convincing mum and dad that Margaret River was the place to surf and that they should let me surf there. I had read about this place in surfing magazines and wanted to go.  I had little idea of what I was in for. With my first ‘real board’ I paddled out into a solid 6ft MR Rivermouth beach break with a piece of rope tied to my leg as a leggie. There was no one else surfing – in fact no one else anywhere on the beach, as it was a massive, chaotic day. Fortunately I got pummelled and pushed back in by the whitewater before I could make any headway,  because had I got beyond the break I doubt I would have known how to catch a wave, let alone how to get back in. Neither they nor I had any clue just how dangerous the ocean was at that point.

But that is one thing I have learnt – respect the ocean… or be prepared to suffer the consequences.

Lately I’ve been reflecting on the various threads that weave together to form a life and I have realised that surfing and ‘the ocean’ have been a massive thread in my own 53 years on this planet, so I thought I’d write a collection of thoughts around that theme and see where it goes. I’m not sure what will come out of it, but I’m curious about the significance these things have in my life, so if you love either then read on…

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​I never really got into stamp collecting. I tried…

It was one of the things I did as a kid trying to find some ‘hobbies’. Apparently it was important to have ‘hobbies’. But stamps?… Nah… they just lacked the kinda energy I was seeking. The thrill factor was rather low even for a 10 year old… They were on a par with ‘pen-friends’.

But then suddenly surfing ‘happened’ when I was 11.

Well… when I say ‘surfing’, it began with a cheapo body board that I rode to shore on the Trigg beach white water. Instantly I knew that I loved the sensaton that came with riding something in the ocean. The body board thing lasted a few weeks before I graduated to a ‘GT foamie’ – a ‘coolite’ style board that I could actually stand on. It was an almost rectangular lump of foam with no hydrodynamic qualities at all aside from floatation. Apart from excruciating nipple rash the GT was a great starter and like many kids in the 70’s I rode that thing until my chest bled and my stomach was raw.

That Christmas I was given a new foamie – a ‘Little Ripper’, and it actually looked more like a real surfboard than the GT whose only real attribute was stability.

I took the Little Ripper to the beach on Christmas Day and snapped it on the first wave. That moulded polystyrene fin was a design flaw for a kid who was riding everything to the sand. As an 11 year old I was utterly devastated. So, I went back to the old GT until such time as I could score myself a real fibreglass board. That didn’t look like happening any time soon as mum and dad weren’t keen on me graduating to a new level of surfing. Fair enough seeing as how I had barely mastered the whitewash.

At 11 I wasn’t allowed to go the beach alone, but no one said I wasn’t allowed to go to surf shops buy a ‘real’ fibreglass board…  Back then surf shops actually sold surfboards…. No kidding…

The old Blaxell’s surf factory/shop was just down the road in Osborne Park and I would often cycle there with my mates and fondle the second hand boards, hoping… wishing… that firstly I could afford one and then secondly be allowed to use it.

Then unexpectedly my moment arrived.

Mum took off on a trip back to Ireland and dad was left ‘in charge’. I had seen a ‘bargain’ at Blaxell’s… Someone had snapped a massive mal and Tom had somehow morphed it into what where actually two kneeboards, (although I wanted to believe they were surfboards). For $15 each my mate and I bought a half each and we thought we had won the lottery!

It was about the same size as the GT, but made of fibreglass – a real board – and I could afford it. Those were its only endearing qualities. It was a total pig.

There was no consultation with dad – I just bought it and brought it home – this mutant lump of fibreglass, foam and resin that I was soon to realise was completely useless. I tried riding it once down at Trigg, but the only wax we had were a few old candles and I discovered quickly that they weren’t going to be adequate. The board had no shape and precious little flotation or maybe I was just a newbie with no clue. Probably a bit of both…

That board got locked in the shed for a few more weeks until I traded it for another equally mutant lump of fibreglass that was 6’ 4’’ and looked a tiny bit more like an actual surfboard. It had only been snapped once and despite its many dings it still floated. $25 well spent… I felt kinda proud of that first real board and by 12 years old I was harassing dad for rides to the beach at every opportunity. These were given in exchange for weeding or picking up leaves in the front yard – no wonder I developed a passionate dislike for gardening… while I was weeding the offshore was turning to onshore…

(Scarborough Beach Front 1975 – not sure whose photo this is)

That board lasted 6 months before it snapped and I dumped in the bin on the beach and rode home. Then Christmas came and it was time to get a better board… I was a real surfer now. I was reading surfing mags, wearing Golden Breed t shirts and talking surf lingo with the blokes at school. I cycled thru a few old single fins in this phase, before splurging on a 5’ 10’’ twin fin that saw me thru most of high school.

By year 9 I had made a surfboard trolley in metalwork which meant I was now mobile and able to make my own way to the beach. 5.00am starts on a Saturday morning were normal with 3 surfs the regime before heading back up the Scarborough Beach Rd hill on the treadly with the assistance of the sea breeze. Sometimes I’d go with mates, but often I was on my own. The bug had bitten and I was hooked.

Trigg Point in 1975 – Oceans Surf Contest (from www.surfingdownsouth.com.au)

Those were the days when we rode Trigg Point regularly and even got waves… The crowds were still there, but nothing like today. I remember some amazing days at The Point, but equally the whole stretch of coast from Scarborough to Trigg was our playground and occasionally you could find great waves when the sandbanks played nice. Attending a school where the bottom sports oval overlooked the ocean meant that we always knew when there was swell and offshores, so I may have spent more than the occasional school day down at the beach… In fact my dad’s decision to push me into Mrs Partridge’s Year 11 Business Studies class which was held during the last two periods of a Friday was probably the reason I improved quickly at surfing. (I even passed business studies…)

To be continued…