More remote beauty

Just back after a couple of days doing six star camping on an unspoiled stretch of coast. Some pics below of me and my girls enjoying glorious winter weather.

No swell, but beautiful beaches with no-one around

Cold water but so very wonderful

I don't mind surfer girls (yeah, yeah - surfer girls)

First wave on the birthday surfboard

No fear - well done

Just the another of many heavy nose dives I hope

Who's in charge here? Not the humans! (First weekend away with our new dog, Jet)

Back from warmer climes (1)

We are back after two weeks away in warmer weather. Here are some initial pictures of surfing action with Annabeth. Next post will tell a more detailed story.

Annabeth and I locked in a nice point wave.

 Working on our yoga moves

Our latest obsession: the coffin ride

One foot! Now that's just showing off

Maybe the last wave of the holidays. Just perfect

The Queen helped me get my surfing mojo back

The Queen's Birthday long weekend saw us spend three blissful days at the beach. I'll let the photos do the taking.


Just one brief reflection: finally, after snapping a surf board and getting washing through rocks and generally feeling like an old kook, I think I got my surfing mojo back. Happened at lunch time on the second day when I shared some nice 4 to 5 foot waves with a young fellow on a boogie board at one of the points near our favourite beach. Great to surf - really surf - again. Big drops; long bottom turns; re-entries and cut backs. Unreal!

 The view from our cabin on the beach at dawn on the first day

Where I surfed early on the first day - small, intense reef

Hermoine, nature lover with rainbow lorikeets on the the verandah of the cabin

Annabeth, nature lover

Rock ledge surfing deep inside remote location. Wild, beautiful and a little dangerous (not for me anymore!)

Big wave, shallow water, local guy charging

We are spoilt rotten with clean water, untouched forest and great waves just a couple of hours from home!

Late afternoon. Remote headland. Stunning

So far, this is my all time favourite photo of Annabeth surfing. After she got this one she said, 'I was steering the board!' She looks hooked and stoked. (I remember this feeling at her age.)

And Hermoine is well on the way to getting that same stoke - look at her face as we catch a wave together.

Togetherness - me and my girls sharing some wonderful times together

Sunrise on the last day. This is almost perfect: winter, before dawn, offshore winter, four foot waves and no one around. My idea of pure bliss

Surfing literature - is there such a thing

I don't really think that surfing and surf culture has been particularly well captured in fiction writing.

Not that I have really, really looked hard to find good surfing writing. If you know of stuff beyond what I am going to suggest below, please tell me via the Comments function.

Dogs of Winter by Kem Nunn is very good in parts. According to Amazon.com:

In The Dogs of Winter, Nunn draws again on the eternal legends and tall tales of surfers. Jack Fletcher is a pill-popping photographer on the skids who lucks into the assignment of photographing the aging surfing legend Drew Harmon and two young pros at the Heart Attacks in Northern California--an appropriately difficult-to-reach and shark-infested "mysto spot" reputed to have 30-foot waves. Not all dangers lurk in the ocean, however. The local Indians are unfriendly to outsiders and to each other; Harmon's young wife is obsessed with Indian witchcraft and a murdered local girl; and Harmon cloaks his own demons in laconic surfer-deity mystique. The hapless Fletcher and a local tribal council worker named Travis McCade desperately try to avert the curl of disaster that builds and breaks in this heavily atmospheric novel.




The descriptions of the coast in Northern California, just on the border with Oregon, made me want to drop everything and go there. A good story, that is of course more than just surfing. But the surfing is epic. Cold water, huge waves, great white sharks. Not the California imaged in the Gidget movies, that's for sure.

But my current favourite, and winner of the 2009 Miles Franklin Award for Australian Fiction, is Breath by Tim Winton.

Boy, what to say about this book ...

It is so very moving and probably like no other writing I have ever read captures some of the essence and experience of surfing.

I will not try to summarise the ploy, explain the characters or ponder on what the book might mean to me or anyone else.

If you surf, or you are interested in surfing, or just want to read an exceptional piece of real Australian literature (with a capital L) I could not recommend a better book.

One of the odd things I noticed after reading Breath was that you could view a video trailer on the web. This is below - not just how I feel about this approach to promoting books, but interesting all the same.

Sadly, the only real photo of me surfing

Like most surfers I have almost no photos of me surfing. This really is the only one that I have.
A very good friend took it with a 600 mm lens off the beach on the mid-north coast of NSW.

I love the spray. Beautiful photo. (Oh, and it was taken 10 years ago so I don't look or surf like this any more).

Surf music: does it exist?

Recently I came across a new Australian band made up by three members of Midnight Oil and the bass player from the Violent Femmes. The bank is called The Break and bill themselves as surf music.


The single off their first album is called Cylinders; the Youtube clip below. It has some pretty good surfing footage, but it also shows the band playing (including an happy looking Rob Hurst playing the drums with great joy).   




But this begs the question: what - if anything - is surf music? I suppose it depends the era you grow up in. When I was in my teens it was all Midnight Oil, B52s, the Clash etc. And the style of surfing seemed to mirror this aggressive, rock music.


One of my favourite recent music clips is Diamonds on the Inside by Ben Harper. The clip below is mostly filmed around Byron and Lennox. It reflects a more mellow, soul surfing vibe.


What about you? What is surf music to you? Post a comment below to let us all know!

The sea was angry that day (or: "I'm too old for this!")

One of the extreme benefits of the internet is the ability to track weather to predict surf. In the past, we tragic surfies would turn into the Channel Ten news and try to make sense of the evening weather report, or try to interpret the synoptic charts in the back on the newspaper.


But now with sites like Swellnet and Coastalwatch we Australian surfers can get pretty accurate (although not perfect) surf forecasts up to seven days in advance. (This helps when you are trying to juggle family and work responsibilities).


We it was with great interest that I watched the surf forecast play out for a recent weekend. A full five days out I knew with some certainty the waves would be overhead. My plan was set: be a good drone at work; a dutiful father and husband during the week; so ALL the clothes washing and sweep ALL floors and bang the rugs ... and Sunday would be mine.


On Saturday I tried to encourage a couple of friends to join me. By then the forecast was for winds up to 55 knots and 6 metre seas/ 2 meter swells.  One friend said to me via text: 'Are you deranged? Have you seen the weather forecast?' I simply replied: 'Yes - to both answers. We are taking an EPIRB so we should be okay.'


At least one Australian surf site on the web is now calling this day 'Super Sunday.' Epic waves up and down the coast. Below are a couple of photos I took.

The view that greeted us on arrival  

My kind of day: big waves and grey-on-grey sky and sea

Cranking - about eight feet

Love the colour on this one - big, mean and beautiful

A nice picture of me - looking happy to be at the beach on a wild day 

But it all ended badly for me, I'm afraid. After not finding anywhere really holding the swell, I find some great but huge waves at about lunch time. A reef. Breaking in front of some rocks. With a narrow pass between the rocks to get out. Big ... maybe 8 foot breaking top to bottom.


Well, I got out surprisingly easy. Watch some awesome, stylish surfing by the locals on some majestic waves. Paddled for one. Got about half way down the face. Fell awkwardly and hit my face on something. Held down ... and could not get up. Starting to think,'I've only got 8 seconds of air left.' Popped up and tried to breathe but got a mouthful of foam. Another big wave on the head. Washed through the rocks. In safely, but sore a bit shaken and bleeding from the mouth. 

Mmmm. I am too old for this type of surfing. Either that or I got to rebuild my strength and confidence. For the time being I am in the market for a longboard and sticking to two foot break breaks.

Coming home into the sunset - blissful.

The day my board broke (again)

A couple of weekends ago we had an eventful trip to the coast. We left early (5.00 am). It is autumn so it was rather dark and cold - just the way I like it! My kids, Hermione (left) and Annabeth (right; nicknamed after Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series characters, respectively) where toasty warm in the back of the car.

When we got to the surf it was huge - at my favourite spot - a reef out the front of a rock platform - it was eight foot set, easy. I had to go out!


I thought I might sit in the channel and watch, but when I saw the waves pouring across the reef, I knew i had to get one.

I managed to get just two waves. Pretty good considering this was my first time back in the water after about three years away. On my second wave I fell and had to deal with with heavy white water. When I came up after one pounding, my board was snapped.

Less dramatic than it actually was. I had in fact snapped the board at the same surf spot about four years ago in very similar conditions. That time I thought I was going to drown. My board had been repaired but probably had a weakness that failed on this day. Coming in I got caught in a rip and had terrible cramps in both legs. Hermoine was in tears when I reached the shore. I thought she was concerned about me. No - the sea had taken her favourite underwear!

We went to the point just north and were treated to some tow in surfing action - first time I had seen this in the flesh. Amazing. Two skis and two riders getting some of the biggest tubes I have ever seen.

Check the guy in the shot below and: a. just how big this wave is compared to him, and b. how close he is to the rocks. Moments later he nose-dived and got hit by the lip. Ouch!

Some other tow-in surfing at a spot very close by can be seen in the YouTube clip below - incredible:

What I am trying to do ....

... document my regular trips to 'the coast' where I go surfing with family (especially my two daughters), friends and others we meet on the way.But first, some things I've seen recently you might like ...


Rio Breaks
Interesting documentary about kids from the slums above Rio in Brazil. The trailer (below) is amazing.





Patagonia wetsuits
The future of high-quality wetsuits. We saw them at the only Patagonia shop in Australia during a recent visit to Torquay. The highlight of these wetsuits is the wool lining. Amazing.