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.