Step on the Gas (WA transmission #3)

"How big's your biggest board mate?"

"Um, 6'2"

"OK, I'm bringing down my entire quiver, so there's a bigger board for you and we've got some spares, we should be on for Grunters or big Gas"

"Right-oh...."

Now I know for a fact that Krede has a few 6'6" and 6'8" semi guns in his rack, plus a few boards that are 7' plus for when North Point is breaking (the sort with tails so pointy that it looks like somebody made a mistake at the factory and put fin plugs in the nose). I want nothing to do with this, but keep quiet.

Grunters is a wave that breaks a fair way out and moves ALOT of water, the thing is pretty much backless. It looks ok from the top of the bluff, even kind of friendly, but by the time you've paddled out and have to duckdive through one you realise just how heavy it is and just how much you've underestimated it. It's the full board-breaker.

Gas is an identikit version of it's near neighbour The Box, 2km to the north. It comes out of deep water and hits a shallow shelf, drawing water off the reef in front of it. Below head high the wave pretty much trips over itself and the curve of the face is so concentrated that it's only really rideable by our lie-down cousins on their squishies, and over head high it gets intimidating. To make this wave you have to take off behind the peak and run through the barrel; taking off on the peak or out on the shoulder seem like an easier option until you find yourself being pitched outwards and downwards headfirst with force towards the shallows. Like I said, intimidating.

Thankfully, this day didn't quite live up to the hype - the swell had a bit too much south in it and wasn't wrapping onto the coast properly so I was spared a paddle out at Grunters, and Gas was in the "manageable" overhead range. So there I was sat out at Gas taking the odd wave and not messing up too bad, a few of the locals sat a bit further out waiting for the bigger sets, and I take a look around me. I'm surrounded by 12 year olds. All of a sudden I don't feel like I'm ruling it quite so much as I watch a tiny blonde kid spin around super late and, after 3 paddles, air drop into a wave that is enormous in comparison to all 4ft of him. He disappears from view as the lip pitches out, only to hop over the back way off down the line with poise and style way beyond his years. Keep your eyes out for a kid called Jack Robinson, that boy is going places. Me? I pretty much rode my next wave all the way in, got out and walked up the beach.

Top: A sunset drainer coming through at Gas Reef, Gnarabup, WA, with just one lucky guy left out there.

Second from top: Inside Grunters. It looks nice huh? It ain't.

Third from top: Dino Adrian getting all Larry Layback on the end-section at Karates, Gracetown, WA.

Bottom: Study this one carefully kids. This is how to come off the top, a textbook demonstration by Scott Jardine-Hargraves at Karates.

WA transmission #2

A week later than advertised thanks to time zone changes, international flights and a 3 metre swell. It's been good to be back though; sunshine and more than a little bit of oomph behind the waves are just a couple of reasons why this all too short trip was a full box ticker.

These images are all archival ones from when I lived out here back in 2005 and 2006 - I got a load of films back from the lab this morning but give me a week to digitize them and sort the wheat from the chaff. On initial inspection there's a few keepers in amongst them, including an absolute drainer coming through at Gas Reef and some good action shots of my mates Mick and Scooter alongside Deano Adrian attacking lips Down South. Check back soon hey.

Until then, from the top on down:

The way home from work; Wise Winery, Eagle Bay, Dunsborough.

Rottnest Island, home to the funny little half rat/half kangaroo like Quokka, and some heaving slabs if you can get your mitts on a boat or ski.

"Every year Scarborough steals a load of our sand and calls it a surf spot..." Mick Jardine taking it home for Trigg Point Boardriders in the 2006 WA Surf League.

Karri trees, Boranup Forest, Margaret River.

Way out West

Back to the programme. I'm meant to be throwing up surf and travel photos and it's been a few weeks since a photo of a wave made it on here, so time to change all that. I landed in Perth, West Australia a couple of nights ago, just in time for the wedding of some good friends of mine (congratulations Anna and Mick, it was a beautiful day) and now I've got a week to catch some waves and spend time with friends.

The West coast of Australia is big and remote, edged with ancient limestone reefs and long beaches. Big storms from the roaring forties send swells spinning off up this coast on their way to Indonesia, and the waves that break here as thy drag up the coast are some of the rawest and most powerful on the planet. Pretty humbling and the joint breeds a certain type of understated hard charging surfer, comfortable and competent in just about anything aquatic.

So far, a few days in I've had a few surfs at Trigg Point in Perth, possibly one of the most crowded metropolitan waves anywhere but managed to snag a few thanks to the generosity of the ruling TPB boys. I couldn't buy a wave this morning but, just spent a few hours banging elbows with crew. But Down South is where it's at, and where I'm aiming for.....a few missions planned and a 3 meter swell is forecast for next weekend which is pleasantly intimidating.

The only problem being that one of my camera lenses in in two bits post-wedding (it looks like I tried to drop kick the thing, pretty upsetting) so I'm going to be standing a long way back with a telephoto lens for the next week, and my new board is lost in transit somewhere on it's way over from the Goldie. I'll do my best to get some shots in between, before and after surfs, and I'll try to find a computer and update you all next Sunday, let you know just how that swell pans out.

The top image is from 3 Bears, just underneath Cape Naturaliste and is a rare boiling right running off Mama's. As the name would suggest, this stretch of reef has three waves of varying size; Baby's, Mama's and Papa's.

The shot below is by Perth photog Mike Maxted and is of my friend Ryan Thomas on what's being hyped as one of the best days at Trigg Point in the past decade, just a couple of weeks ago. Off the top of the point and eyeing up the mental slalom course coming his way. I told you this place gets crowded...

Moving on...

Moving house is not a task that that I particularly enjoy. Which is ironic, because I would estimate (conservatively) that in the past 9 years I haven't lived in one place for any more than 9 months. Of that, the last 6 years the maximum amount of time that I have spent residing in any one dwelling is 6 months; which means that by now I am pretty good at this moving house business. I feel a bit like a snail. So I have spent this weekend packing up my life once again and shifting it someplace else, leaving behind one of the most astoundingly beautiful views on the Cornish coast. Here's a rough image of the view out of my window these past 6 months, certainly one of the things that I'll miss alongside being able to step onto the sand and paddle out from the bottom of our garden. You know what they say though....."a change is as good as a holiday" and anyways, regularly changing your view keeps life interesting.




Top Image: A shearers cottage that I lived in whilst working on a big sheep station on the South
Island of New Zealand in 2007.

Bottom Image: An unfortunately dusty and scratched negative scan of the view from the smug lounge window of Wavecrest, New Polzeath, Cornwall. Winter 2010.

Who Saw Who

Music from Wales....not the eerie underwater whines of a giant leviathan, but the solid and prolific output of "The Land of my Fathers"...they love music almost as much as rugby and daffodils on the other side of the Severn.
For a small nation, Wales churns out a disproportionate number of top rate musicians, singers and bands like Harry Secombe, Aled Jones, and now, Who Saw Who.

Rising from the ruins of The Winchester 4, the Brothers Williams are now flanked by ripping singer Lucy Winter and new drummer Danny Shaw, and they've spent the winter snowed in at a recording studio in the depths of Wales. The result is a new 4-track EP which is available for free download here although for those of you who like me enjoy holding an actual for real hard copy CD, the boys assure me it's being mastered and sent to the printers imminently.
So if you're partial to your rock music spiked with jagged indie vocals and duets, thumping rhythm and stoccato riffs, check 'em. It's like being punched on the ear by an angel. Hard.

All aboard the good ship Drift

It must be a slow news week in the surf media, as the good people over at the European edition of Drift online surf magazine have decided to run a piece on my portfolio.

They've also asked me to step aboard as a regular contributor. I tried my best to play it cool but pretty much bit their hand off in accepting, so I'll be patching together some feature pieces, photo essays and interviews for them over the coming months. I've been a big fan of Drift for a good while now, their refreshing perspective on surf culture is firmly to the left of centre and encompasses the travel, art, board design and environmental aspects of this lifestyle of ours, and I'm super stoked to be joining the ranks alongside some full surfing luminaries.

So if you don't mind my opinions and crummy photos, you'll soon be able to get a double dose.

Subscription's free, you just sign up to the newsletter. There's not a single reason not to.

Jump straight to the article here.

Or hit the European Edition or North American Editions by clicking through.

I hope you dig it as much as I do.

The End of the Line

“Turn your television on right this second!”
I tend to take my Dads advice, he’s generally pretty spot-on. I also tend to not watch very much TV, except for in this instance. End of the Line had its terrestrial premiere last night on Channel 4 and it was an eye opener – a documentary heralded as “An Inconvenient Truth for the oceans” it shines a light on the plight of our marine environment and just what we are doing to it. Destroying it.
If humans continue pulling fish out of the oceans for consumption at our current rates, BY 2048 THERE WILL BE NOTHING LEFT bar plankton, algae and worms. 1.2 billion humans on this planet depend on fish as the key source of protein in their diets, and furthermore in terms of not only impact upon humans, fish poo has been shown to actively absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. No more fish=no more fish poo=more CO2 and accelerated global warming and ocean acidification. These kinds of facts scare me.
Humanities current capacity for fishing far exceeds the amount of fish in the oceans. Four fold. Some more scary facts: Illegal fishing is worth $50 billion per year effectively making every other fish on your plate stolen, and of all the fish caught every year, approximately 7 billion tons (1/10 of the total world catch) goes back overboard dead because it’s by-catch. Harvesting wild fish from our oceans has become a highly industrialised, military-esque operation, hunting down every fish in the ocean until there are none left. Annually, the number of long lines laid could circle the planet 550 times, whilst the mouth of the largest purse seiner net would easily accommodate 13 747’s. It’s not really a fair fight. Many fish stocks, such as Atlantic Cod, have crashed beyond retrieval whilst others like Blue Fin Tuna are critically endangered. That doesn’t stop them showing up on menus, but can you imagine the out cry if a restaurant advertised Orang-utan steaks or fillet of White Rhino? It’s really no different.
There are solutions however, which if pressed into mass action could push that ominous 2048 date back a bit: Only buy sustainably sourced seafood bearing the Marine Stewardship Council mark or that caught in Alaska, one of the most sensitively and well managed fisheries out there. Don’t buy farmed fish because it’s a bag of crap; it takes 5kg of “other” fish to produce 1kg of salmon. That just doesn’t add up.
Pressure politicians to listen to fisheries scientists when setting catch limits; or better still to push for the creation of marine protected areas. If all of the money spent on subsidising the fishing industry was redirected to maintaining marine protected areas then they would be protecting 30% of the worlds’ oceans rather than the current 0.6%.
I’m not saying stop eating fish, perhaps just go about it in a different way, armed with a bit of knowledge and some realistic facts. I plan on catching a lot of what I eat this summer, and when I do buy fish, checking the source. I urge you to do the same.

http://www.endoftheline.com/film

Photography: Various shots from Tsukiji fish market, Tokyo Japan. This is the largest fish market on the planet and the venue for the infamous Tuna Auctions. I hit the place at 5am to get a realistic view of what goes down there.
Below that, Blue Basque boats in the harbour at Mundaka, Northern Spain, and some rusty old trawlers at dock in Portland, Victoria, Australia.