Happy days.. off for two weeks to the south coast of New South Wales and the little town of Broulee, just south of Bateman's Bay. Hopefully I'll have lots of pics of sunny days, offshores and fun waves for me to share with the family, and you, when we return. With half a chance I'll post while away but if not, have a Happy New Year.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

It comes to the end of the year and a fun couple of months playing with Safe to Sea.

To the precious few of you who have shared my thoughts, and given me feedback, many thanks, and Merry Christmas.

Attached is the card we sent to friends this year, and I include you amongst them. You'll see my darling Sue (She who must be Obeyed), 14 year old Joey, and little Tom, and a few of the things that have entertained or diverted us over the past year.

Take care everyone, be safe and enjoy the coming few days.

HAVING A DIG

When I was 4 years old my love affair with the surf began. As I was walking out the front gate of our house with my dad a white station wagon drove past loaded with what I thought looked like jets.

"What are those Dad?"

"Surfboards, little mate"

Whatever they were, I thought to myself, I want a bit of that.

Not long after, as this was 1959, I saw the first images of Waimea, in the paper and on the telly, and I looked on, as everyone, did, in awe at the madness and bravery of those big wave pioneers.

I also made a promise to myself to do that one day.

The barriers were many.

I lived in near waveless Adelaide, but did live near the beach, so was blessed with early familiarity with the water. There I taught myself to swim, and even invented my own version of underwater rock running as I didn't have fins. On busy beach days, I'd dive to the bottom, and, as I was little, I'd pick up a rock and run around everyone's legs.

We moved to another waveless city, Melbourne, when I was ten, but luckily, we lived across the road from Port Phillip Bay, which had 3 foot wind chop if a southerly hit 50 knots, so there I learned to body, and later board surf (once I'd earned enough to buy my first board at 15).

I also paddled, dove, spearfished and generally gained a lot of water skills without really realising it.

Around that time neighbours moved in who did surf, and the eldest of them had a drivers licence.

Nirvana.

I could finally get to the coast on weekends. Real swells were a revelation, but I was always doomed to be a weekend surfer. When I hit it, I hit it big time and made the most of the little time I had.

Once I got my own licence it was on for young and old, and began searching waves up and down the Victorian coast.
It's a coastline not short of swell and I was able, in a shortish amount of time, to get access to bigger and bigger waves so that, by the time I was 19 or 20, I'd surfed waves of up to maybe 12ft at Bells, Winki, Cape Schanck and began venturing tentatively "down south".

At 24 I went to France, Spain and Portugal, scored epic waves, and had a short taste of Hawaii on the way home. I'd had a taste, and wanted to go back.

It took another ten years, with trips to Morocco, Europe again, and Indonesia before I returned to the North Shore for a five week hit, with my wife Sue, in 1988.

I'll put my hand up right now and say I survived it more than performed, and I've fond memories of being plastered all over the bottom at Haleiwa at close out size with Avalanche rolling through to the Haleiwa peak, nearly getting knocked out as the lip drove me into my board attempting a late take off at 8 foot Jocko's, getting dragged what seemed like the whole distance from outside Sunset to Val's reef, underwater, snapping my favourite board at Gaschambers, and generally getting pasting after pasting with just enough good waves mixed in with the beltings to keep me coming back for more.

But one thing has and will forever rest in my Alzheimer's addled brain when the days to reflect on times past comes.

I surfed Waimea not once, not twice, but thrice on that trip, and even had the honour of being shown the lineup by none other than Keone Downing and James Jones after I paddled straight past them on my first surf out there, sat inside the boil, got totally launched, smacked, and belted and paddled back for more. They called me over, we got chatting, and they told me where to sit.

Making my first wave out there was bliss, but the highlight was a few days later, with the swell over 20', when I was dropped in on by Ken Bradshaw. I made it, Ken glared at me, and I've had a smile about that wave for the last eighteen years.
I managed another trip a couple of years later, had a couple more surfs out there, generally started to feel more comfortable, and then the kids arrived.

Haven't been back since, but I still like to have a dig, still get belted, still love what I see when the waves shake the water.

Have a dig, everyone. It's worth the memories.















Waimea, just before paddling out on one of those sessions..1988

AT LAST

Finally, after two weeks of working 12-16 hour days, plus moving house, hanging pictures, and just dealing with it all I managed to get a window. Off with Richie again, only to break down on the way. Almost gave it away but found the problem and after losing an hour, made it to Magics, again, just on the change of tide. No one out and a beautiful, fast, hollow right at 3-4 with the odd bigger one. Snuck off a shot, and hit it. First wave I realized it was one of those rare sessions when my body actually worked.

It all flowed. Snaps, cutties, 3 quick barrels, tons of fun. The board went where my old fart abilities willed it and and since it was my 6'3" fishy thing it was all at speed. Flopped off the board, lolled around, not a hassle in the world. I just hope it's not another 6 months before it all connects again.

What makes me laugh is that a session like that can happen when everything is fighting against it. Not in the water for 2 weeks and glowing under a cathode glow for most of the time. Can anyone work that out?

So here's this week's surf piccie. The fog is not fog, it's smoke. Half the state is on fire as I write this, it was 40C today (about 106F) and a scorcher.

We passed one fire driving back, the poor bloody firefighters were hard at it, and because of the conditions in SE Australia they're forecasting the fire may burn for months.

I hope they got a break at some stage and, if they were so inclined, managed to snag a wave.

RATS!!

Moving house over the past week or so, working flat stick and no chance to get near a wave, not a chance in hell. Today I thought maybe I'll get a little window of opportunity. But nooooo, "darling let's hang the pictures."
Just to torture myself, I check the waves on the net...

Like I said, RATS!!

About fifteen years ago I saw a news report on the famine that hit Eritrea in north east Africa. That night I had a very vivid dream that I just had to commit to a very short story. For the sake of getting something online this week, I thought I'd share it. It's kinda raw, and I'll probably regret putting it up, but here goes anyway.



SHE WAS

She was the most beautiful woman in the world, although she didn’t know it.

I first saw her when I was working in the Horn of the Continent. She lived in a small village, with her new family (a baby son and a husband) trying with some success to live and be happy. Her husband was a herdsman, as most husbands were, and farmed a little, as most husbands did, and she, God bless her, did her best to be a good wife, by pounding the grain, or baking the bread or looking after the joy of her young life.

She was sixteen years old and early into the second year of her marriage.

Her name was Ichka.

I didn’t see her for some months and I’m sure she didn’t miss me, as she didn’t really know me. I was just another white man working for the local Red Cross. We’d never spoken and it was unlikely we would.

You see, it was not as though I’d fallen in love, or even lust, which would have been forgivable given the rather chaste circumstances of an aide worker in the aptly named Horn of the Continent. More, I simply fell deeply in admiration for the pure grace of her life.

The troubles came quickly.

The cause seems irrelevant now. The leaders of two countries that didn’t really feature in the greater scheme of things began to feel they needed to show some muscle. The superpowers, always ready to capitalise on an opportunity to gain territory or to score points, were quickly into the fray, supporting opposite sides and letting another witless pair of dictators begin to starve their people into oblivion.

There was no drought, it was a wet year and the crops should have been good. There was plenty of fodder and for the first time in some long years there was an opportunity for this lean race of people to grow fat, and so it should have been. But, the war came, forcing them away in their thousands to try to keep themselves and their beloved children alive.

They have a strange way of burial in this part of the world.

The soil is hard, and wood scarce, but they painstakingly fashion a coffin of the finest timber available. This out of respect for the deceased. Its shape is like a barrel cut diagonally across its axis to form a base and a lid. The body is placed in a sitting position, the higher side of the diagonal cut acting as a backrest, to keep the body upright for the necessary viewing by relatives at the funeral. The grave itself is like a large posthole, and about a foot deeper than the coffin is high. A gravestone is positioned after the funeral and a memento of the deceased is often attached. Funny little graves, if graves were ever funny.

I’d been away for a couple of months, trying to organise supply lines around the war. I wasn’t the only one and I know I wasn’t the best. My manner was never the most diplomatic and when it came to dealing with a petty official who was enjoying having some hundreds of thousands of lives hanging on the stroke of his pen, well, my manner was even worse. Thankfully there were others more suited to shaking such people out of their complacency, and due to the efforts of them we were about, we hoped, to receive shipments of rice, or wheat to relieve the famine.

Approaching the camp, my first impression was “where is it?” because all I could see was a few tents flapping in the wind, surrounded by regularly spaced boulders rising out of the dust that covered an area of about 40 acres. A few figures could be seen staggering around but for where there were supposed to be some 10,000 people there were not enough.

Not nearly enough.

And then I realised the boulders were bodies, most still alive, others just dead and awaiting the attentions of relatives to prepare them for burial.
A few of the stronger were making the strange little coffins that they used, only now the coffins were not made of the finest timber. They were made of the only timber, being sticks and twigs, and as these became scarcer the coffins got worse.

The remaining women were, with the aide workers, respectfully cleaning the bodies.

Then I saw her.

One of the two ‘boulders’ close to me moved and I realised it was Ichka, lying next to the body of her baby. She was nearly dead herself and there was nothing I could do to save her as the shock of food, if there was any, would probably have killed her anyway.

What happened next was like a dream.

The little one was gently lifted for cleaning, and so was Ichka. They had begun to wash the near dead as well. As the dust was sponged away you could still see the beauty, and somehow the suffering had made it even greater.

Her happiness was placed in a coffin, and she was placed in the one next to it. She wanted to be.

How it got there I don’t know but suddenly I heard the click-whirr of a polaroid camera and turned to see Ichka with a smile like the opening of heaven, sitting in her funny little coffin, laughing at the bloody stupid futility of her life.

Then she died.


People gasped at the polaroid nailed to the post on her pathetic little grave. They were the people who finally arrived with the food and medicine that would have saved them. They gasped at the polaroid and so they should have.

She was the most beautiful woman in the world, but she never knew it.

I FINALLY MANAGED A SURF LAST SUNDAY

They've been a bit thin on the ground lately, as we're moving house soon and there are just so many demands on my time.

Did an early morning run with my mate Rich down to Woolamai on Phillip Island. Bit of a bump in the swell but found a very quick righthander at Magiclands, just under the headland in the shot.

It's not called Magics for nothing, such a lovely spot. Unfortunately the crowd was decidedly unmagic, and it got a little tense, but by then I'd managed to get some good ones. A few nice turns, and in I went. I'm too old for all that testosterone fueled stuff.

I was all set for a second surf when the sea breeze hit.