Wow, everyone's the same age.
Grommets would get tied up in board bags (board socks in those days) and rolled off the steep sand dune at Cove, or stuffed in the steel mesh/yellow sheet bins and couldn't get out.
Use to hang out at Sammies Pizza Bar with our skateys all summer. Sammy and his brother would chase us out with a baseball bat when we'd manhandle the pinnies too hard. Until the shop burnt down.
I remember surfing Shallows with my mate at 14, inexperienced. My mum on the beach. We paddled out in a lull, then 6 footers started rolling in. A sneaker set came and we paddled for the horizon. I punched through and looked back. My mate was a smoker and lagged behind me. He almost broke surface tension and was sucked backwards over the falls. He got washed in after 4 or 5 more waves almost dead. My mum couldn't have done a thing, not experienced enough in surf. It took me almost 45 minutes to time my dash in to shore between sets, with brown undies.
Same mate and I at Easter one year, out at Smiths. 4wds fang down the beach and they're launching a tinny. They start waving their arms and shouting "get out of the water, get out of the water". It was an oily, glassy, grey day. A sharky day. 4' oily pits at Smiths main, just he and I out. We would've been 15. Of course we didn't realise what was up and panicked and scrambled for the shore. They told us we were in the way of their salmon school and obviously they had priority.
Used to need 4wd for the old Bears track, kept the crowds down. The Pattos had an old blue Suzuki Sierra and once we got a flat and couldn't work out why the jack wasn't lifting the car. Turns out we were young and stupid and the jack was in the wrong place and peeling the sheet metal like a banana. We could've lifted it ourselves easier anyway. Which they did another time apparently when 10 people were riding in/on it down the Gallows track and it tipped over.
After leaving school and the obligatory two weeks at Rotto a mate and I went to Quindalup to my granny's holiday house. We were there from schoolies until Christmas, maybe 3-4 weeks. The town was absolutely dead, just how we wanted it. A far cry from these days. The pub was empty, less that 10 locals on weekends and 3-4 on weekdays. As underagers with no id it was pretty intimidating, but we copped no grief. Every morning we'd be up before 5am for a trip to Bears or Windmills in the old man's F100.
Did the new Bears track in my mate's HZ. It took three attempts up the big sandy hill from the Yallingup end. About 90km/h did it with two of us waiting 3/4 up to run in and give it a push as required. It had dodgy ignition and my mate had to carry a screwdriver to start it by shorting the wires in the steering assembly. As a result of constantly pulling the steering apart, it used to lock up occasionally at a whim, usually on a bend down Caves Road.
Mates brothers lived in Gracetown for many years and were "gardeners" on Paul Keating's surf team. I spent many weeks and weekends down there with them. Surf was empty all year, cold and grey. Most people I knew were goofies so we loved all the lefts, and Northies was (and still is) scary.
Exploring deep jungles like the Balingup pine forest and Black Point was a mission on down days. Although there'd always be waves somewhere down south.
Margs used to be tiny, and Dunsborough had no supermarkets, no shops. I remember when it just used to be the general store on the corner near the phone booths. No malls, no nothing. It's disgusting now, and at holiday time all the western suburb soccer moms are shopping in boutiques and visiting wineries. There are traffic jams and stand-still traffic through both towns all day long. I have also followed this path to an extent, I've become what I despise. I'm restricted to holiday season, and the rest of my extended family appreciates mod-cons. We don't go down south any more. I make flying day-trips for surf and that's it. In a way it's good to be forced to explore more of the state, but I miss Gracetown, Dunsborough of old. I'd love a house on the hill at Gracetown, although it's probably lost its character. It used to be all "gardeners" and dole-bludgers.
There used to be days at Leighton when cold fronts would arrive and the first push of wind was from the north. If you timed it right, you could get it when it was NNE and 2' right-handers would peel down the beach. That doesn't seem to happen much anymore, although it might've last week.
Sand Tracks and Rous Head used to be secret. I went to the former this week on a weekday and there was a minimum of 20 guys out and it wasn't even working. Wow. Good times.
There are reef breaks that I won't surf anymore. The sort of places subasurf goes. They are ridiculous. One peak, one position to take off, 2 waves per set if you're lucky, but 15+ people on that one peak? How does that work? At least there are familiar faces at my old local. Although it didn't work all last winter and I only went out twice.
I like how I still recognise faces, though. I can be almost anywhere in the state and still come across people I know, or who I know rip. There's a respect there, and I've got no problem sharing waves with them. There are others I'd like to get to know, including some seabreezers. But I'm antisocial, sociopathic, introverted, selfish.
Surfing is hard these days. It's made me ultra-competitive in the water, but it's not easy. At one northern just-out-of-metro spot that I've spent a lot of time at in the last few years (Kearnsy's
) last week, first wave I was too deep, second wave too fat, third wave too deep and another guy dropped in, fourth and five waves blatantly burned by dropper-inners. I got a few after that but I already had a bad taste in my mouth. Same at ST, best wave of the day and a 60 year old kook on a mal with a Gath completely dropped in and I got burned. I paddled back out and the guy sitting near me, a chatty bloke who I've seen once or twice around the place over the last few years and who surfs well laughed in disbelief. There's no respect. Sometimes I think I should join the legions who think it's appropriate to drop in first, pull off later but it goes against everything I believe in. I look, and I won't even paddle if someone else has priority or I feel they deserve it. And if they know what's up and I have priority and they've been waiting or something happened that means they haven't got a good wave in a while I'll ask them, "you going mate?". That rarely happens these days unless I know who they are or know they rip, too many anonymous kooks in the sea of faces.
I continue to fight the fight, and paddle out and hassle grommets less than half my age, and shudder at the huge amount of people and kooks in the water. I will do so as long as I can, but I think that the fire is dying. Surfing isn't what it was, there are no secrets, there is no core. It's a fashion trend. There are fish and funboards and alaias and retro mals. There's no ladder, everyone's entitled to sit out the back and we should hold hands and take turns. There's no local enforcement, there are no locals. So I resort to petty hassling. I hear more English and Kiwi and Brazilian accents than Australians in the water. And yet they regulate me, when there are 4+ of them what chance do I stand?
I met a seabreezer (my only one) last year and he said he doesn't get out like he used to. I could also be keener, but I do get out a lot. It's hard to stay motivated, and I have other commitments and obligations so I don't have much time. Midweek is my domain for now, and I'm thankful that I have that, but the WA FIFO industry is making it difficult. Everyone has afternoons off.
And of course there's the threat of the kooks from the other forum, the cause of my "exile". The rise and rise of the overweight middle-aged kook with superior paddle power continues to scare me. They are encroaching even further up the reefs near my house this year. I guess it's good to tell the other mid-life crisis BMW drivers that you're a "surfer".
There are places and times to rekindle the fire, there is hope. It requires dedication, imagination and money, moreso than ever. You have to be willing to go a bit further than the next guy, look a bit deeper, sacrifice some time to put in hard yards, miss a few sessions in hope of future sessions.
E.g. there was a recent photo in a recent thread. I came across the place when my dad did some work there years ago. He was there for six months spanning around autumn. It was glassy all the time, and waves all the time. I visited him with some mates and we scored big time. I've been back since and been skunked by the same wind that blows the Greenough trees flat, but I've also scored a few more times. Nice town. I'm going to look further east and north, explore a bit. My heart remains in the down south of my youth, but it's a down south that no longer exists, and the "me" from that time no longer exists either.
bakesy
> 9 months ago, 22 Jun 2011
) and onto the other crap.
