Kurungabaa - A Journal Of Literature, History And Ideas From The Ocean Vol. 1 No. 1 by Simon d'Orsogna for the Kurungabaa editorial collective copyright 2011 kurungabaa incorporated (Australia) Smashwords Edition License Notes Thank you for downloading this free e-book. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This e-book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the e-book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this feel free to view the blog at kurungabaa.net for more writing and submission updates. Thank you for your support. ~~~~ Table of Contents [ToC] An Open Letter to the Surf Magazine Editors of the World — Tim Baker Bigger Lives — Nick Carroll (poem) The Green Room — Caro Flood Rethinking Gubbah Localism — Clifton Evers Iraq — Fong The Interview: DC Green with Alex Leonard Days of Excess — DC Green Vulture — Dan Crockett Air — Ry Beville (poem) Mindsurfing — Stu Nettle Images by Mark Sutherland Surfing and the Artistic Debate in the 1960s–1970s — Joan Ormrod Night surfers — John Stokes (poem) Surfing Idol — Dayu Sri Two Subcultures of Surfers in California and Kanagawa — Robert Stuart Yoder On the Eve of Destruction — W. D. Ehrhart (poem) Contributors to Kurungabaa Vol. 1 No. 1 A word about us... ~~~~ An Open Letter to the Surf Magazine Editors of the World Am I getting old and jaded or are surfing magazines getting worse? Possibly both. But after 20-odd (extremely odd) years writing for surf magazines, I feel compelled to offer a little advice to some of my colleagues. It seems to me surf mags are suffering from a slow drift into the realm of advertorial, where they become merely an extension of the marketing campaigns of their major advertisers. I can’t count the number of times dedicated, lifelong surfers have said to me, ‘I don’t read surf mags any more.’ While surfer numbers have boomed, the magazines’ circulations have remained static or declined, which seems to say they are missing the mark somewhere. I would suggest it is by becoming beholden to advertisers and thus losing credibility in the eyes of discerning surfers. Back in the day, advertising managers used to tiptoe into the offices of editors with sweaty palms and pounding hearts to nervously pass on some request for editorial coverage from one of their clients. The outraged editor would swear and curse and bang their fists on the desk, banishing the ad man from the editorial offices and sending them scurrying back to their desk, suitably chastened. These days, it seems, the ad departments run the magazines, and the editorial teams have the almost incidental task of filling a few pages of content in between the advertisements. The balance of power has shifted and advertising managers now lay down the law and editorial staff meekly oblige. Little wonder then that surf magazine readers of the world are beginning to feel a little used and abused. The tipping point came when magazines first went over 50% advertising. This was something I personally fought and campaigned against as an editor, lost the battle at one magazine and moved on, to another magazine where I was assured it would never happen. When it did, I moved on again, this time to the uncertain world of the freelance contributor, where I could operate one step removed from the exercise of office and surf industry politics. In some ways, this has spared me the worst excesses of industry influence and control over the surf media, but it has been with some sadness that I have watched the magazines’ descent into meaninglessness. There are exceptions. The Surfer’s Journal, The Surfer’s Path and Surfing World magazine in Australia are all making valiant, genuine efforts at an intelligent, independent surfing media, with sometimes varying degrees of success. Other magazines sometimes have moments of inspiration, but they are more often lost and buried beneath the tide of marketing material, ads and advertorial, celebrity gossip and trivia. Read what passes for ‘news’ on any surfing website and in most magazines these days and it is almost entirely industry press releases or marketing material, sometimes barely even re-written. There are plenty of skilled practitioners in the surf media trying hard to produce worthwhile material but it often feels like a losing battle in the face of the unremitting tide of advertiser favours, contrived sponsor trips or celebrity pap. My argument has always been that you best serve the advertiser by delivering them a large, passionate and committed audience, which you earn by producing the best magazine you possibly can, without fear or favour to any advertisers. Every time you do a favour for one advertiser you do a disservice to your reader and every other advertiser, by diluting your relationship with the reader and weakening your magazine’s overall content. Once magazines go over 50% advertising the battle has essentially been lost. No matter what brilliance and artistic mastery you can conjure in your editorial pages, it stands little chance of prevailing above the avalanche of sales pitches, when editorial makes up a minority of the magazine. Why does any of this matter? They are only surfing magazines, after all. And they are businesses, designed to make a profit, not perform some noble or charitable community service, right? Well, we are living in an information age, we are told. The dissemination and exchange of information is the currency of the new economy. It stands to reason that being able to trust that information is more important than ever. The great unwashed public are tiring of misinformation, I’d argue. Every day we are bombarded with a barrage of marketing material, advertising, PR spin and sophisticated manipulation of our every human urge. Who do we trust in this environment? Having a credible, independent surf media seems to me necessary to have any meaningful discussion of environmental issues, surfboard design, the ethical considerations of travel to often remote and fragile third world destinations, the influence the surf industry wields and how responsibly or otherwise they wield that influence. I’d suggest it’s these very concerns that have given rise to the curious, slightly eccentric journal you are currently holding in your hands. The guiding principle of my urge to write and communicate through surfing magazines is a simple one – live, learn and pass it on. We are all trying to make our own way through an often muddled world. And the more we can share and pass on our experiences to others, honestly and openly, without taint or spin, the easier it might make other people’s passages through life. That is largely the point of our existence, I reckon, to share the journey and support and encourage and inform each other along the way. When you can’t trust the messenger, when you suspect you are forever being ‘sold’ something along with your surfing information, how do you know what to believe? In the perhaps naive hope of encouraging a more independent and thoughtful surfing media, therefore, I’ve come up with a few pointers for my colleagues at the helm of the world’s surfing magazines. 1. Advertisers buy advertising space, that is all. Resist efforts to sway or influence your editorial content. By all means, be polite and courteous to our friends in the surfing industry but be aware that they represent one single, narrow vested interest in the vast world of surfing. Young, impressionable editorial staff are often left at the mercy of older, more experienced and powerful industry players to fend for themselves. I remember well walking along Sunset Beach one day many years ago, minding my own business, when an industry bigwig leapt out of the bushes and summoned me into his company’s palatial beachfront rental house, where I found myself seated around an enormous dining room table with a group of industry millionaires, all 10–15 years my senior, who wanted to impress upon me the importance of representing their views on surfing through the magazine I then edited. I was a bit stunned and overawed, certainly, but would like to think I gave a reasonable account of myself and did my best to articulate the principles of editorial independence outlined above. I’m not sure how convinced they were, but to their credit no great harm befell me and I continued to preside over a fairly anarchic editorial product without further intimidation or undue influence. I suspect the magazine editors of today might not be so lucky. 2. You are in the communications business. Communicate. I have been writing for surfing magazines for 20 years yet sometimes even I struggle to get a response from magazine editors regarding stories or ideas I have submitted. If I can’t get a straight answer, what must it be like for any young, aspiring surf writers out there? There could be a young surfing Hemingway or Steinbeck producing literary gems but he would be lucky to even get his material read, unless he happened to get himself on a Mentawai boat trip with at least half a dozen members of the ASP top 45. No wonder there are so few promising surf writers coming up through the ranks, and old hacks like myself can continue to peddle our wares and cobble together a livelihood. Actually, on second thoughts, editors of the world, continue to ignore all those promising young surf writers! Ironically enough, the one editor I can always count on for a prompt, thoughtful and courteous response is probably the best credentialed and most experienced of the lot. Drew Kampion, at the Surfers Path, who has been editing and writing for various surfing magazines almost as long as I’ve been alive, is always reliable and encouraging in his correspondence and a few younger, less experienced and less competent magazine staff could learn a thing or two from him. If you are one of those aspiring surf writers trying to get a foot in the door and can’t seem to get your material read, don’t despair. Few magazine editors are very reliable judges of what constitutes good or bad writing and if your carefully crafted masterpiece has been rejected it certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Send it to the editor of this fine journal and I trust you will get a thoughtful and compassionate response. 3. People read left to right, top to bottom. Black text on a white background is easiest to read. Beware the excesses of your ambitious and over- adventurous art directors. More great stories and photos have been destroyed by insensitive art direction than by any other means. I don’t care how impressive your page layout might look in your portfolio or what kudos you might earn from your art school pals by running type backwards, sideways, or overlayed on photos so that it is rendered unreadable. That is not your job. Your role is to present words and photos to best effect for the enjoyment and edification of your readers. The art director is not the star of the show, they are a conduit to facilitate the best presentation of the writer’s and photographer’s crafts, and through them the ocean’s splendour. If I see one more article defaced by elaborate backgrounds or overlaid on photos that leave the text unreadable, I am going to take matters into my own hands and start swinging punches. 4. Photographers are your best friend. Even though I am a writer myself, I am more than happy to acknowledge that the real stars of surf magazines are, or ought to be, the photographers. Their job is infinitely more difficult than any other contributor to the magazine. They require tens of thousands of dollars of equipment (that is rendered swiftly obsolete by constant advances in technology). They are paid a pittance, require the patience of a saint, endure the tantrums and egos of fickle surf stars and often uncooperative natural elements. Yet it is their art that provides the basic building block of the surf media and the entire industry marketing machine. That is – the memorable image. It is what matters most about surf magazines and what etches itself most deeply in our memory banks, what inspires us to travel or want to surf better or to try and live adventurous lives. It is the great shame of the modern surf media that photographers earn far more money for an advertising photo than an editorial shot, so all those telephoto lenses are always going to swing towards the highly sponsored surf star when he or she takes off on a wave, rather than the logo-less charger who might be pulling into the barrel of the day, but who may as well be invisible for all the surf media cares. There, now that I have all that off my chest, enjoy the rest of this fine journal, confident in the knowledge that there are no sinister or subliminal sales pitches or marketing messages being embedded into your consciousness without you even realising it…(Go and buy one of my books)…that this noble publication at least, is operating free of poisonous industry influence…(Visit www.bytimbaker.com)…and that you are safe amidst an environment of pure surfing stoke that exists simply for your enlightenment…(Hurry while stocks last)…that there is at least one place in our sullied surf culture where your soul may reveal itself and share in an honest exchange of information and ideas without hidden agendas…(Major credit cards accepted)…Honestly. — Tim Baker [back to top] ~~~~ Bigger Lives A warm clear dry north wind in June. The sea creased in a wrinkled smile. The whales are still yet to come. ‘Give ’em time,’ sighs old Gorman – old man’s creased sea-wrinkled face – ‘Weeks and weeks to go, there are. Last year they weren’t here til July.’ Each passing year more whales have come. There were none when I was young. They’d died under the hardened points of harpoons, or their mothers had. Those big lives, butchered, quivering, boiled down to steaming sludge, blood drained off to stain the sea. Why do they come? Might as well ask why a north wind blows in June or why we killed their parents once or why old Gorman waits for them, eyes on the wrinkled smiling sea, looking for one fleet fluke’s flap – a sign of big lives passing by. — Nick Carroll [back to top] ~~~~ The Green Room The old man, fragile and ancient as a sea mist, drifted away. In his mind he ran his hand over his malibu, stroking it like the downy head of a newborn. He used to surf every day. It was his ritual, his meditation. At the water’s edge he would wax his board, keeping one eye on the movement of the sea. The wax was soft and pliant as the island’s temperature was too cool for the harder wax used on the mainland. Rubbing sand across the board to roughen the surface for grip, he would slip into a wetsuit, plunge into the water and paddle out towards the foaming break. Searching his memory for a picture of his wife’s face, he found nothing but the sound of their conversation. He had told her about dropping in, watching the horizon for the big sets and paddling out to sea. ‘Watch me,’ he said, taking a dry run, lying flat with his hands flat on the board. ‘I’m a goofy,’ he said. ‘A what?’ she had giggled, impressed with his prowess. ‘Watch. Right foot to the front. Jump. Arms out for balance, aiming with your eyes.’ Picking up his board, he waded straight-backed into the sea. The swell lifted his body and he pushed out a little further until the water reached chest deep. He shifted his weight to allow the board to plane then moved slightly forward into the break. Jumping to his feet, he traversed the face of the foam. The cold waves pounded his chest. People stood around his hospital bed watching the slow rise and fall of his chest. He didn’t know who they were and couldn’t hear what they were saying. The only sound he heard were the waves crashing on the shore. The conditions were perfect with a powerful break and a light offshore breeze, holding up the face of the wave so it could pitch out and roll. The rip took him out past the break and a set of three rolled towards him, each wave gathering in force. His lungs began to rattle and his breathing slowed. Jumping up onto the last in the set, he let his board stall on the top as he pushed his weight onto the back foot. The swell curled above him and he overtook, just far enough away from the foam ball to remain upright. The people around him held his hands, stroking his translucent skin. Shifting to the front of the board, he accelerated out of the barrel for a moment before disappearing into the green room. — Caro Flood [back to top] ~~~~ Rethinking Gubbah Localism Gubbah: /gë’bbë/ non-aborigine, whitefella It’s summer, sticky and humid. The afternoon drags on. A rush of wind sweeps through the window and reminds me of the new cyclone stalking the coast and whipping up a south-east wind. My body cools down. I knock off work early and drive the ute towards the coast…fast. The traffic slows me down. Why can’t people just get out of the way when the swell is up? I decide to lobby council for a surfer-only lane during cyclone season. I’m rushing to The Point. It stays glassy in these winds. Powerful swells stagger down its flanks, punch- drunk from the dogged south-easterly. On the northern side the swells twist into hollow barrels. I park at the picnic benches halfway up The Point where a closeknit crew mills about. Scat and Drew sit on the picnic table, and old Laz leans against his car eating a slice of watermelon. Ash sucks on a beer as he prepares his fishing line. Friendly jibes are thrown back and forth. We take up a large area and others have to go around us. We all grew up surfing The Point and know when conditions are right for it to turn on. Most of our families live in the run-down council-owned fibro houses up the road and have done so for generations. Our boardrider club parties are held in a clearing at the top of the headland. My first root was in the long grass down near the Surf Club. Our local knowledge and persistent presence afford us privileges. We hang out next to the best facilities and claim rights to carparks, waves, park benches, even girls. We dominate the area by sprawling out and being raucous, acoustic borders being just as effective as physical ones. When I first began to surf in this area, I had to pay my dues until I earned the right to belong. If I stepped out of line I was promptly put in place by harsh words or a quick fist. It was the same for all the surfers of my age at The Point. It’s still the same now. When I was 15 I got a pat on the back from one of the older crew to let me know I belonged. That felt to me like getting a knighthood. These days the feeling of unity my mates and I enjoy provides us with a sense of authority. We’ve spent years earning our belonging by surfing on the biggest days, enduring abuse as grommets, fighting housing developments, backing each other up in fights and helping each other out when our luck is down. We have tattoos. Our belonging is etched into our bodies. We have handshakes. Feelings pass easily through gnarled hands to recall experiences we have shared. We haven’t just bonded with each other though. We’ve also bonded with The Point. That confused beating of your heart has to become familiar. Body strength and stamina grow. Each collision and strained breath teaches oxygen efficiency and turns lungs into a surfer’s lungs. Wipeouts rip at flesh and contort the body unnaturally. Whitewater washes, reefs rip, swells sweep. Each surf and watery collision at The Point is another battering and modification your body has endured. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where our bodies begin and The Point ends. As local surfers we feel the waves of The Point and ride with them, not simply on them. Those waves are part of our bodies and our bodies are part of them. My mate Kim Satchell tells me that we’ve emerged as part of the ‘lived cartography’ of this coast. He explains this as the coming together of social life, ocean swells, the sun, sand, rock and bodies. Kim’s a high-brow ecological hippy! I wait all year for the cyclones that light up The Point. Over the years I’ve felt many cyclones and become accustomed to their characteristics. If my skin drips with sweat and I’m itchy, inevitably a lacklustre north- east wind is blowing and there’s only a slight chance of swell. If a cyclone is at sea and the wind turns to the south, then the air becomes less humid – clearer – and my anticipation rises. The cyclone is within our swell window, and the confluence of swell and wind means there’ll soon be good waves at The Point. I know every section of The Point. At the pinnacle of the headland the waves are steep, raw and powerful. In the cove the swells even out, the take-off is critical and the wave hollow. Further inside, and closer to the beach, the waves are slower and more rhythmic in their progression. Each section allows different rides – expressions, enthusiasms, intentions, imaginations and experiences – and each feels different underfoot. Kim says there’s a sensory relationship between us local surfers and The Point: ‘Nature and culture entwine as our habitat.’ (Told you he was a hippy!) I see it as our turf. I change into my wetsuit as Scat waxes up. Oldie has just got out of the water complaining about the session. ‘Fucking crowds! Every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he’s a local here now. Fucking blow-ins, kooks, tourists…the fucking lot. You name it, they’re fucking out there. Didn’t see one fucking person I knew.’ We nod in agreement and sympathy. Lately we’ve all been feeling out of place in our own backyard. The land around The Point is changing. Our homes are being demolished to make way for million-dollar mansions and trendy tourist resorts. Our parks are being developed. We complain about the newcomers. They come from the cities. Some already surf while others are learning at the new surf school. The line-up is now packed and The Point groans under the pressure. The boys and I don’t ask the newcomers about their lives or intentions, or the struggles they may have been through to get to The Point. Guess we assume they had it easy, not like us long-time locals. I know this wilful ignorance fuels the fear that the newcomers threaten The Point and our lifestyle. But then I also know that my mates can’t afford the increased house prices and resent the newcomers forcing them up. Some have even had to move away. Recently, some of the younger crew spray-painted ‘Locals Only’ on the boulders near the jump rock to let people know The Point is ours. Like the first pat on the back an older local ever gave me, local status has to be earned and the blow-ins haven’t put in the time. Out in the water blow-ins are often harassed, especially if they think they are now local at The Point. They don’t know that Laz’s brother died out there. That Ben’s family was the first in the area, and that Scat rallied everyone together to stop a sewerage outfall being built. Harassment isn’t always violent. Only takes a couple of beltings for the message to get across regarding who is at the top of the pecking order. After that it’s implied violence. Just as effective. But we’re beginning to feel outnumbered. Our position at the top of the pecking-order is being challenged by the sheer number of newcomers. We don’t like it. Surf journo Dave Parmenter reckons a surfing boom means there is now a ‘kookocracy’: the general surfing IQ has lowered as a result of a beginner boom, a legion of zombie surfers. My mates and I say the kookocracy is how any fool thinks he can paddle out into a line-up and just catch waves and get in the way without respecting our tradition, our authority, our knowledge. Addressing my mates in the carpark, I compare our situation to that of the local indigenous people. After all, we are like a tribe, with our own cultural values and laws, and now we’re being displaced. Continuing, I parallel our bonding with The Point with indigenous people’s connections to the sea and land. I’ve thought about this a bit recently and speak with confidence. I can see the words resonating with a few of the fellas who feel the same but haven’t thought about it in these terms. I know they’re feeling the same flush of justification and vindication that I had when the thought first came to me. Still, I’ll admit I don’t really know that much about the indigenous population and their relationship with the Australian coast. Of course I know about Dale Richards who won the Quiksilver Pro Trials a few years back and got into the main event, winning a ‘Deadly’ award from the indigenous community for his effort. Occasionally I read an article in surf mags on blokes like Paul Evans, Kenny Dann and the Slabb family. I also know about the Dhurga people who live at Jervis Bay on the South Coast of NSW, and have a strong community of surfers who ride the perfect lefts of Wreck Bay down the road from their home. I can also recall reading in a history book how during the Australian Bicentenary Day celebrations in 1988 Aboriginal lifeguard Burnum Burnum hoisted the Aboriginal flag above the white cliffs of Dover in England. It was an ironic gesture indicating Aboriginal sovereignty over the colonisers of Australia. After I’ve spoken, one of the boys, Jack, an indigenous surfer, gets angry with me. His voice shaking, he tells us all to be at the pub that night. He’s going to introduce us to Max, one of his elders. Then he storms off, leaving us scratching our heads, eyebrows raised. After we’ve had a few games of pool and a few beers, Jack arrives with Max. Max is an older bloke – about 50, although it’s hard to say for sure. I’ve seen him around over the years but never spoken to him. I’m curious to know why Jack got upset with me. After all, wasn’t I sympathising with the blackfella’s plight? About ten of us gather in the corner of the pool room next to the TAB. It’s obvious Jack has already spoken to Max about what I said as Max begins speaking. He speaks gently but with certainty about the saltwater mobs of Australia and the long history they have with The Point. He explains that my mates and I have forgotten that the traditional custodians of The Point were colonised long before we came along, and experienced physical, social, and cultural displacement in order that we could become local. He tells us that saltwater indigenous mobs have a particular relationship to country and sea: ‘When I talk about country I mean the ocean…our sea country that provides so much of the resources we still depend upon for our wellbeing, and which covers the submerged lands that bear the footprints of our ancestors.’ Looking my way, Max says that my comparison of our bonding and plight to those of the indigenous mob works only as a tool for us gubbahs to claim ownership of waves that weren’t ours from the outset. By declaring my local status I obliterated many other stories and propagated a long history of colonial dispossession. I ignored the stories of women who collected shellfish, and of blackfellas sitting in Bora rings. And I ignored thousands of years of coastal life where Aboriginal people played on and lived off the ocean. Max finishes. We sit on our stools absorbing what he’s said. Without standing, Jack begins. He tells us that the clearing at the top of The Point where we have our parties and throw our empty beer cans is where past generations are buried, where families were massacred, and where his mob have held traditional ceremonies. ‘It’s why I never go to the parties.’ And we always thought Jack was soft… I don’t know what to say. What Max said is a revelation but it is also startlingly obvious. I feel ignorant. And I feel sick. Perhaps it’s dented pride that makes me stand up after a while and reply to Max and Jack. Perhaps it’s that I still think I’ve been misunderstood. I’m not sure. But I tell Max that when the housing development was proposed my mates and I were the first to support the indigenous people’s land right claim to protect The Point. ‘We helped out,’ I say. ‘We’re in this together. We know how you feel.’ Our campaign was similar to the one that has been taking place at Sandon Point, a legendary pointbreak near Wollongong, New South Wales. The ‘Save Sandon Point’ campaign was a protest against a housing development planned for the vacant land adjacent to the headland. The land is under the custodianship of the Dharawal people. The coastline is part of the Wodi Wodi people’s region and they call the point ‘Kuradji Sandon Point’. It’s a 4,000-year-old tool-making site and ceremonial gathering place. The developers – Stockland Trust – wanted the indigenous tent embassy at Kuradji Sandon Point dispersed. They were creating bad publicity and were a hinderance to the developers who planned to put in 1,200 homes. Local residents and traditional custodians protested the development. Their motives for doing so were mixed: to help the indigenous people; to keep the surf uncrowded; to keep land prices high. The ruling judge declared the Sandon Point development invalid, not because of the claims of the Dharawal people (in fact they were completely overlooked), but because the development proposal had failed to consider the impact of climate change on the flood-prone site. Again Max stands. He knows about our cooperation with the local mob in protesting the housing development, and he congratulates me on standing up to the developers. However, he adds, we’ve supported the local mob for our own purposes, to protect our own privileges. Our experiences are nothing like those of the traditional custodians who have been colonised for generations. ‘Since colonisation our lives have been plagued by massacres, limited rights, poor access to education and health facilities, racism, lost homes, and persecution. For decades our children were stolen and put into missionary schools and foster homes. Those families continue to have issues with identity and loss. ‘To tie your plight in with our history re-colonises our indigeneity and makes the story all about the gubbah. You forget the power you have to ignore our stories while furthering your own. ‘Our culture is our own. Our symbols are our own. And just because a surf company sponsors one of us blackfellas doesn’t mean that company has the right to use our symbols, our culture, to sell more clothes. That’s cultural exploitation. ‘When you gubbahs surf this place and call it home, you enter into a relationship with all us blackfellas and our culture. When you claim exclusive local status, then you’re ignoring that relationship and denying our stories and histories, which are just as much a part of The Point as yours. If you’re serious about being locals, you gubbahs have to rethink localism. You have to stop asking what you can take from your surf spots, what you think you own. You have to start asking yourselves who’s speaking, who’s speaking for whom and what for. And more importantly you have to learn to listen.’ I’m not saying anything this time. There’s too much to think about. We drink our beer in silence, as Jack chews his lip and nods excitedly, and Max waits... — Clifton Evers [back to top] ~~~~ Iraq Shiny boots, military boots. Shined to perfection in that military way. You never stall your motor here. Random gunshots up front confirm the stop of this UN aid convoy. At least having the motor going means the air-con won’t stop, damn desert heat. Eighteen grand I earn, run this rig through a convoy in outer-west Iraq. Once every three months I get the holiday of my choice: I always go home to my house behind Byron. I never used to feel like a mercenary, but these days I’m not so sure. Then a dawn patrol at Tallow’s makes the mortgage worthwhile. Time in the tube looking at flat rock now stands still in my mind, then returns to those black boots shining up at me in my air-conditioned cab. The heat fucks with your mind. Money’s good running this trip, much better than sucking down pills and driving the Pacific Highway in a B-double. Still, it was much easier early on when we carried aid and food. Now with guns and ammo we become prime targets. Knowing the locals the way I do, it’s hard to blame them. Yeoman, two worlds away from Iraq (only a vet will get that), a small port town, enjoys a few Aussies. Drinks, laughs, good food abound. Till the American Fifth Carrier Group comes to town. Suddenly 6,000 horny US Navy sailors are unloaded (in more ways than one) in a devout Muslim town. Honestly, give me a grenade! It’s an easy job. You match the white line up in the windscreen with the white line on the back of the lorry in front. Two white lines in a convoy matched up = safety, so long as you can do it for hours on end at 140mph! Mercedes Benz rules in these circumstances. You can laugh. Till the next roadside bombing. It’s the bridges with their spring-loaded mines that scare me (supposed to go off only with the weight of a tank, but over time and trucks, the mechanism builds up…and another aid truck bites the dust). But then again, I find it hard to sleep in the securer Green Zone – shit that comes with the job. Still there’s the kids, fighting over the dead GI’s boots in front of me. I guess that’s life. I hope they fit: then the poor Marine’s life will have meant something. A nice shiny pair of boots! — Fong [back to top] ~~~~ The Interview: DC Green PART I: Indonesia, 2001 Alex Leonard: How did you start writing, DC? DC Green: I’ve always loved writing. It’s one of the three loves of my life, the others being surfing and sex – and I guess lately my daughter makes four. When I was a kid I made my own comic strips. I had a character called Radical Radical, who had a Dennis Lillee moustache, long wispy hair and a talking dog called Harold. He was a surfer who had all sorts of adventures – once he went to Uganda and met Idi Amin, he went to Japan and did all sorts of things there, he went to Heaven and he went to Hell.Then in Year Ten I wrote this thing in class called ‘Lash Clone’. Lash was a young grommet on the planet Vortex who one day heard the King was looking for a husband for his daughter Buttocks. The suitor had to surf and handle Vortex Bay, so Lash, being a cocky grommet, said, ‘I’ll do that.’ The waves were about 750 feet high, but Lash went out there on his computerized, mega-fin blitz-board and tore them apart. Finally he did a big reo, crashed back down through the atmosphere and landed in Princess Buttocks’s lap. Then when the old King died Lash became King of Vortex, got a group of shiftless, disgruntled surfers together, formed a galaxy-conquering empire and ended up becoming Emperor of the Universe for a while. In the end he got bored, took too many drugs and overdosed, lost the whole lot and got demoted all the way down and exiled to this planet called Earth, where he became a dole-bludger, met me in the Bondi CES and got me to write his biography for him. That all happened in the first Lash story. I submitted it to Tracks, and Tracks loved it and said, ‘Have you got any more?’ I said, ‘Hell, yeah!’ and did 80 more. For a long time I was interested in writing fiction, not in becoming a surf journalist. It was only after I’d been writing Lash Clone for about four or five years that I started writing travel stories. I travelled overseas, to Indonesia, for the first time when I was 23, and Tracks, being a real garbage guts, ran all my travel stories and some of my photos. I went with a couple of experienced Indo travellers, who took me to the Hinakos, Nias, South Sumatra, Java and Desert Point. The waves pumped wherever we went. I rode the biggest and most perfect waves of my life. Bali was almost the last place I went to, because the guys I was with were so soulful they said, ‘Bali’s all sold out, it’s gone down the tube and is full of drunken yobbos.’ By the time I reached Bali I was preaching that stuff as well. In Bali, of course, I became the biggest drunken yobbo of them all. I degenerated from a soulful, surf-obsessed traveller into an alcoholic, gonzo idiot, very quickly. A suitable start to a career in surf journalism? Well, surf journalism has always seemed to me to be a very loose field, where you can really go to extremes. Like surfing it’s a larrikin thing, and there are so many different approaches to it. It was probably Tony Edward’s Captain Goodvibes more than anything else that made me realize that anything is possible in surfing magazines. It was so satirical, so naughty and over-the-top – with Goodvibes taking every drug under the sun, turning up at surf contests and shitting on their whole act, getting farted out of God’s arsehole and being super rude and obnoxious. It opened up a whole spectrum of possibility for me – I saw that whatever I wanted to write about I could write about it and magazines would publish it. Whose surf journalism have you admired? In the beginning it was Phil Jarratt’s. To me Jarratt was the epitome of the naughty Australian larrikin. The story he did for Tracks on the first Stubbies contest was a lurid look behind the scenes of professional surfing, full of sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll and overeating, with Jarratt’s memory cells scattered across the pages. In years since, a lot of people have tried to pull that sort of gonzo off again, but most have done it gratuitously, trying to get away with unrestrained reference to booze and drugs and that sort of thing without its working towards a certain theme. But incredible debauchery was what the Stubbies was all about, and Jarratt captured that brilliantly. Now it’s like there are two styles of surf journalism – an American style and an Australian style. The Australian style’s much looser and more gonzo, while the American style strives towards a watermanly, soulful, ‘what-is-the-true-meaning-of-surfing?’ sort of thing. And I guess watermanliness is good to a point, but when you’ve got a whole magazine full of it, sometimes you want to reach for the ralph bucket. Surfing’s not just about spiritualism and soulfulness and respecting nature and other people. It’s also about naughtiness and uncouthness and recklessness. Probably the best in the American style is Nick Carroll. When he was younger Nick wrote funnier, naughtier things. These days he does more of that solemn, methodically researched stuff. It’s not gonzo and he doesn’t reveal much about himself in it. It’s more like, ‘This is the body of my work, I am a former Australian champion, I’ve been the editor of Tracks, I’ve been the editor of Surfing, so you must respect the might of my words!’ And he is very good at it. He does a much better job than any of the American writers, and he can still put some Australian irreverence in as well. I also like some of Dave Parmenter’s stuff – he’s much more critical of the status quo than anyone else writing for the American magazines and he’s a good writer as well. But other American writers, it’s hard to separate their styles. Many seem to be massive ego- maniacs, the concept of self-deprecation completely unknown to them. They can’t take the piss out of themselves and are always trying to create images of themselves that are all gold with no shades of grey – ‘I am wonderful, I’m a fantastic surfer, a fantastic lover, a hardcore traveller.’ I enjoy reading more when the author’s voice is a little subversive or slides in and out or can take the piss out of itself or even expose really bad sides of itself – and that’s why the Aussie writers are the best. Guys like Tim Baker and Derek Rielly consistently make me envious. And the South African, Craig Jarvis, has taken personal revelations in his writing to a level that makes even me cringe. Do you still read much? Not nearly as much as I used to. When I was at school I used to read voraciously and for the first few years after I’d finished high school I was determined to read all the great works of Western Literature and diligently apply myself to things I wasn’t really into. I’m an addict, so when I read a book I have to finish it – I have to lie down and consume the whole thing. But now that I have kids and have to work, that’s a luxury I can’t really afford. If I have the time, though, I love nothing better than to curl up with a good book. But I get all these free surfing magazines sent to me, and I always end up reading them just because they’re there. I think, ‘Might as well have a look through and see what’s happening.’ Usually I get mad when I read them and think, ‘Fuck! There’s so little of value in this!’ There’s lots of poorly written drivel out there. How do you feel when your pieces are edited? I hate getting edited. I hate it when people change my words around. I hate it when they add spelling mistakes. When they add spelling mistakes! And sometimes I’ll do some really nice sort of poetic thing to tie things up and they’ll straighten it all out, just brutally. If you really work on them you can almost make poems out of your stories, where you get certain sounds and rhythms happening, which you can only appreciate if you read it aloud. So when an editor mutilates it I want to scream at him, ‘There was a reason it was like that, you moron! If there are too many words, send it back to me and I’ll chop them down my way.’ It’s something I’m really bad about because I like writing and what I write so much. And because I’ve been doing what I do since 1983, I’m more senior than most editors now. Some of the editors were reading my stuff in Tracks back when they were grommets in the 1980s. So it’s almost as though I’m a respected elder statesman whose judgement isn’t to be questioned, with a reputation for ranting and raving. Did you ever want to become an editor? No. I’d like to be editor for a month, but that’s it. I think the day-to-day responsibilities of an editor would be too much for me. It’s more fun being a contributor. You get to travel, for one thing. Tim and Derek at Australia’s Surfing Life used to say to me, ‘It’s great you’re a contributor, because we can send you on all these trips and we don’t have to write any articles.’ And I used to think, ‘Great, you can send me on all those trips and you guys can stay up there on the shit- hole Gold Coast! Perfect balance.’ What else have you done in life? I’ve done heaps of things, I suppose. I ran a publishing business for over seven years – published tourism newspapers of all things, we ran coach tours and did all sorts of crazy things. They were horrendous, because everything, the caravan parks and so forth, had to be described in such positive, glowing ways – when in fact you knew they were crappy tourist traps. I had nine people working for me at one stage. It was one of those things that just evolve according to their own sort of logic and become… Well, it was actually fun, but it was also far removed from what I wanted to do, because all I was doing was managing, no writing. The only time I got to write was when I went on holiday and did a Tube Quest for Surfing Life every year. What were those Tube Quests like? They were good, a lot of fun. All these amazing things were happening and I was telling myself, ‘Just write about it! Just write about it!’ I got to write about having a fight with the photographer Sean Davey, about Cactus locals, and I wrote what I thought was a pretty moving piece – a tribute to my mum when I found out she had died when I was in France – I incorporated that into a story about French nuclear testing. I really like incorporating personal elements into stories – like the birth of my daughter and things like that. Not gratuitously, but so they fit in with the theme of the story. So you learn a little bit about the author. Of course, you have to be very honest, and sometimes you might look like a fool… Wanda - Sean Hill (Photo) You can also be very dishonest, can’t you? Oh, sure. Sometimes nothing happens, so it’s better to make something up. It’s interesting to combine fact and fiction. Sometimes, reality just doesn’t work in a story. But honesty is best. I’ve often made myself out to be a real bastard. If you write about yourself in a positive way, it’s almost horrible for other people to read. You’ve got to be prepared to put the bad stuff in as well. Especially since in my writing I try to take the piss out of everyone, pick up on funny things about them, their interesting peccadilloes or weirdo habits… If you’re going to take the piss out of other people then you have to take the piss out of yourself as well, even more than anyone else. So then you get the balance right. What motivates you to write? Travel, definitely. You can cram more experiences and emotions and other fun things into a week of travel than you can into months and months of staying at home. Just being on the road, having interesting experiences, getting pitched into real-life gonzo adventures, meeting interesting people and having good conversations with people. You’re always thinking ‘Wow, this would make a fantastic story!’ The actual writing process itself involves trying to come up with fresh angles to approach saying things from, because the ways in which any one story can be told are infinite. You can pull it apart, start at the middle, the end; there’s bits you can leave out and bits you can add in; there’s different voices you can use – a child’s voice or an Indonesian local’s voice or a shaper’s – and trying to think the way that person thinks is really fascinating, like going on a journey. Like that novel of yours you told me about. Yes, 90,000 words from a female perspective. I came up with a timeline for this woman and was thinking about it and going over it for weeks and week before I started writing anything. The character had to be consistent to be believable, and so I couldn’t just go and start writing, because then I reach a certain point and think, ‘Oh, these actions don’t sound like the actions of this character.’ I wanted to get inside and really flesh her out, even become her myself. It was like I was almost menstruating every 28 days, it was so vivid. So I went to Bali, which has all these wonderful women, and I didn’t go out, because my predatory male thing of going out and looking for a root was so opposed to what she was that I couldn’t do it, I would have offended myself. She dominated me – she was a lot smarter, more assertive and on it than I am – and she took over my head. It was an amazing experience, quite unpleasant as well, because there were unpleasant elements to her personality. She was going through a lot of changes – in fact, she was dying of cancer and only had a week to live. It got to a point where I was really worried I was going to develop cancer myself, by visualising it. One night I went down to Kuta Beach and I was almost crying and I clenched my fists and called out, ‘I’m a man! I am not a woman! I do not have cancer!’ Just getting a bit of reality back before my personality was consumed and I started growing breasts… A bit different to Lash Clone. A balance to Lash. Lash was such a sexist, misogynist character – he was a satire as well of males like that, it was all a piss-take and I was constantly aware that he was like that, it wasn’t like I was endorsing his attitudes – but I thought this would be a nice balance. I like the idea of going to one extreme in my life and then the other. I know if it comes out it’ll make a lot of people mad. I think a lot of feminists will get mad, because there are topics in there men aren’t supposed to write about or understand. So I’ll have to be in a good, strong position to defend myself from. I want people to read it and think, ‘There’s no way a man could have written this!’ I don’t know if I’ll succeed at it. I’m too close to it to be able to tell. I think I’ve done a pretty good job. I think it’s the best I’ve ever done, even though I haven’t finished it. Who do you think will read it? What kind of reader are you writing it for? Well, it’s a bit cynical in some ways, because there’s a big genre that’s emerged in the last few years and that’s Mills and Boon but with naughty bits, Mills and Boon that doesn’t stop at the bedroom door. And maybe 10%–15% of my book is hardcore sex. It’s full of explicit sex action, and sex sells. It’ll have the naked chick on the cover as well. Almost every character in it is on some sort of drug. So in that regard it’s a modernish sort of book, and it’s cynical, but it’s also a romance – which no one would ever have thought I would write. There’s even a weird science fiction sub-plot. It’s almost everything people would think I wouldn’t write about, and almost entirely the opposite of my surf journalism and Lash Clone. Even Lash was only cartoon-like sex – he’d mention his ‘purple-helmeted moot mallet’ and stuff like that – and sex was only a means to a bit of humour, so Lash would always be gloating about what a Sam George, what a magnificent sexual fiend he was, and you soon got to realize he was a real fuckwit who had an image of himself that no one else shared. I really enjoyed playing around with that two-voice stuff, where the authorial first-person voice is really strong and competent, but slowly you realise there’s another truth, that the first-person voice is not saying everything, and other voices are creeping in and undermining it. There’s lots of that in my book – the author’s making all these competent-sounding assertions about things and you realise later, ‘Fuck, that didn’t even happen! Who’s she kidding?’ She’s kidding herself, kidding the readers… And slowly the layers get peeled off her like the layers of an onion. What led you to begin it? I’d always thought it was an interesting concept: if you’ve only got a week left to live, what do you do? If you’re happy with your life you don’t do anything – you live your last week just as you lived the week before. It’s the idea that we’ve all got goals we want to achieve before we die and suddenly having a week left to live means you’ve got to cram everything into a week – all the radical experiences, jumping out of aeroplanes, having threesomes, doing this, doing that! But when you get right into it they’re all fleeting, superficial things you eventually get over, and then you finally come to terms with the fact that you’re dying, you’ve got so many days left. And one of the really important things is peeling back all these layers of yourself, breaking down all these walls you’ve built up around yourself and doing away with this façade you’ve been presenting to the world, till finally you discover what you really are and the things that really matter to you. Why didn’t you finish it? It sounds like you could have done something special. I was in Bali working on it and still had a week left before I got on a boat to do an on-location issue of Surfing Life. But I was working so dementedly on it – up every morning and straight into it, banging away on my computer, going all day long – that I fucked up my shoulder. ‘Fuck,’ I thought, ‘I’m going to have to stop writing!’ I wouldn’t have been able to write anything on the boat if I’d kept going. So I stopped for a week, my shoulder recovered and I got on the boat and was able to get all the stories done. Then I went back to Australia after two-and-a-half months in Indonesia to find all these jobs and bills and my life there waiting for me. I plunged into all that and just never got back into my novel. I’d forgot the intimate details and lost the ability to weave it all together. Also, the character was so weird and so different to me that I couldn’t just slide in and out of her. I could slowly build her up around me and turn myself into her, but it took me a long time to turn myself back into DC Green afterwards. I know that to finish it off I have to go off again somewhere, go back to Bali and remove all externalities, all the stuff of my life, and just submerge myself in that world again. Maybe I could do it in a few bursts. But some of it is really heavy, and when I get into it I get depressed. And now my surf journalism career has really picked up! After I wrote my book I got really motivated and thought, ‘Fuck, I can write!’ But at the same time people realised I was available all the time, and I started getting more and more work, enough for me to work as a surf journalist full-time. And now I’m reluctant to back off and vanish to do this book, which I might not be able to find a publisher for and which quite possibly won’t sell at all. I’m afraid I’ll have people ringing me up and giving me good jobs and trips and then going, ‘Ah, bloody DC! If he doesn’t want that…’ I’d get kicked back down the pecking order, after so many years of crawling up to the top of it. I’d be worried about sacrificing that, and I’d also be worried about money, because my mother was a single parent and always drilled into me, ‘We don’t have much money, we’ve got to be really careful with money!’ And now I am really careful with money, and one of my great fears is that I won’t have enough. Especially now that I’m a dad, I think, ‘What if I fuck up and end up not having a job and can’t afford to pay my mortgage or feed and clothe my daughter?’ It seems to me to be such a bad thing that I just keep working, being unable to refuse any assignment no matter how much I don’t want to do it, knowing I’m not going to do a good job because my heart’s not in it. But I just think, ‘Fuck, I’ve got to do it, and anyway if I do a few fucked things like this, then hopefully they’ll give me some good trips as well.’ I guess surf journalism is the comfort zone for me. For 17–18 years I’ve been writing for surf magazines and so now no matter how I play around with it it’s still comfortable. Even if I do something B-grade, I know editors are still going to run it. But you have to step outside that comfort zone… I’m motivating myself to do it more now, talking to you, that’s for sure! I’m pointing out what a softcock I’m being about it, and whenever I do that… That’s how I goad myself into surfing big waves and stuff like that – I tell myself, ‘Fuck, you softcock! You’ll be in a retirement home and you’ll be regretting the fact that you didn’t come out today. Sure it might drown you, but imagine if you make one of those insane waves!’ So I boot myself up the arse and get out there and have a go. Or if I’m doing a story and I think, ‘Fuck, there’s a famous surfer over there! But they’re so intimidating-looking and they probably don’t even know who I am and are probably going to tell me to fuck off and blah blah blah’ – then this little voice in my head starts saying, ‘You softcock! Call yourself an adventurous gonzo journalist and you’re skulking here in the corner too scared to go up! Who cares if they tell you to fuck off? It’ll be a good story if they tell you to fuck off.’ And once that voice gets going it goads me into all sorts of shit. I hate that voice, but at the same time it’s good, it’s healthy and effective, it makes me face my fears, and that’s how I grow. That’s how we all grow. If we just do the things we know, the things that are easy for us, if we don’t step outside the comfort zone, then we don’t grow – we don’t grow as writers, as surfers, as human beings… PART II: Australia, 2007 What sort of writing have you been doing in the last five or so years? I still write semi-regularly for surf mags in Oz, the US and Europe, but since I’ve become a full-time father, extensive gonzo travelling isn’t an easy option anymore. Taking the hackneyed ex-surf journo path to working for a surf company didn’t appeal either, as I’m rather fond of my soul and would prefer to live in Ulladulla, where I grew up. So instead, I’ve become a children’s book author! I’ve just had two books published. The first is Stinky Squad. Oztrailer has mysteriously turned into a nation of brain-eating zombies, run by an evil Prime Minister named Howard John. George Boof wants to bomb the entire country back to the Stone Age. The world’s only hope? A team of loser teens with revolting superpowers like acid vomit and super-sticky pimple pus: Stinky Squad! I loved writing this book. On the one hand, Stinky Squad is a 50,000-word, rip-snorting read for reluctant grom readers packed with cliff-hangers, ultra- violence, mega-grossness, laughs and mysteries galore. But it’s also important that stories have a bit of deep and meaningful stuff, and so on the other hand Stinky Squad is a biting critique of John Howard’s Australia, satirising everything from detention centres to our toadying relationship with America. The second book is Three Little Surfer Pigs. Curly, Grunt and Bruce are the naughtiest pigs in Fairyland. No beach is safe from these pranking porkers. Everything changes the day the pigs spy a beautiful and mysterious hog. Can the brat brothers beat her surfing challenge? Are they up for… PIG WEDNESDAY?? This bently rhyming picture book of the classic fairy tale features gorgeous hand-painted art by Simon McLean, who’s done lots of surf magazine art, and design by Graeme Murdoch, ASL’s guru design guy. Ten per cent of all proceeds from Three Little Surfer Pigs will be donated to CanTeen, the Australian organisation for young people living with cancer. I love this book too: it’s twisted, funny and chock full of surf stuff: exactly the sort of book I would have loved when I was a grommet. Heh, sorry to answer your question with the biggest double-plug since thongs were invented... What drew you to writing for children? Certainly not the money! I think I’ve found an even better method of slow bankruptcy than writing for surf magazines! Seriously, I really enjoy writing fiction and making people laugh. I find using my imagination is a lot easier and way more fun than writing non-fiction. Plus I don’t get in trouble off grumpy surf companies or pro surfers any more. As with the Harry Potter books and Shrek movies, I think a good children’s story will resonate with readers of all ages. And writing for kids tends to cut all the crap out of my writing. Kids don’t give a rat’s anus about overblown imagery, excessive adjectives and convoluted sentence structures that scream, ‘See what a brilliant writer I am!’ Grommets just want a rocking good yarn that will seize their interest and not let go, and that’s what I try to deliver. What do you think of the surf writing that’s been appearing in the last five years? It ranges fr om the sublime to the ridiculous. Unfortunately, surfing has become so corporate and advertising-driven that hardly anything offensive gets written any more, let alone published. Most magazine stories are tied in to advertising: like surfboard buyer tests featuring board labels that just happen to advertise in that issue. Also, there doesn’t seem to be much new journalistic talent. The best writers today were also the best writers ten years ago and most of the best writing is in books rather than magazines. Would you mind saying a bit about your own problems with alcohol back in the day? When I was travelling through Europe on an Operation Tubequest mission for ASL in 1995 I learned that my mother had died back in Oz and it was too late to return to her funeral. So I did the typical Aussie male grieving thing: I went on a bender. A BIG bender. My liver was already a bit dodgy after a bout of glandular fever and Indo malaria, and after a week on the turps, the big booze filter swelled up like a pregnant football, causing constant pain as it pressed against my ribs. I also began to turn yellow. A doctor told me I’d be dead within six months if I didn’t stop drinking. So I stopped drinking. [back to top] ~~~~ Days of Excess Zarautz, 1989. On his way home after an all-night bender, and a fully clothed bodysurf with Barton Lynch, Aussie Rod ‘the Box’ Kerr discovered he was due to surf in the first heat that morning…against American arch-Christian, Richie Collins. Remembers Box, ‘I got back down to the water’s edge absolutely paralytic, couldn’t even see.’ After every wave, the tour prince of partying would pause in the shoredump to retch and vomit before paddling back out. Even so, Box annihilated Collins, who had a shocker. That afternoon, the enraged Christian woke Box and demanded the two share a bottle of Scotch. Later, a drunken Richie ‘was swinging off the rafters’ and applying headlocks to Box, who claimed Richie mutated into ‘a deadset maniac,’ adding, ‘He got a lot of respect off the boys for that.’ It was the ultimate apocryphal triumph of Aussie excess over conservative Seppo dedication. Hell, it was the ‘80s! The Coke Classic Presentation night, 1991. Resplendent in dinner suit, with my trusty tape recorder and half a dozen optimistic condoms in my pockets, I was determined to both expose the seedy underbelly of pro surfing and get pissed on the free beers. For that year was the fag end of the Greed Decade and I wanted in on the action. The Top 44 was more than half-filled with Aussie surfers, a few of whom, like Box and his ring-in Hawaiian mate John ‘Shmoo’ Shimooka, set the tone of the whole tour: PARTY HARD! The previous several years had been the most decadent in pro surfing history, with party feats almost more highly revered than surfing skills. In those days, the freak on tour was Dave Macaulay: a brilliant top five surfer, especially in small waves, but also a married Christian with kiddies and no tattoos (no wonder Quiksilver culled him from their books!). Few could focus on the new day breaking through… That night I interviewed Box, Shmoo and Matt ‘Branno’ Branson in detail, and several other surfers more briefly, scoring some amazing quotes before I was kicked out with a drunken ex-world champion, who screamed at the bouncers, ‘Don’t you know who I AM?’ My sealed section article that followed in Australia’s Surfing Life established a new journalistic low. Quoth Branno, ‘My first year on tour I hung out with Box, Greeny, Pagey and Lawro…I was only 18, but after you hang out with those guys for a year, you feel like you’re 50!’ Confessed Sunny Garcia, ‘In 1989 I bought a brand new car. On the same day, I smashed it – a $26,000 car. Too much cocaine. (But) I haven’t done coke for three or four years. I’m having a kid any day now!’ Shmoo fondly recalled the fun he used to have in Hossegor with the legendary DJ Roland: ‘There’d be guys in the nude, swimming on the dance floor, guys ripping chick’s skirts off…I’ve got photos of me passed out, in the nude in the DJ’s club, while the nightclub is still going off. Rod is pissing on me and Roland is spewing right next to me.’ Stories of extreme excess flowed: of all-night orgies with three 16-year-old groupies in Florida, complete with high-fives throughout, film camera whirring and ‘everyone blowing left, right and centre’; of Japanese groupies being fucked with plastic McDonalds burger boxes; of one pro surfer pissing on his groupie in Brazil, only to have another pro surfer burst from a cupboard and squirt jizm all over her back; of inebriated idiots falling face-first into mountains of white powder… One year later. The three main surfers I featured in my ‘Sex, Drugs & Rock’n’Roll’ article were all culled from the Top 44. Perhaps the trio were victims of a harsh, never-repeated system in which only the Top 16 automatically requalified (the system became a fairer 28 the following year). Perhaps they simply partied too hard. Or perhaps, as was suggested to me, the three were victims of an ASP conspiracy. The theory went: after my article came out, an embarrassed ASP, keen to clean its grubby image, did everything possible to get rid of such disreputable characters. Some pros, like Barton Lynch, held a grudge against me over this for years. Though I didn’t hide my tape recorder, as some suggested, I was a young gun dickhead keen to make a name, happy to go for cheap controversy, to exploit trust, to write with the same degree of excess. When I heard later that I’d made Box’s mum cry, I realised how far I’d gone over the line. When I was then sent on a surf trip with Box and Branno, I feared the pair would lynch me. But they both laughed at the water under the bridge, proving bigger men than I. All I could do was apologise to them, and to anyone I’ve hurt with my sensational words. I’ve learned, I hope. Anyway, the first culling was almost immediate. Partying on after the Coke presentation at a Kings Cross night club, Branno was viciously stabbed in the stomach and neck and almost died. Branno – a brave if closeted homosexual in a sea of rowdy heterosexuality, is today a chef with his own band. Also failing to requalify, Box became a lifeguard at his home suburb of Bronte, while Shmoo was relegated to the ‘QS ranks. Even surfers I mentioned only briefly were struck down. Robbie Page was busted with a few tabs of acid in 1992 and spent 66 days in a Japanese prison, half in solitary. Nicky Wood was similarly nailed for possession of marijuana on the Gold Coast. Though not gaoled, his sponsors brushed him, and he has never been a serious threat since. Even the sole Euro contender of the day, the ever-partying Carwyn Williams, ended up mangled in a car crash, told he would never surf again. Out also went Gary Green, Ross Clarke-Jones and young Slater rival, Shane Herring, perhaps the greatest of them all, another victim of party-hard mates, the so-called ‘Tall Poppy Syndrome’ where egalitarian Aussies lop down the tallest poppies, so no-one is better than anyone else. Seppos Curren and Gerr simply bailed, while Occy ballooned like a lounge-bound puffer fish. He and Shmoo were the only ones who pulled off successful comebacks – Shmoo by settling down, renouncing his wicked ways and launching into a serious physical fitness program with the earlier reformed Sunny Garcia; Occy via a remarkable trail few believed navigable. Luke Egan best summed up the mood of ambivalence after the culling year: ‘Box liked everyone to hang together, and be tight-knit, so he’s a real loss. He probably went too far with the partying, but that’s Box. He was spewing that he didn’t requalify, but his couple of years on the tour will be the most insane to talk about of anyone.’ For better or worse, the Excess Era was over. The New Social Order The other great harbinger of change in the early ‘90s was the arrival of the (mostly American) New School. Slater, Machado, Dorian, Knox, Williams and co. were all healthy, anti-drug and very small drinkers at best. In the same way that Shaun Tomson had been so opposed to the great Aussie drugged larrikin Michael Petersen in the mid ‘70s, so too was Slater in particular critical of any form of bodily abuse amongst pro surfers. The bar was raised. The year Slater won G-land, fresh and frank with me in the jungle, he pondered his own childhood: ‘Drinking…it quite possibly cost my dad his marriage and a lot of time with his kids, which is…probably a sad thing for him.’ Slats agreed his father’s alcoholism affected his own outlook on life, especially in regard to the tradition of surfers as anti-establishment party animals, what he termed the ‘Aussie bong on’ mentality. Slats explained, ‘I’ve heard a lot of guys go, “Oh I’m an Australian, I’ve gotta get on the piss tonight.” That’s just an excuse. Whether you want to break out of your shell, peer pressure, just drinking your sorrows away, or forget about something for awhile, there’s a problem there.’ Not that Slats condemned without trying, for he also admitted to having thrown up twice in his life. ‘I felt really shitty about it. I never want to do that again. I’ve never even smoked a joint. I could stand back and criticise it, but it’s not really my place because I don’t know about it enough. I’ve just seen the effects of it, and it’s not good.’ But as with everything else Slater did in the ‘90s, even his social actions set an agenda for the rest of the New School, which the remainder of the world would either have to struggle to match, or else be put to the spear like the last of the Neanderthals. The bar was raised. Zarautz, 1995. At the first meeting of underground Aussie support group, LMB (Lick My Balls), I sat down next to tour correspondent Sarge – voted the worst influence on tour by Pagey only a few years earlier – just as he sparked up a joint and passed it…in the other direction! I cursed, figuring the spliff would be sucked to ash by the time it passed through five sets of hands. Instead, I gawked as 20 young pro surfers handed the joint swiftly around the circle as if it were a reeking, ticking bomb (though admittedly, the more drug-inclined young Aussie pros were quite possibly lost in the foyer and not at the meeting at all). How times had changed. These days, even Sarge is a clean- living Christian guy. Australia, 2003. I’m not sure how I feel about the evolution of pro surfing in the last decade. It’s good that surfing’s role models are no longer booze-fueled misogynists, but it’s also a little sad that so many of the sport’s unique and crazed individuals have moved on (the last being, perhaps, the recently retired Hoyo). Maybe surfers in the ‘80s only went so crazy because they were compelled to ride such shitty waves. Certainly, Dave Macaulay would be more at home on tour these days. The Top 44 is a mobile creche; a big night out for 21st Century pros is a tight five–four score in a backgammon tournament, followed by a few racy emails and a bodywax. The path to the top is clear: clean- living health backed up with a stable relationship, preferably married like all the recent world champs – Sunny to Raina; Occy to Bea and Slats to, well, his own inordinate, undeniable talent. One should drink only in moderation and only when the contest is over. While drugs…do not exist on the pro tour any more (or is that any less?). As for groupies – well, thankfully, one little baby wasn’t tossed out with the reeking bathwater… Maybe the ASP has become a modern day morality play. Maybe these days, ultra-straight pro surfing is even more removed from the average Surfing Joe or Joelene. Or maybe it’s all a big rolling cycle, and the days of yore may lurch to life once more. Parko, Fanning, Morrison and co represent the greatest Gold Coast/ Aussie surf push since MP, PT, Bugs and Drouyn strutted Kirra and Burleigh. And these guys know how to party. — DC Green [back to top] ~~~~ Vulture Light really burning now, sun got up all sudden spilling over everything. Dousing it. Noise of the cars playing pizzicato on my nerves. Bead of sweat springs up on Macy’s temple, I can see it throb throb throb through her hair. Slip of metal clasped tight. Calloused old vices sprouting curls, white in places where they bust up and healed and bust again. That bird at it again in the roof of the world. None too many back here, but that one always shrieking. Macy looks up, I do too, but it’s too dizzy and the heat starts up again like a motor. I had the same car since before Macy-O, bowing down in the shade there, trying to escape the press. Fucker roars into life and Macy climbs up rides shotgun when I open the door for her. House gone in the rear-view, all needs paint but been thinking that for years, it’ll be dust before. Pass on down past Brer and Peter, who waves with one stump because the other got took. We stop out the shop and I say to Macy ‘wait there.’ I done need say it anymore, because she always stays put. Shop-girl rolls her eyes at me. ‘Going see shore again, Farley?’ I go to the far wall and choose my water- grade. I choose an eight because Macy been awful dry late and needs it. I’d drink ten to get by, nine on Friday. I eye the 1s and 2s, but I can feel they eyes from behind the rack. Glance through the winder where the hot sun still cuts through the layers the girl got hung. It burns right through the glass. Poor Macy, I think, with no shield. Empties my wallet right out and just have enough, thanks oh thanks. Kids walking past looking real dry, looking at Macy, bug eyes and red skin. Back in the car she is all pinned up one wall in the shade, and I cap the water and pour a bit for her. Sailing out of town, cutting through the still and the wind feels good against our faces. It’s like before the heat come on and the green withered up. Feels like we headed out the coast, for pineapple and to play all day in the waves. Just like real wind come whipping down through the canyons and clusters, fanning the sea. And I think of my buddies, hooting and hollering, side-slipping down the waves. Then we eat up the miles, cutting through the dust on the road and sending it all pluming out behind us. All that curmudgeoning forgot, and even Macy has a smile on. Now you can clear see where the land end and the sea starts, like a great big column where the dry meets the wet. You’d think it’d be real angry and tense up there in the air, those great differences between the two, but it’s like all their energy for a fight just left. This is where they mine water grades 2 to 5, since the rain stopped. It still pisses a bit here, an it leaks a bit from the mills, so they fenced off five miles from the sea to keep people away. We get closer. Thing is, Macy don’t know why we are here and she is up all happy at the winder. Eyes find it hard to see the green now, but suddenly we are right up in it and the dust drops away from the tyres. The signs start up, one every hundred or so. I count em, I know where we gone. It was lucky that Macy found the narrow crack in the wire. The car was giving me trouble or we’da never seen it. Seen her scramble through and come back dripping wet was the happiest day. She shook herself off and I caught the drops on my tongue. Near Pure it was, I swear to you. Macy felt good then for a while but that was then. We crest the last hill before the slip down to the road where the green is so thick through the fences it feels like you hid from the world. Then there it is, that great jewel of ocean. It looks smaller though, acres of blue stretch and stretch. This is damn near close as you can see it. Pull over then and get out, do a big stretch as if sore from the road. Macy looks excited, cause she been there before. I let open the side door and she comes out like a shot. She knows where we gone and slopes off down the side of the road where little bits of green are trying to seed in the dirt. Macy runs ahead, and then she wriggles under the wire and beyond, in the natural shade. I want to go under with her, but they’d see the car and we’d have no chance then. I can’t keep her you see, can’t afford the grades of water she needs, and I know they’ll take her soon. I stamp the wire down where it was come up, and give Macy one last look through it. Then she goes. — Dan Crockett [back to top] ~~~~ Air I dream of swimming up through pressured blue, erupting beyond that surface of shifting light into air. I wake, still swimming. This pressured blue world grows deeper. That surface of shifting light floats further away. I swim, suspended. And you’re there. We’re both awake now and swimming through the pressured blue and hoping for air soon. Silence in the silence– and why not, when pressured blue drowns out each other’s voice? Why not, when we’re both swimming now and the surface draws closer now and something seems to be lifting us up from below? Why not talk up there, beyond the trembling liquid edge of our pressured blue world, where the shifting light is air, and the air, where pressure ends and space begins? — Ry Beville [back to top] ~~~~ Mindsurfing Mindsurfing is a great thing to do. You always rip, the surf’s always good, and you can do it anywhere, anytime: sitting in traffic, at work, during flat spells. I think I mindsurf more than I surf in the ocean, and I’m probably not alone on that score either because, let’s face it, no-one surfs as much, or as well, as they wish. And the fact is, surfing transfers itself to mental imagery so well. Bored? Sit back, close your eyes and rip like Kelly. Or imagine the view from inside Chopes. Quietly conjure up the feeling of weightlessness, imagine the view of the reef and the flash of the lip. It passes the time and feels damn good. But beyond enjoyment it can serve a purpose. Psychologists could no doubt explain why humans daydream, but I’m thinking of a purpose specific to surfing. Shaun Tomson thinks so too. The 1977 world champ recently published a surfer’s code whose second-last maxim is: I will catch a wave every day, even in my mind. Such is the importance Tomson places on keeping a mental connection during dry times. I’ve got mates working on the mines in Western Australia and they won’t see the ocean for weeks or months, but they are surfers and they long for it. I’m sure they think about it at least once a day. Mindsurfing can also fuel our creativity. In 2003, mad Monty Webber made one of the best surf movies I’ve seen…with no surfers in it. Liquid Time is composed of slow-motion sequences of boat wakes breaking along shallow sandbars near Webber’s home on the North Coast of New South Wales. Shot at ultra-close range so the waves fill the entire screen, the dynamics and shape are identical to those of normal ocean waves, yet in reality they are no more than 20cm high. And they are perfect…utterly perfect! Watching Liquid Time, it is impossible not to imagine surfing these tiny waves. Just let reality take a raincheck and stuff yourself deep inside those perfect peelers. Imagine the view! And it ’s not just food for the imagination: mindsurfing can help our real ocean surfing. Rather than just sit back and indulge ourselves, why not try to re-create our surfing fantasies in real life? Someone that understood this concept was surfing super-coach Martin Dunn. Back in the late 1980s, Dunn created Ripstix. Ripstix were stickers to be placed on the nose of your board with a picture of a surfer doing a manoeuvre – a re-entry, cutback or top-turn – with the body in perfect placement for that particular manoeuvre. Dunn understood the power of ‘dream, see, do’ and Ripstix provided the ‘see’, allowing surfers working on a particular manoeuvre to picture how their body should be positioned for perfect execution. I think the idea, at least for competitive surfers, was great. I use past tense because they no longer exist. We’re a self-conscious bunch, we surfers, and a Ripstix on the nose of your board went counter to the image we like to project of not trying too hard. - Stu Nettle [back to top] ~~~~ Mark Sutherland [back to top] ~~~~ Surfing and the Artistic Debate in the 1960s–1970s A while back there was all this controversy over whether surfing was a sport or an art, and for a time, it really put a line down the middle of surfing. Well it flashes on me that in surfing, art equals style…Style as an external, physical equivalent of an internal, non- physical reality. In other words, style is the difference between surfers. – Drew Kampion1 The late 1960s and early 1970s was a turbulent period in surfing history when involvement and expression on the wave vied with competition. Surfing was described as a play activity, a lifestyle and, by some, an art form. The last idea was fuelled by rhetoric in magazines and films which preached a message of surfing as a lifestyle through which one might drop out, travel and be an artist on the wave. The notion of surfing as art echoes a long-standing debate in philosophy about the place of creativity in sport and games. There are a number of ways activities can be classified, ranging from playful to spiritual, from competitive to sporting.2 However, the main arguments surrounding sports as art can be understood in the following four ways: sport is neither artistic nor aesthetic; sport is quasi-aesthetic and shares some qualities with art; sport possesses some aesthetic qualities but is not art; sport is performance art akin to dance. In the last case, the aesthetic possibilities of surfing might involve the bodily dimension, creativity, grace, speed and expressive possibilities. As Durward argued, ‘…Art is by definition self-expression. In a performing art, the artist is physically involved in that self-expression…A surfer is a performing artist; his medium is the wave.’3 The platform of expressions and involvement therefore formed the basis of the argument for surfing as art, an issue which was also informed by hippie values in this era. It is possible to argue that surfing values differ from culture to culture. Indeed, these values can all be applied to surfing at different socio-historic points in its development. In simplistic terms, the values depend upon where a particular type of surfing is located in the sports/games/play continuum in any particular era. A distinction made between sport and art was that although some sports are similar to dance, they are sports by virtue of their competitive element. Leaving aside the view that this idea proposes dance in competition cannot be described as art, one possible argument for surfing as art in the late 1960s and early 1970s was that in this era surfing tended to be regarded more as play. Surfers, in general, favoured an anti- contest ethos. This was an approach influenced by the hippie countercultural values embraced by many surfers during the 1960s and into the 1970s. Hippie values were encouraged by changes in surf technique and technology towards the mid to late 1960s, changes which affected surfing values and philosophy. The ‘surfing as art’ debate was fuelled by two important aspects of surfing in this era, first in surfing media such as magazines and films, second by new surfboard technology and the revolution of the shortboard. The shortboard revolution ushered in an era in which the boards changed dramatically from 12–14 feet in length to 9 feet 4 inches and less. As Gross notes, ‘…between 1967 and 1969, virtually 100% of the active, worldwide surfing community abandoned long boarding in favour of the short board. To put that into perspective, imagine if everything you saw in the water today – short boards, long boards, body boards, everything – was gone in two years, replaced by something you hadn’t yet imagined.’4 Shortboards came at just the right time when surfing values were beginning to move away from showy hotdogging towards a more introspective, spiritual notion of surfing in which one surfed for the ‘good of one’s soul’. Shortboards changed surfing values and performance because they enabled better manoeuvrability and tube riding. The tube also inspired a new aesthetic sensibility in surfers, and this was expressed in surfing magazines and films. The roots of this new aesthetic were in hippie countercultural values. Hippie values, according to Brake, tend to be middle class in origin and stress qualities such as individualism, self-growth, the exploration of alternative lifestyles, ‘doing your own thing’ and creativity.5 These values were expressed in surfing in the late 1960s and early 1970s in surfing magazines and films. Surfing magazines and films were produced regularly from the early 1960s and they were frequently produced by the same individuals. The first major surf film producer, Bud Browne, spliced together footage of his surf trips to Hawaii in the early 1950s and, as Warshaw observed, ‘…for 90 minutes Browne had defied the cliché, becoming the host with vacation pictures that other people actually wanted to see.’ 6 Browne established the model for film production, distribution and exhibition through a four wall chain of surf clubs and high school halls. He screened the silent films and added his own commentary and music. Other surfers such as Bruce Brown and Greg Noll followed Browne’s example, Bruce Brown famously producing The Endless Summer (1964) to counter surfsploitation Hollywood dross of the early 1960s. One other film producer, John Severson, an art teacher, produced a 32-page press pack to promote his film Surf Fever (1961). Severson quickly realised that here was an opportunity for transmedia promotion using the newsletter to advertise his films. The press pack evolved into Surfer magazine, which was to be influential in promoting American surfing values and a nomadic lifestyle throughout the western world. Film producers were often involved in the production of magazines, either as contributors or editors: Bob Evans, a prolific filmmaker, also published Surfing International in the early 1960s; Tracks, first published in 1970, was intended by John Witzig, Alby Falzon and Dave Elphick to promote their film production. Thus the roots of magazines and films were bound together, and it is no surprise that the values expressed in both media were identical. However, there was a caveat: although from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s the idea of surfing as art and the avant garde was expressed in films and magazines, it was channelled through national values. These values formed the basis for differing American and Australian attitudes towards surfing. An analysis of three magazines – Surfer and Surfing from America and Tracks from Australia – reveals that the American (mainly Californian) media tended to stress the romance of the wave and downplay the hardships and dangers of surfing whereas the Australian media tended to emphasise more realistic concerns of the surfer lifestyle including healthy eating and meditation. These differing values evolved from the differing roots of surfing in both countries. American surfing tended to develop from tourist and capitalist discourses and was affected by American national myths of the frontier7. Australian surfing developed from a mixture of middle class beach cultures and the activities of the Surf Life Saving Association (SLSA) which were informed by nationalist, ethnic and pathological discourses.8 Nevertheless Surfer and Tracks included similar types of writing from poetry to short stories. Where Surfer and Surfing were printed on glossy paper, Tracks attempted to occupy a student/outsider aesthetic with production on newsprint and no adverts in early issues. In addition to surfing the articles covered politics, cookery and yoga, in short, a guide to living the good life. Surfers in this era described their type of surfing as ‘country soul’ with its emphasis on a rural lifestyle, an idyll so beautifully evoked in Alby Falzon and Dave Elphick’s Morning of the Earth (1972). The film studied a small community of five to six families who had returned to the land to live and work on farms and, between work, to surf. Like the rhetoric in Tracks, the film was a model of the ideal surfing lifestyle in which nature and the body were in harmony on land and in the sea. Harmony in the sea revolved around the surfer’s creativity and involvement with the wave. However, it was not the Malibu medium wave which inspired the surfer. It was the tube. Much of the surfing imagery and literature in this era revolved around the tube, the ‘holy grail’ of surfing. The experience of tube riding evoked feelings of spirituality, involvement, experimentation and creativity on the wave, thanks to greater maneouvrability and speed afforded by shortboards. In surf rhetoric it was inferred that shortboards allowed surfers to interact with the wave whereas the long board came between the surfer and involvement with the sea. In his commentary while shaping his board in The Crystal Voyager, for instance, surf guru George Greenough noted, ‘The surfboards in the early sixties were just crude lumps that provided water stability but were difficult to manoeuvre.’ Indeed, Greenough, Bob McTavish and Nat Young promoted the philosophy of involvement with the wave from the mid 1960s. Instead of performing on the wave, involvement ‘was based on powerful turns in and round the curl’.9 Involvement and creativity on the wave inspired normally taciturn surfers to wax lyrical about the tube as an object of beauty in poetry, weird and wacky stories and psychedelic imagery in magazines. Rick Griffin, the resident artist for Surfer in this period, frequently used psychedelic imagery, most notably on the front cover of Surfer March 1969 which featured a highly stylised surfer riding acid waves.10 Griffin also drew a cartoon series entitled, ‘Tales from the Tube’ which reflected the output of underground comics art of the day. An area where American and Australian magazines crossed over was in poetry. ‘Green room writing’ appeared in surfing magazines from the later 1960s, most famously with (the foremost tube- rider in this era), Jock Sutherland making a religious connection by describing the inside of the tube as ‘The Pope’s Living Room’.11 A similar juxtaposition of spiritual enlightenment with danger is described in Aaberg’s article, ‘Invisible Tracks’, for Surfer in 1970: Within a cavern of peace, a silent hissing, crystal shingles of green perfection, and you’re safe, but locked far and deep within the hole of danger. Green room writing was a consistent feature of surf magazines from the late 1960s to the mid 1970s. Common themes expressed in the poetry and literature involved birth/ rebirth, and the spiritual aspects of the wave. This was often linked with altered states, birth, death, sex and spirituality the underpinning theme is time, specifically the linearity of time which begins and ends. Referring back to Aaberg’s original statement, the water is described as ‘crystal’, a descriptor used in the title of Alby Falzon’s film of 1973, The Crystal Voyager to describe the ocean. The notion of crystal is that of clarity of vision, prophecy and eternity and it may be argued that by riding the tube, a surfer may step outside time and experience ‘truth’. Like surf magazines, surf films used experimental and avant garde techniques to express an aesthetic sensibility in surfing. They used methods such as bleaching out and slowing down shots, acid colours, all set to progressive rock soundtracks. Kampion describes surfing films of the late 1960s, early 1970s as ‘stoked paeans of organic bliss and tubular escape’.13 The titles of this sub-genre of surfing films describe the values of soul surfing and hippie culture; Cosmic Children (Hal Jepson), Evolution (Paul Witzig), Morning of the Earth (1972, Alby Falzon), Pacific Vibrations (1972, John Severson). The logline of the latter might apply to any of these films: An example of man in harmony with nature…A life that doesn’t emphasise materialism. Have a good time. The Natural Way. A witness of the Truth.’ In the spirit of their artistic pretensions soul surfing films were often exhibited in art colleges and arthouse cinemas.The link between art venues and soul surfing films is nowhere better expressed than in the work of George Greenough whose ‘fish eye’ footage, shot in the tube, was slowed down to evoke the psychotropic affect of tube riding.The 20 odd minute sequences were placed at the end of The Innermost Limits of Fun in the ‘Coming of the Dawn, and ‘Echoes’ in The Crystal Voyager. His film, The Innermost Limits of Pure Fun (1970) inspired the exhibit ‘To George Greenough from the Outside Looking In’ (1971) in Sydney’s Yellow House Artists’ ‘Spring Exhibition’.14 It depicted ‘a room painted to appear as if it was cut from rock, with furniture and objects painted to look like they were made of stone’.15 The doors open out onto Hokusai’s print of a tsunami. A piece of curved glass balanced on the curl of the wave ‘providing a fish eye’ view to evoke Greenough’s typical depiction of the wave curling over on itself. Alby Falzon’s Morning of the Earth is also a useful example of a ‘pure’ surf film, as it gives an indication of the values underpinning surf culture in the early 1970s. Lewis notes that in Morning of the Earth: ‘The body is centralized; the film-maker creates his profound sense of nascence and purity through the deployment of lyrical imagery, violet filters, slow-motion sequences and the omnipresence of a Romantic and idyllic “earth”.’ It is precisely this romanticism which the film-maker invokes against the ‘other’ world of social conformity and control. Surfing is the condition of freedom and rebirth which extinguishes rational-national borders and differentiation that is not simply the purity of surf and surfing. 16 Falzon’s aim in making Morning of the Earth was to produce a beautiful surfing movie. The film also showed surfers surfing the exotic and ‘virginal’ surf of Indonesia. Many of the arthouse pretensions of Morning of the Earth carry over into Falzon and David Elphick’s The Crystal Voyager, the documentary about George Greenough. The final 23-minute ‘Echoes’ sequence, noted above, featured footage shot by Greenough inside the wave accompanied by the music of Pink Floyd. In effect it was a filmic translation and poetic evocation of green room writing in the magazines. Previews and reviews of The Crystal Voyager tended to be enthusiastic in both the surfing press and mainstream publications. Tracks devoted its December 1973 edition to The Crystal Voyager with articles and reviews of the film. In Cinema Papers Quarterly, Flaus noted, ‘Echoes is given special mention: If it were not for the extraordinary final passage, The Crystal Voyager might have claimed our respect, but scarcely our enthusiasm…With the first “ping” of Pink Floyd’s Echoes we are captive to the “lovely impulse” Shelley and Keats wrote of…We are immersed in the patterns, textures, colours of the watery curtain and music of the spheres.’17 The film grossed $120,000 in its initial Australian run. Through careful marketing by Elphick and with monetary support from the Australian Film Development Corporation, it was successfully shown at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival and transferred to London’s West End. After its success in Cannes the film ran for three months in the West End of London. Tracks, ever sceptical about the ability of British audiences to understand surfing, ran a short tongue-in-cheek article suggesting that the British climate was so alien to the ‘sunlit hydra power, tanned healthy bodies and the Man-Nature union’ that it was inevitable the film would flop. As if to reinforce this notion Jameson described audience reactions to the film: ‘The screen gives way to Greenough’s voyeurism as the camera’s eye captures the inner regions of the surf-air-sunlight orgasm…A comment from over my right shoulder tells me somebody thought it was a bore’.18 However, Jameson did not account for the film making £100,000 profit in London in its four-month run. Some surfers too did not think of surfing as art. A small but vocal minority surfaced in surf magazine rhetoric, mainly in letters to the editor from disgruntled surfers. In response to an article in Surfer proclaiming the new shift in emphasis to involvement,19 an Australian surfer complained, ‘Total involvement, your own thing…this is just pretentiousness…start catering for surfers who enjoy surfing for what it is.’20 The link between art and sport is by no means a new one. As noted above, whether sport can be described as art is a continuing debate and one which it is difficult to address in a short piece such as this. My point is that the debate about whether surfing is art, sport, lifestyle, etc., rests upon its social and historical context. Although surfing in the late 1960s and early 1970s was proposed as possessing aesthetic qualities, these qualities were expressed in different ways dependent upon cultural contexts. Returning to Kampion’s assertion that surfing is style at the beginning of this article, in Surfer magazine it was based upon the creativity and involvement of the surfer’s interaction with the wave. This belief arose from and was supported by hippie countercultural values. American rhetoric emphasising freedom and individuality embraced a philosophy of brotherhood on the wave (a myth which ignored surf rage, localism and attacks on kneeboarders). American magazines and films expressed the artistic decision as a poetic search for adventure, questing for unknown waves through which the American frontier might be extended. Australian ‘country soul’ surfing, however tended to emphasise political issues such as ‘anarchism, anti-capitalism, individualism, anti-development, and ecology…’21 Despite these radical political ideas, Australian surfing values were predominantly based upon masculinity, lad culture and mateship. They were also underpinned by notions of professionalism and competition instilled from the ideology of the SLSA but also from Australia’s colonial status.22 In the 1970s, the Whitlam government with its strong sporting platform began the process of developing the sports infrastructure in Australia. Funding was offered to athletes to travel and to develop rules and competition standards. All of these factors resulted in Australian culture’s more practical and bullish attitude to sport and also surfing. In 1974 competition in Australia took a leap forward with the formation of the Australian Professional Surfing Association (APSA) solely for the aim of organising contests. The prize money won by surfers in these contests was crucial to their strong presence on the world surfing stage.23 A new breed of Ozzie upstarts – Ian Cairns, Michael Peterson and Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew – stepped into the gap left when top surfers such as Nat Young dropped out of competitive surfing. Their aggressive ‘surf mongrel’ attitude to surfing, fiercely competitive spirit and commitment to their surfing lifestyles was signalled in the film, Free Ride. Surfing values evolved from play/ art to pro/sport. Although surfing films and magazines infused local surfing communities around the globe with notions of surfing as spiritual and as an art form, as noted above, not all of these messages were wholeheartedly accepted. Surfers tend to express their personal attitudes in their philosophy of surfing whether in their local contexts or as individuals. Surfing provides surfers with a range of lifestyle opportunities which have evolved, filtered through various national, global and historical contexts. This article has examined one such historical era in which surfing was promoted as art. The expression of art in surfing, however, was tempered by national and local contexts. Today, although surfers perform diverse values and identities, the influences of soul surfing can still be identified in the continuing debate on the aesthetics of surfing, the rural idyll and the search for that elusive ‘perfect’ wave. All of these can be traced back to the time between the early 1960s to the early 1980s when an elite of charismatic figures influenced and inscribed their values in the surfing media. Whether surfing is art or not is a debate that remains significant today with notions of surfing as 'dancing’ and the rise of a new generation of soul surfers. — Joan Ormrod [back to top] REFERENCES 1 Drew Kampion (1969) ‘Style: A Common Man’s Look at Artistic Wholes’, Surfer, 10(1): 29. 2 The debate on different values encapsulated in various sports is fully discussed in Robert G. Osterhoudt (1991) The Philosophy of Sport: An Overview, Champaign, Illinois: Stipes Publishing Co. It is a debate which is too complex for an article of this length which focuses on the historical and cultural effects of the notion of surfing as art. 3 J. Durward (1970) ‘Surfing and the Artistic Decision’, Surfer, 11(2): 100–02. 4 George Gross (1998) ‘Moving Forward: A Greenough Scrapbook, 1960–1970’, Surfer ’s Journal , 7(4), http:www.surfersjournal.com/greenough_vol/no.4/ greenough.feature.htm. 5 Mike Brake (1990) Comparative Youth Culture: the Sociology of Youth Cultures and Youth Subcultures in America, Britain, and Canada, London: Routledge. 6 Matt Warshaw (1999) ‘Rough Cut: Surfing on Film’, The Australian Surfer’s Journal, 2(2): 10. 7 Joan Ormrod (2005) ‘Endless Summer (1964): Consuming Waves and Surfing the Frontier’, Film and History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies, 35(1): 39–51. 8 Douglas Booth (1991) ‘War off Water: The Australian Surf Life Saving Association and the Beach’, Sporting Traditions, 7(2): 135–62. 9 Matt Warshaw (2003) The Encyclopedia of Surfing, NewYork, London: Harcourt: 720. 10 A gallery of Surfer and other rare surf magazine covers can be found at Surfbooks.com: http:// www.surfbooks.com/surfermagazines.htm. 11 Drew Kampion (1970) ‘In the Pope’s Living Room with Jock Sutherland’, Surfer, 11(6): 72. 12 Denny Aaberg (1970) ‘Invisible Tracks’, Surfer, 11(2):77. 13 Drew Kampion (1998) Stoked. Koln: Evergreen: 112. 14 Albie Thoms (2000) Surfmovies, Australia: Shore Thing:112. 15 Thoms, 2000: 112. 16 Jeff Lewis (1998) ‘Between the Lines: surf texts, prosthetics and everyday theory’, Social Semiotics, 8(1):55–70. 17 John Flaus (1974) ‘Crystal Voyager’, Cinema Papers, July: 276. 18 Neil Jameson (1974) ‘No, George. They’re not ready for this!’, Tracks, December: 8. 19 Drew Kampion (1968) ‘The Super Short, Uptight, V- Bottom, Tube Carving Plastic Machines’, Surfer, 9(4): 40. 20 Peter Murphy (1969) Letter in Surfer, 10(1): 10. 21 Margaret Henderson (2001) ‘A Shifting Line Up: men, women, and Tracks surfing magazine’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 15(3): 321. 22 McDevitt, P. F. (2004) ‘May the Best Man Win’: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, New York, Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan. 23 Phil Jarratt (1977) ‘The Pros Get Organised’, Tracks, January: 33. [back to top] ~~~~ Night surfers wake to be still drifting again along the eye’s sea coast; chance, the randy surfer guzzler of continents and girled grit arrivings, head blown soft above the headlands, slide and drown of belly wave, muscle knocked trapped boomed darkening down dives under groundfoam nothing slipping above, below between the shrilling laugh of the land breathers surging under drumming eared oceans. Dreaming again: a taste of salt veins naked around night rings, the splayed girl strapped to the spinning chair whirling with the glistening of the silver whore fate, white through the mango bushes under the headland then soft lipped into wave groaned shivering to the breath of moons’ tide her sea-hair falling to a blind star’s cold dancing. — John Stokes [back to top] ~~~~ Surfing Idol ‘Ha! You want to learn to surf?’ Windi wrinkled her nose at Dulpi’s declaration that she intended to learn to surf on Kuta Beach. She knew Dulpi hated the sun’s rays because she was afraid they would make her skin turn black. Dulpi nodded firmly, a big smile lighting up her face. ‘Are you serious?’ Windi couldn’t believe it. ‘Very serious.’ Dulpi nodded still more firmly, messing up her usually neat bangs. ‘And why are you interrogating me with that look on your face, anyway? So shocked just to hear that I want to learn to surf! What if you heard I was to star in a movie alongside Leonardo Di Caprio? I can hardly imagine the look on your face then,’ Dulpi muttered angrily, her eyes bulging. ‘Admit you’re just envious because you don’t have the guts to try it,’ she added with a look of contempt. ‘That’s not it, Pi. I just remember how you pretended to be sick when our sports teacher suddenly set us a swimming test.’ ‘You mean to say I can’t swim, Win?’ Dulpi cut in drily. ‘That’s it! And you once said that you’re scared to swim at the beach because besides having your skin turn black you’re also scared of a shark attack like in Jaws.’ Windi finished her sentence with a feeling of great satisfaction, seeing the expression on Dulpi’s face change in the manner of a famous actor who realizes her secret has been revealed. Privately, Dulpi had to agree with what Windi had said because it was in fact the truth. But Windi couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm by stating such embarrassing facts. ‘You’re so mean, Win. You just want to discourage me,’ Dulpi said, putting a sad look on her face. ‘I’m not mean, Pi,’ Windi retorted. ‘And it’s not as though I revealed a state scecret, is it?’ ‘It’s only a three-day pogram. Learning to surf for three days won’t turn me into an African. And I’ll feel safe being with Mickey. He’ll be the first to help me if anything goes wrong.’ Dulpi’s eyes shone. ‘Mickey?’ Windi squinted suspiciously. She snatched the flyer from Dulpi’s hand and glanced at it. ‘Oh!’ Windi scoffed. ‘So the instructor is Mickey, the Japanese- Brazilian you’re always telling me about, the one who inspires you to write poetry, whose name you write on exercise books and benches and walls? Now I see why you’re so keen to learn to surf. Three days will be nothing – you’ll be able to keep it up for three months, even three years, if he’s the one showing you how.’ ‘Mean thing!’ Dulpi thought. ‘That’s not it, Win…’she began. ‘You mean I’m not wrong?’ Windi laughed out loud. ‘It’s not like that at all. I don’t like Mickey. I’m just taking the three-day private lesson to fill the school vacation. It’s boring sitting at home all the time. My parents and younger brothers and sisters have gone to Jogja, and I’ve been left at home with Pipin, who never speaks,’ Dulpi explained, although Windi’s words had already made her blush. ‘I think that’s even worse! You’re willing to spend hours under the hot sun if it means you can be with Mickey, then go home fried to a crisp and still hope that people will think you’re pretty because your skin is so white and fine. For a guy who might not even like you, you’d do things you never wanted to do before. It would be better if you stayed at home doing nothing. Help Pipin mop the floor, wash the dishes or cook – at least you’d be learning to do housework while helping out your maid,’ Windi harangued her friend furiously. ‘Ck… ck… ck…, Dulpi… Dulpi,’ she said, shaking her head in pity. ‘Hmm,’ Dulpi frowned. She knew she could never win this debate because Windi already held all the aces. The only thing she could do was go home, since soon the school gate would close. Tomorrow the week-long vacation would begin. The students and teachers had been leaving for home for the last half hour. Only a few students were left at school, including the two of them. ‘Thanks for making me sleepy. I should hurry – I have to register for my three-day private surfing lesson. Wish for me to become a good surfer girl, and one day I’ll show you how. He he he he…’ Dulpi left laughing and holding her flyer tightly, as if expecting someone to try to take it off her. She was tired of listening to Windi and afraid that she would say the wrong thing if she let the conversation continue. For example, she might let it slip that she was falling in love with the good-looking boy whose name was Mickey. In the morning, when the sun had just begun to rise in the sky and a cold wind seemed to wrap itself around one’s body and clutch at one’s bones, Dulpi was at the beach in a state of great excitement. It wasn’t seeing the big waves thumping on the shore that caused her heart to race, but seeing Mickey weave across the face of a wave on his white surfboard. Every now and then Mickey disappeared behind a curtain of water, as though into a cave, then appeared again standing upright on his surfboard. Dulpi clapped her hands in delight, crying out like a spectator at the circus. Mickey returned to shore and approached Dulpi. ‘Hi, Mickey’ Dulpi said. ‘Hi to you, too, Dulpi,’ Mickey smiled. With his dark eyes, he carefully looked Dulpi up and down. Dulpi swallowed nervously. The look on Mickey’s face made Dulpi both nervous and happy, and her heart beat faster. ‘You’re not scared of turning black?’ Mickey asked suddenly, glancing at Dulpi’s outfit, a tank top and hot pants that showed off her white skin. Mickey’s question was met with a grin. Of course, for Dulpi it was a standard question, one that had to be asked of a white- skinned girl in minimal clothing who was going to be active under the sun for several hours. ‘I’ve already put on SPF 15 sun block. It’s enough to block out the most harmful sun’s rays,’ Dulpi replied. ‘Good. Usually girls don’t want to learn to surf because they’re scared that their skin will darken.’ Dulpi replied immediately with excessive confidence, ‘My name is Dulpi. I’m different to other girls. I like a challenge and like to try new things that get my adrenalin going. ‘Good girl,’ Mickey praised her, lifting his thumb, causing Dulpi to feel as though she were soaring up into the sky. ‘Let’s begin the lesson,’ he continued. They took a big blue longboard down to the water. Dulpi screamed herself hoarse every time they were hit by a wave, making Mickey laugh out loud. On the first day, Mickey taught Dulpi how to stand on a surfboard with a wave rising up beneath her. Gathering her courage, Dulpi lay on top of the surfboard. When a wave approached, Mickey, who held the board from behind, pushed Dulpi onto the wave, shouting, ‘Up...!’ After several failed attempts, she suceeded in standing, right foot forward, and sped smoothly forward, carried by the wave all the way to shore. Mickey watched as she did this again and again. She was delighted, even though she sometimes fell and was washed around until water filled her ears and nose. Mickey continually praised her while encouraging her to practise seriously so that the money she had spent on the private lesson wouldn’t go to waste. On the second day, Dulpi learned how to paddle properly in order to get out into the lineup. Lying on the board, she moved her arms as if swimming, while Mickey steered her from behind and pushed when she tired. Paddling gave the muscles in Dulpi’s arms and stomach a good workout, so she was happy to do it. Once she had mastered the paddling movements, Mickey taught her to duckdive to get through a wave by pushing the surfboard down into the water so the wave didn’t wash her back to shore. On the third day, Dulpi began to learn how to pick good waves and turn across a wave’s face. Whether because of Mickey or because of Dulpi’s great enthusiasm, she succeeded. This showed that indeed she was serious about practising, even though it meant that her skin would darken and her hair would lose its sheen in the salt water. Because she was having such a good time, Dulpi didn’t even notice that she had already lost the white skin and fine hair she always took so much pride in. Dulpi could hardly believe her eyes when she looked in the mirror and saw a girl with skin the colour of dark chocolate, hair that had dulled and reddened slightly, and a dry, peeling face. Oops, and black flecks had also begun to appear. Dulpi rubbed her nose, remembering the last time she had looked in the mirror and seen a girl with clear white skin and hair as fine as that of a model in a shampoo advertisement. She clicked her tongue in surprise at the memory. She had lost it all. That was the consequence she had to accept. She couldn’t imagine what Windi’s reaction would be when she saw her. Dulpi smiled at the thought. ‘Wah… wah… you look as sexy as Beyoncé with your chocolate skin!’ Windi would say. Or, ‘Wah, your hair looks cool, as though you’ve just had highlights!’ But suddenly bad thoughts occurred to her. Windi’s jokes and taunts filled her ears. But Dulpi didn’t care. She had to go to Windi’s house today, to show off her certificate, on which the words Congratulations, now you are a good surfer! Windi looked at the thick piece of blue paper Dulpi handed her. ‘Selamat, lo sekarang menjadi peselancar yang baik,’ Windi translated the most important words on the certificate as she shook her friend’s hand. Dulpi laughed to hide her embarrassment. ‘So let’s go to the beach,’ she suggested. ‘You have to see me surf.’ ‘I agree,’ Windi replied with enthusiasm. They arrived to find the beach looking deserted, not crowded as on previous evenings. Beside the food sellers, several minimally clothed foreign tourists receiving massages and a young couple laughing under a mahoe tree, there stood two surfboard-hire stands. A lifeguard was putting up a sign warning against swimming, although the sea that evening looked calm. Out in the water, two surfers sat waiting for waves. Dulpi was delighted to see that one of them was Mickey. She could recognise that handsome face even from a distance. She hired a surfboard and quickly changed. Windi sat under a mahoe tree to watch Dulpi. Dulpi lay on the surfboard and paddled out. In the distance, Windi saw her join Mickey and his friend. When a wave came, Dulpi went into action. Turning across the wave’s face, she was cheered on by Mickey and his friend and applauded by Windi. Dulpi felt as though she were flying when she rode the wave, stretching her arms out and laughing joyfully. She continued to surf even when Mickey and his friend had returned to shore. Dulpi didn’t want to follow them in. Now the waves were all hers. No competition. Windi waved for her to come in, but Dulpi ignored her. She liked being out there on her own, floating on the calm sea and letting the water rock the surfboard from side to side. Through the clear water she could see colourful fish and coral reef. She lazily swung her legs backwards and forwards. There were no sharks to attack her as in Jaws. There were no jellyfish or gigantic squid like those she read about in comics. But her pleasure came to be disturbed by boredom. No waves appeared. She had been sitting on her surfboard and admiring the water below her for some time now. She hoped a wave would come so she could ride it all the way in. But, oh… Dulpi began to panic. It turned out that she was far out to sea. The people on the beach looked like ants. Even Windi who had been jumping and waving wasn’t visible anymore. Dulpi began to cry. If only she had her cell phone, she thought. But that was silly. Of course it wouldn’t work if water got into it. Her spirit shrank when she realised that she was far from shore on her own. Suddenly her head filled with bad thoughts. What if a school of sharks were to attack her and rip her to pieces? What if a giant squid suddenly appeared to wrap its tentacles around her and crush her? At the same time, she hoped that a school of dolphins would come to help her as in fairy tales and cartoons. In the end, nothing happened. The sharks must all have been full. And the giant squid had probably been caught by an American research ship. Nor was it impossible that the dolphins had all been caught and put in circuses. She was still floating with her surfboard on the water. She decided to paddle to shore, but the current was much stronger than a girl of 17 years who didn’t eat much for fear of getting fat. She shouted like someone possessed until her throat was dry. In vain: nobody heard her. There was no one there, only indifferent seagulls flying this way and that over her head. Her strength failed her and she decided to give up, since death would soon come for her. Terepai Richmond, Shark Island - Sean Hill (Photo) No, it wasn’t death that came for her. It was a boy who drove a jetski with daring, like a lifeguard in the film Baywatch. It was Mickey. Dulpi cried and laughed simultaneously. Her feelings were in turmoil. She waved her arms even though Mickey had already seen her. Mickey approached quickly, and without waiting to be told Dulpi scrambled onto the jetski, hauling the rental board up behind her. Without shame, she held Mickey tight, and the jetski took off at high speed. When Dulpi got off the jetski, Windi met her with an expression of both concern and joy. ‘What the hell were you doing, Dul?’ Windi examined Dulpi’s body and was grateful not to find a single wound. ‘Thanks, Mick,’ she said. ‘You saved Dulpi.’ Mickey smiled. ‘No problem. It’s my responsibility,’ he said, as nice and sweet as chocolate, glancing at Dulpi. ‘Thanks, Mick,’ Dulpi said. ‘You’re so kind!’ ‘Next time you go surfing, I’ll come with you.’ The sensual tone of Mickey’s words made Dulpi feel as though she were flying to Seventh Heaven. ‘Okay!’ Dulpi cried, unable to hide her happiness. ‘We’ll go home, then,’ Windi cut in, taking Dulpi’s hand and waving at Mickey. As she was dragged away, Dulpi waved. ‘See you soon, Dulpi...’ Mickey called. ‘For sure,’ Dulpi shouted back. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Win! You don’t like to see anyone else having a good time,’ Dulpi sniffed when they’d reached the surfboard-hire stand. Windi grinned. ‘It’s been proven now,’ she teased. ‘You really do like Mickey, the brave boy who saved your life.’ Dulpi smiled. ‘Mickey is my surfing idol!’ — Dayu Sri [back to top] ~~~~ Two Subcultures of Surfers in California and Kanagawa There are a plethora of subcultures in modern society, and to fully appreciate culture one must understand subcultures. Subcultures range in intensity and socio- cultural influence on their members. Some are loose groups with a weak in-group identity, such as men who gather to play pool as described in Tally’s Corner;1 others are all-encompassing groups with a strong identity, like Hell’s Angels or bosozoku (youth gangs) in Japan.2 This paper describes a subculture that lies somewhere between these extremes of subculture identity and group solidarity: that of surfers. Surfing has become popular worldwide, and surfers’ lifestyles have taken on an international flavor. Still, cultural mainstays such as language, beliefs, folkways and mores are different cross-culturally, and so are surfing subcultures. To bring out both universal and cultural elements of surfing, this paper studies surfers in two contrasting societies at two different time periods: Shonan in Japan and California in the United States. Subcultural features such as identity as a surfer, interpersonal relations, status, and surfing’s meaning are explored. Not only are comparisons of subcultural group characteristics made, but social class is introduced as a control and shown to be influential for the behavior and life chances of surfers, independent of subculture. Methodology A Master’s thesis on surfing subcultures in California is utilized as a major secondary data source.3 Hull, a surfer, engaged in participant observation with surfers in Northern California to describe their lifestyle and subcultural group characteristics. His work acts as a basis for cross-cultural comparisons and matches well with my own field observations. The main data source consists of naturalistic observations of two surfing subcultures, which proceeded by what John Lofland calls accidents of current biography.4 That is, from a young age I have been a surfer, and at different times I have been a member of both surfing subcultures. The first subculture, called ‘T-Bay surfers’, are young surfers who lived in a beach town in Orange County, California, during the 1960s. The second, called ‘Reef surfers’, are Japanese surfers who live in a beach town on the Shonan coast of Kanagawa prefecture. While being a member of the two surfing subcultures allowed access to inside information unavailable to an outsider, my activities and close personal ties within the two subcultures carry a natural bias. In regards to the T-bay surfers, there are further problems of recall and limited information about members over a long period of time. An open-ended questionnaire was designed to explore the subcultural characteristics of the Reef surfers. An old friend and well-known member of the Reef surfers who lives a short walk from the Reef passed out the questionnaire to other members of the group, estimated at 20–25 surfers. Twenty-one Reef surfers received the questionnaire, enclosed in an envelope together with a pen, a beer coupon and a stamped envelope with my address. All except one, or 20 of 21 (95%), of the Reef surfers filled out and returned the questionnaire. T-Bay and Reef Surfers The T-Bay group consisted of 11 teenage males who lived in the same neighborhood and surfed at a spot within walking distance of their homes called T-Bay. They were usually the only surfers at this spot and regularly surfed there from the early to late 1960s. Most had been boyhood friends and naturally formed a surfing subculture when they got caught up in the surfing boom around 1962. At this time all but one were secondary-school students. While all members knew one another other well, when not surfing they stratified by age. The five older T-Bay group surfers were high-school students, excepting one high-school graduate. The six younger surfers, all best friends, were in junior high or first-year high school. The T-Bay surfers also surfed south of T-Bay at Dana Point Pier, Doheny and spots in San Diego County, and they sometimes went surfing up north as far as Santa Barbara at Rincon and Hammonds Reef. Still, T- Bay was where they surfed most frequently because it was so close to home. The T-Bay surfers fixed their own boards, wore surfing clothes (sandals, T-shirts, jeans, trunks, etc.), read surfing magazines, went to surf movies and talked about surfing. Their lives were centered on and enwrapped in surfing. Their tight group lasted until after high-school graduation, at which time there was a military draft and the Vietnam War. The Reef is one of the spots where surfing first occurred in Japan. Surfing occurred there in the 1960s, and a few locals were out surfing when I first surfed there in 1972. The Reef surfers dealt with in this article were surfing there in 2004. Now the spot is crowded, with about 60 surfers spread over its three breaks at a time on summer days of good surf, though most are not local surfers. Still, the Reef surfers are visible as a group since they occupy an area near and around the steps that face the main break. The Reef surfers are considered one of the better groups of surfers on the Shonan coast. More than half of them have been in surf contests, with three taking first place. Nearly all (17 of 20) have surfed outside of Japan. Hawaii is the most popular overseas surf destination, but some have surfed in California, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Canary Islands, Fiji, Costa Rica, Taiwan, Philippines and South Africa. They have surfed at nearly all spots in Japan along both the Pacific Ocean and Japan Sea coasts. Due to locality, surf spots along the Shonan coast and in Chiba prefecture are surfed most often. And, while Hawaii is a popular overseas surf destination, most Reef surfers said that the Reef was their favorite spot of all. The Reef surfers closely identify with one another as a group. While they have friendships outside of surfing, the great majority reported that more than half of their best friends are surfers. The most popular get-together among Reef surfers is a barbecue party at one of their homes, where they all eat and drink until late, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. The surfers’ families are closely tied in with the group and are a part of the surfing scene during the summer, with wives, husbands and children gathering in the same area near the steps. It is not uncommon to see a Reef surfer teaching his four- or five-year-old child how to surf. The Reef surfers range in age from 12 to 48, with an average age of 33 and median age of 39. Three of the surfers are female, and this number will probably increase, as more women are taking up surfing these days. Twelve of the Reef surfers are married, and among these ten have children, most not yet in their teens. However, regardless of age, gender and marital status, everyone is equally a part of the group. Place and Dress Along the Shonan coast, locals gather at spots where they are recognized by others as locals and group members. Most Reef surfers live near the Reef, predominantly surf at the Reef and when not out surfing occupy an area on or near the steps that lead to the sand in front of the Reef. Their surfboards, bicycles and motorbikes with surfboard racks, and clothes are strewn on or near the steps. The Reef surfers may be defined as a group by their dress, talk, mannerisms, engagement in the same activity (surfing), frequent interaction with one another, and a sense of identity with and belonging to one another. The number of Reef surfers gathered at the steps depends on the surf. When there are good waves and it is a nice day, 15 or so Reef surfers will be around with some out surfing and others occupying the steps. The best surfer, a pro surfer, sits in the middle and at the top of the steps. His motorbike with surfboard racks is parked almost next to where he sits. There is a railing about three feet high on either side of the steps, and usually the same surfers stand leaning on the right or left railing watching the surf and chatting with friends. Conversations as one would expect usually center on surfing, though family and work are also common topics. Personal relationships vary from best friends to acquaintances, particularly so with this group since age, marital status and occupation vary so widely. The youngest members, in their early teens, listen respectfully when their elders, some over 40 years of age, talk about surfing. Still, dress, mannerisms, and demeanor are strikingly similar. Hull described the physical appearance and dress of Northern California surfers during the 1970s.5 His profile matches well with the T-Bay surfers and even approximates the attire and appearance of the Reef surfers today: Active surfers are characterized by shaggy, sun- bleached hair that does not quite reach their shoulders. Crew cuts and Brylcream are definitely unacceptable. His face is usually clean-shaven, except, possibly, for a mustache. Super long hair or beards are rare among active surfers. His face, neck, hands, and wrists are tan from hours in the water and on the beach, even in the winter months. His neck and shoulders are often muscular, and his arms and wrists are well-developed from hours of paddling. His dress changes from season to season but his surf trunks and wetsuit are always present. His clothes are not new, and he is often wearing a Hawaiian or T-shirt, Levi’s (blue-jeans corduroys), and will be barefoot or have tennis shoes or sandals (slaps, thongs, etc.) on his feet. The T- shirt is rarely plain, and often quite colorful (but slightly faded) with a symbol of surfing printed on it in the form of a wave or a prestigious surfboard manufacturer’s name and insignia. His general appearance is one of carefully fostered casual ruggedness. It reflects his physical pride in his body, common among athletes, tempered by the independent, masculine, ‘back-to-nature’ image most surfers have of themselves.6 Surfing subcultures and language Subcultures adopt a style of language different from that of the national culture. Among surfers, language centers on surf maneuvers and sea conditions and is only familiar to surfers. Furthermore, although language is different, many Japanese words for surfing are gairai- go – foreign words borrowed from American surfing lingo. One reason for this, as one of the Reef surfers said, is that it is easier to take terms for surfing from its place of origin and adopt them into the Japanese language than to figure out what they may mean in Japanese. A few of these surfing words in Japanese are gettingu ouuto (getting out), noozu raidingu (nose riding), kuroozu auto (close out), karento (current), padoru (paddle), padoru auto (paddle-out), teiku ofu (take-off), botomu taan (bottom-turn), oobaaheddo (overhead), waipuauto (wipeout), chopii (choppy), gurasshi (glassy) and paaringu (pearling). Meaning Meaning is the phenomenology of subculture. John Lofland provides us with a definition. [Meanings] are the linguistic categories that make up the participants view of reality and with which they define their own and others’ actions.7 Meanings are also referred to by social analysts as culture, norms, understandings, social reality, definitions of the situation, typifications, ideology, beliefs, world view, perspective, or stereotypes. Terms such as these share a common focus on humanly constructed sets of concepts which are consciously singled out as important aspects of reality. Meanings are transbehavioral in the sense that they do more than describe behavior – they define, justify and otherwise interpret behavior as well. Each surfer identifies with the ocean and being a part of it through surfing. What this means in a phenomenological sense is different for each person. Conceptually, however, looking over responses by the locals to the question ‘What does surfing mean to you’, two general categories came about. The first category has to do with individual practical concerns, or what a Reef surfer gets out of surfing. Representative responses here are that surfing is ‘fun’, ‘gives me self satisfaction’, ‘is my favorite sport’ and ‘is good for my health.’ The second and most popular category (12 of 20 Reef surfers) has to do with surfing as life itself or as a representation of self. Some Reef surfers said that surfing means life itself or that surfing is the most important part of their life. One surfer said surfing means jinsei (philosophy of life) and another said that surfing means zen (spiritualism or Buddhism). In Hull’s research, California surfers in the 1970s made similar comments on surfing’s meaning.8 The individuality of surfing was reflected in such expressions as surfing means ‘being able to enjoy myself in the atmosphere of the ocean’, surfing ‘gives me a pleasure of mind and relaxes me’, and surfing gives me ‘a feeling of freedom’. California surfers also said that surfing is life or the essence of life: surfing is a ‘way of being with and expressing yourself through nature’, ‘a total escape from life’s pitfalls’, ‘a good life’, ‘being next to the source of life’, ‘a way of life’ and ‘everything’. There are no survey data to describe the meaning of surfing for the T-Bay surfers. However, meanings came through in how they lived their lives through surfing. In this regard they were similar to other California surfers and the Reef locals since surfing was central to their lives, it gave them satisfaction and provided them with characteristics that defined their identities. Similarities and differences between American and Japanese surfers The locals at the Reef were asked about similarities and differences between Japanese and American surfers. For similarities, the Reef surfers cited the ocean and surfers’ connection to it: ‘they both love the ocean’, ‘they are into waves’ and ‘since both love the ocean the way they think is about the same.’ For differences, common responses referred to surfing style and the ‘physical differences’ of surfers in the two countries: ‘American surfers surf more powerfully than Japanese surfers’, ‘physique’, ‘power’ and ‘body’. Status Surfing groups in California and Shonan are made up of locals who have shown they can surf. Kooks (beginning surfers) are not considered members of the group until they have proven themselves. The top surfers in the group enjoy the highest status, and this pecking order goes down to the least skilled surfer. The best Reef surfers are the center of attention at the steps, others respectfully greet them, when they talk others listen carefully, and one cannot be considered a member of the Reef surfing group without their tacit approval. These top surfers also earn money by giving surf lessons, and one makes surfboards and another is a pro surfer. Earl held the highest status among T-Bay surfers. No one could do what he did on a board. Earl was a nose rider who on just about any wave could hang five and his cutbacks on waves were remarkable. His surfing ability was the measure of comparison for the other T- Bay surfers. In the water, Earl had priority on the waves and on the shore his word about the surf condition, surfing in general and almost anything else for that matter was carefully listened to without objection. Class Social class relates to behaviour regardless of subculture. Surfers come from all classes though most California surfers are from the middle class, and more towards the upper than lower end of middle class.9 This occurs because most surfers live close to the ocean where the cost of housing is high, surfboards and other equipment like surf racks and wetsuits are expensive and surfing has been a sport of the middle class. For similar reasons, surfing is a middle-class sport in Japan as well. However, a very demanding educational system and strict controls over youth in Japan creates conflict for middle-class adolescents who are a part of the surfing subculture. Reef Surfers’ Social Class. The Reef surfers did not remain in the same class as their parents: they went downward, as their completed education and occupations were lower than that of their parents. Reef surfers had a lower occupational status than that of their fathers. Fathers’ occupational status was middle leaning towards upper class. The occupational status of sons, the Reef surfers, was at the lower end of middle class. While one Reef surfer was a researcher and five were businessmen, the others worked in jobs that are of lower status and are less mainstream than their fathers’. Two of them worked in the surfing world, one as a surfboard manufacturer and the other a pro surfer. The other four included private English language tutor, cameraman, boat assistant, and carpenter. The locals at the Reef are ‘mavericks’ in Japanese society, with their loose, carefree lifestyles. I would argue that their downward social mobility is a result of the conflict between the surfing subculture and the dominant national culture, particularly in regards to adult expectations and strict controls of youth. Pop culture portrays surfers as laid back, natural, fun-loving, and as doing their own thing. The meaning of surfing for Reef surfers as noted above fits these popular images. These values contrast with Japanese mainstream cultural values, particularly ‘obligation’ (on or gimu), ‘one must adhere to one’s place’ (honbun or bun o mamoru), and the strong emphasis on conformity.10 A surfing way of life conflicts with dominant adult expectations and norms of adolescent behaviour such as compliance with strictures forbidding youth misbehavior, ‘hard study’, adherence to school regulations and rules aimed at suppressing individuality, and active participation in conventional youth activities. Furthermore, the Reef surfers identify strongly as local surfers distant from mainstream culture and society. Asked what they thought were the defining features of their surfing group, the Reef surfers were in strong agreement that ‘close bonds or ties’ with each other were what the group was all about. They commented that the group provided their very identity as ‘locals’, meaning resident Reef surfers, who were members and belonged in the group. As if in opposition to the national culture, they said, ‘As “locals”, we have our own way of life,’ or, ‘We surf and have parties and barbecues, we are natural, easy-going and free, we respect and are a part of nature, and we are positive thinkers.’ None mentioned that there was some kind of uniqueness that distinguished Japanese surfers from surfers in other countries. To the contrary, they identified as ‘local’ surfers, and the surfing subcultural values and norms played a dominant role giving them direction in life and a sense of their identity and relations with others. Nearly all Reef surfers who began surfing at an early age experienced downward social mobility. The minority or four surfers who as adults remained in the same middle social class as their fathers, all of them college graduates, began surfing at a relatively older age: three of the four began surfing in their late teens. In contrast, all eight of the Reef surfers who experienced downward social mobility, or as adults had a lower education and occupational status than their fathers, began surfing at a young age (12–15 years old). Reef surfers who either did not graduate from high school or ended their education after high school showed signs of early youth rebellion. Coming from a higher class, when young, Reef surfers had every opportunity to achieve academically, get into high-ranked schools, properly prepare for college entrance and go on to college, but most decided not to. They had a class advantage to achieve while other lower working-class youth do not. In something of an irony, Reef surfers made a decision to reject getting ahead through education, even though in the usual course of events the educational system would reject such lower-class students. Quite simply, as an adolescent in Japan you cannot both conform to a mainstream way of life and be part of a surfing subculture. The Reef surfers’ downward social mobility, then, reflects on the dire consequences of adolescent non-conformity in Japan. Surfing as a subculture in Japan goes against adult expectations of mainstream adolescent behavior, and active participation in surfing makes it near impossible to keep up the levels of academic achievement necessary for college entrance. There are no open admission programs for high school or college; that is, if you don’t get into a higher-ranked secondary school it is very unlikely that you will go on to college. The Reef surfers who experienced downward social mobility were surfing and not studying during their middle-school days, and as a part of a local surfing subculture they placed themselves outside the mainstream and only route to a higher education and the conventional middle-class occupational status of their fathers. T-Bay Surfers’ Social Class. The T-Bay surfers came from working-class and middle-class families made worse by living in a wealthy coastal city of Orange County. The parental social class of the T-Bay surfers was much lower than that of the Reef locals. Half the T-Bay surfers came from single-parent households at a time when divorce rates were low in the United States and stigma was attached to single-parent families. Not one of their parents was a college graduate. Parental occupation was working or middle class. For those in a two-parent family, fathers’ occupations were working class: maintenance worker, gardener, truck driver, handyman. Most mothers worked full-time and held working-class or middle-class jobs: cafeteria worker, bakery worker, office worker. Adolescent deviance and future socioeconomic status in the United States closely tie in with social class.11 A ‘stigma’ is attached to the lower class, family finances and class culture severely dampen hopes for college education, and job opportunities are hampered by exclusion from mainstream social circles and low levels of education. Social control agents (police, teachers, etc.) expect trouble and keep a close watch over lower-class youth. Labeling encourages lower-class youth to adopt the identities of ‘bad boys’ or ‘bad girls’ and eventually leads to isolation from conventional youth activities. Early trouble at school and with the law coupled with limited opportunities to make it in middle-class society result in a social reproduction of class. The T-Bay surfers fit this pattern well. The T-Bay surfers were a rowdy group nicknamed and identified by others as the South Gang. They had fun during adolescence, none expecting to go to college or to succeed in middle-class society. The T-Bay surfers began smoking and drinking in their early teens, played cat-and-mouse with security guards and the police, trespassed on private property, went joyriding, got into fights, engaged in minor theft, and so on. They were ‘outsiders’ at high school and looked down upon as social misfits from the bad side of town. Two T-Bay surfers did not finish high school, most of the others graduated in the lower part of their class, and only two are college graduates. The latest I have heard (and some of the information is dated) is that all but one have worked in working-class or middle-class jobs: gardener, fisherman, truck driver, maintenance man, tree cutter, house painter, boat operator. The one exception is in academia. The consequences of active youth deviance and lower-class background also showed in conflict with authority and trouble as adults. A little over half of the T-Bay group surfers have been arrested for criminal offenses as adults, and four of them served from six months to three years in prison. Only five T-Bay surfers ever married, and of the three marriages I know of today only one remains intact. Finally, tragically, two T-Bay group surfers died early, one after contracting AIDS and another committing suicide. Conclusion Although the Californian and Japanese surfers described in this paper are from different time periods, classes and cultures, they had surfing in common. Sugimoto (2003:25–27) argues that individuals from the same subculture but different societies have more in common with each other than they do with individuals from other subcultures in the same society.12 The downward social mobility of the Reef surfers suggests that early involvement in a surfing subculture is an impediment to ‘getting ahead’ in mainstream Japanese society. This is not only the case in Japan: Hull demonstrated that downward social mobility was common among Californian surfers in the 1970s. Conflicts that occur because of downward social mobility, for example, in the family or with adult authorities, need attention. A future longitudinal study of adolescent surfers could address these issues. Our understanding of the role between class and surfing subcultures would benefit from research focused on class and its relation to the lifestyle of surfers. The youth deviant behavior and troubled adult life of the T- Bay surfers was more tied in with their lower-class background than with belonging to a surfing subculture. It may also be that surfing subcultures have a class dimension and that behavior of surfers varies according to class background. Differences of behavior in surfing subcultures by class, conflicts, social mobility, and cross- cultural similarities and differences would benefit from future research. — Robert Stuart Yoder [back to top] REFERENCES 1 Elliot Liebow (1974) Tally’s Corner, Boston: Little Brown and Company. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc. 2 Karl Greenfield (1994) Speed Tribes, New York: Harper Perennial; and Ikuya Sato (1991) Kamikaze Biker: Parody and Anomy in Affluent Japan, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 3 Stephen Hull (1976) ‘A Sociological Study of the Surfing Subculture in the Santa Cruz Area’, unpublished M.A. thesis, San Jose State University. 4 John Lofland (1986) Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis, Second Edition, Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company. 5 Hull, 1976 6 Hull, 1976: 94–95 7 Lofland, 1984: 71–72 8 Hull, 1976: 73–74 9 Hull, 1976 10 John Condon (1984) With Respect to the Japanese: A Guide for Americans, Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press Inc; and Takei Sugiyama (1976) Japanese Patterns of Behavior, Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. 11 Chambliss, William J. (1975) ‘The Saints and the Roughnecks’, in Friedman (ed.) Annual Editions: Readings in Sociology, Guilford, Connecticut: Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc. 12 Sugimoto, Yoshio (2003) An Introduction to Japanese Society, Second edition, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. [back to top] ~~~~ On the Eve of Destruction The weekend Watts went up in flames, we drove from Fullerton to Newport Beach and down the coast as far as Oceanside, four restless teenage boys three thousand miles from home, Bob Dylan’s rolling stones in search of waves and girls and anyone who’d buy us beer or point us toward the fun. California. What a high. The Beach Boys, freeways twelve lanes wide, palm trees everywhere. And all the girls were blonde and wore bikinis. I’d swear to that, and even if it wasn’t true, who cared? A smalltown kid from Perkasie, I spent that whole long summer with my eyes wide open and the world unfolding like an open road, the toll booths closed, service stations giving gas away. What did riots in a Negro ghetto have to do with me? What could cause such savage rage? I didn’t know and didn’t think about it much. The Eve of Destruction was just a song. Surf was up at Pendleton. The war in Vietnam was still a sideshow half a world away, a world that hadn’t heard of Ia Drang or Tet, James Earl Ray, Sirhan Sirhan, Black Panthers, Spiro Agnew, Sandy Scheuer, Watergate. We rode the waves ’til two MPs with rifles chased us off the beach: military land. ‘Fuck you!’ we shouted as we roared up Highway One, windows open, surfboards sticking out in three directions, thinking it was all just laughs, just kicks, just a way to kill another weekend, thinking we could pull this off forever. — W. D. Ehrhart [back to top] ~~~~ Contributors to Kurungabaa Vol. 1 No. 1: Tim Baker is a freelance writer and a barely competent natural footer who somehow supports a wife and two young kids by the elaborate ruse of surf journalism. He is a former editor of Tracks and Surfing Life magazines, author of several books and proud owner of a lovely website of unspecified purpose (bytimbaker.com). He hopes the world embraces renewable energies sooner rather than later. Ry Beville started surfing in earnest to relieve stress while at graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently researching at the University of Tokyo for his dissertation on modern Japanese poetry, meanwhile surfing in Chiba whenever he can. He has translated two books by the Japanese poet Nakahara Chuya and displays his photography at: flickr.com/ foamygreen. Nick Carroll, 48, learned to surf at Newport Beach in Sydney in the early 1970s and was a founding member of his local boardrider’s club. Nick went on to compete at the highest level, winning two Australian open titles and placing in various pro events around the world, before taking on a career as a surf writer. He has worked as editor of Tracks, Surfing magazine (USA), and Deep, and written numerous articles and books. Currently he writes for Australia’s Surfing Life and Surfing, among others. He is married with two children and lives in Newport Beach. Dan Crockett is a surfer and writer who lives in rural Cornwall. He tries to balance life and work, but mostly ends up in the sea forgetting about both. He is interested in the flow state and peak experience, and considers them the ultimate goals in life outside the tube. He had a role in the creation of Switch-Foot and the recently published September, and has worked as a contributing editor, writer and photographer for a variety of surf-related magazines. DC Green has been described by his surf magazine peers as ‘the world’s best surf journalist’, a ‘salty Hunter S. Thompson’ and as ‘large, bald and scary-looking.’ His article, Two White Doves, about the Sari Club bombing and aftermath, was hailed as the greatest in the 37-year history of Tracks magazine and won the ‘E-map Feature of the Year’ Award. Lately, DC has been writing funny fantasy books for 8–108 year olds like Stinky Squad and Three Little Surfer Pigs. DC lives on the NSW South Coast with one slightly crazy daughter and four very crazy cats. He continues to surf with high zeal and low skill. Check out more of DC’s stuff at: dcgreenyarns.blogspot.com W. D. Ehrhart fought in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine, and subsequently joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The author or editor of 18 books of prose and poetry, he teaches at the Haverford School and lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his wife Anne and daughter Leela. Clifton Evers is a research fellow at the Centre for Social Research in Journalism and Communication, University of New South Wales. With Alex Leonard and Stu Nettle he is co-founder of Kurungabaa. Caro Flood writes short stories, poems and novellas. Having lived for 15 years in Tasmania, she now lives in Sydney with her two daughters. Fong lives on the North Coast of NSW in the traditional surfer way. He drinks a lot, smokes the odd joint, avoids all meaningful work and never went to much school. He intensely dislikes small, sloppy, crowded lineups, large cities, war, racism and Roosters supporters. He loves his family and dog as well as his beloved Rabbitohs league team. He has quite bit of time for fellow surfers and doesn’t mind a chat, but he thinks all natural-footers have shithouse style and goofys are totally underscored on the world tour! Sean Hill started surfing at age 16 on a 5’10 twin-fin. Twenty-two years later, he’s still stoked with riding waves, and is thinking about getting another twinnie. He lives in Sydney ’s south with his partner and 19-month-old daughter, and can be found in the water or pointing a camera towards it as often as possible. His photography can be found at: pbase.com/bookster. Alex Leonard almost has his Anthropology PhD from the Australian National University for a thesis on the surfers of Kuta, Bali. He has done surf research in Australia, Indonesia and Japan, and is currently living in Hanoi, working on Kurungabaa with Clifton Evers and Stu Nettle and waiting for the swell to come up in the South China Sea so he can go surf some spots in south-central Vietnam. Stu Nettle is a writer, student and small business owner who mainly surfs the reefs around his beloved Cronulla but has had a long and lusty affair with the limestone coasts of southern Australia. With Alex Leonard and Clifton Evers he is co-founder of Kurungabaa. Joan Ormrod is a senior lecturer on Film and Media in the Department of the History of Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. She lectures in youth cultures and subcultures, science fiction and fantasy and the aesthetics of trash. Her publications and research to date develop her PhD, ‘Expressions of Nation and Place in British Surfing Identities’ as they focus on analysing representations of surfing, gendered and national identity through film and popular culture. Forthcoming research and publications focus on postcolonial and gendered identities in fantasy texts. Dayu Sri, born 1984 in Denpasar, started writing in high school and likes hanging out with friends, watching extreme sports, reading, and playing video games. The worst thing that ever happened to her was...the day her dog died. John Stokes is an Australian poet, surveyor, planner and environmentalist. His work has been widely published in Australia and in the USA. His current book, ‘A River in the Dark’, is published by Five Islands Press, Wollongong, NSW, Australia. Robert Stuart Yoder (PhD, University of Hawaii) is a sociologist and has taught at a number of American and Japanese universities including the University of California Irvine and Sophia University in Tokyo. Bob is first and foremost a surfer. Born and raised a five-minute walk from the ocean, Bob was rafting at four years old, and surfing became a way of life for him as a teenager in Southern California. Living next to the sea in Kanagawa prefecture, Japan he still surfs, and his best friends, just as in his youth, are other surfers, as surfing knows no national boundaries. In the next issue of Kurungabaa Vol. 1 No. 2, July 2008 Robin Canniford, Nick Carroll, Krista Comer, Darius Devas, Dina El Dessouky, Fong, Colleen McGloin, Miff, Rebecca Olive, Kim Satchell, Rick Shapter, Snapper, Richard Tipping, Tara June Winch...and more creative and critical writing and art for surfers. [back to top] ~~~~ A word about us... Kurungabaa is a journal of literature, history and ideas for surfers. It is a not-for-profit publication, published quarterly by the generosity of subscribers and donors. Kurungabaa is a Dharawal word for the Australian pelican, chosen out of admiration for that handsome bird with its peculiar way of gliding low over the waves. We who make Kurungabaa respect the Dharawal country where we love to surf, celebrate the continuing culture of the Dharawal people, and acknowledge the memory of the Dharawal people's ancestors. The image on the Kurungabaa masthead is a reproduction of Thirroul artist Paul Ryan's painting 'Sandon Point from a Small Boat'. Notes for contributors: Kurungabaa publishes diverse genres including poetry, fiction, reflective and scholarly essays, memoirs, review essays, and interviews. Four pages each issue are made available for a photo essay or series of art reproductions by a single photographer or artist. All work undergoes anonymous peer review. Emerging writers from coastlines around the world are encouraged to submit their work. Several pages will be dedicated to emerging authors in each issue. Editorial and writing assistance can be arranged, if requested. Indigenous surfers are encouraged to join in Kurungabaa’s production, both as members of the editorial collective and as contributors. Every issue will contain material on surfing-related Indigenous history, culture and politics. Short stories should be 1,500–3,000 words in length, essays 1,000–5,000 words. Longer pieces may be accepted on consultation with the editors. All manuscripts should be double-spaced and a statement of word length should be added to the end of the article. Contributions that draw on academic research should be written in a non-academic style that can engage anyone. Authors are encouraged to identify sources within an article and where appropriate to include notes on sources or references at the end. [back to top] Editors: Alex Leonard – alex.h.leonard@gmail.com Stuart Nettle – stuartnettle@hotmail.com Clifton Evers – clifton.evers@unsw.edu.au Editorial advisers: Tim Baker, Ry Beville, Nick Carroll, Krista Comer, Dina El Dessouky, Fong, Nicholas Ford, Margaret Henderson, Colleen McGloin, Joan Ormrod, Rick Shapter. eBook Publication (2011) - Simon d'Orsogna Postal address: Kurungabaa PO Box 6384 UNSW Sydney NSW 1466 AUSTRALIA Phone: (+61) 02 9385 8531 Fax: (+61) 02 9385 8528 Incorporated Association number (Australia): INC9888932 Acknowledgments of support: Journalism and Media Research Centre, University of New South Wales; Kwik Kopy Design and Print Centre. ### You’ve reached the end of kurungabaa vol.1 no.1. Thank you for reading! ### Original hardcopy copyright 2008 - eBook created and copyright 2011. Connect with us online at the 'baa blog for more writing, posts, and our current issue http://kurungabaa.net [back to top]