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Responsibilities are a bit like toothpaste. Once it’s out of the tube, it’s damn near impossible to get it back in. Mortgages, kids, a partner – all of these things a pull towards middleclass and away from the blissful dereliction of a life dedicated to surfing. Outside of a professional surfing career, there aren’t many who can manage to ‘grow up’ and still maintain the freedom necessary to chase swells. Tai ‘Buddha’ Graham is someone who has managed to do both, and with a remarkable amount of success. He’s the co-owner of lifestyle hospitality group, Project Black, in Bali – in charge of 1500 staff and 12 venues, including Single Fin at Uluwatu, The Lawn beach club at Canggu, Times Warung, Numero Quattro at Echo Beach and Skool Kitchen, which…

The last dry season was amazing, having moved here for work without even a thought that I might get a surf in was mind-blowing. Luckily, I had brought a board with me, being close to Indo I thought I might just happen to skip over there at some point for a break to get my surfing fix. It took me a while to get used to the fact that surfing here involved likely sharing the lineup with crocs (Baru in local lingo), sharks and the lethal stinger varieties of Irukandji and box jellyfish. After surfing the whole dry season, we didn’t see anything in the water, our dogs swam around next to us in the lineup without a care in the world so we figured if the crocs were hungry,…

Surfboards in Australia in the late 70s were still challenging to ride. They were primarily single fins, far too thick, had hard rails, and needed more rocker and lift in the nose. Lots of home movies from the period shows surfers struggling, nosediving, or catching their rails. Some great surfing was done by Australians during this period, particularly the back foot power surfers who set their surfboards on a rail and let the crude plan shape and limited rocker carve through the full arc of a turn. Guys like Michael Peterson, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew and Terry Fitzgerald. Their American equivalents were the big-wave riders, Jeff Hakman, Barry Kanaiaupuni, and Gerry Lopez. In 1974, Michael Peterson won every major surfing contest in Australia, five contests in 12 months. He complained: “To…

In Greek mythology in Homer’s Odyssey, Sirens were beautiful women who sang so sweetly that sailors passing by their island could not resist their call and were smashed on the rocks or hacked to death by the sometimes-not-so-beautiful Sirens. Odysseus was warned about them by the witch, Circe, and knew he had to find a way to avoid being seduced by the sweet sounds. Odysseus came up with a clever plan; he had his sailors tie him to the mast of the ship and then plug their ears with beeswax so they would not be tempted to listen to the Sirens’ song. Odysseus was able to hear the Sirens’ singing, but because he was tied to the mast, he could not give in to their call Mythologically… musically… it’s possible…

THE FIRST TIME I SAW IT – WELL, PHOTOS OF IT – WAS IN AN EARLY 80s ‘SURFING WORLD’. This was the golden era of SW when owners, Hugh McLeod and Bruce Channon, would produce extensive features, even entire issues, of their famous road trips around Oz. Hugh’s long lens land photography and highly creative design work – all analogue, paint, glue and collage, real art, not Photoshop trickery – combined with Bruce’s wonderful water photography, and both of their lifestyle work, was a whole much greater than the sum of its parts, and the magazines they produced from this era were masterpieces; they are still considered the benchmark in surf media. The issue that especially captivated me was ‘Eagle Island’, a road/ferry trip to a much loved Queensland sand…

01 LIGHTBOX SURFER: COREY WILSON  PHOTO: MARK ONARATI When the right combination of sand, wind and swell coalesce, Narrabeen can be a world-class beachbreak. Pulsing, northeast lines swing in from the deeper waters behind the point then stand-up vertically on the reliable, lake-fed sandbars, creating a moveable feast for surfers – reeling lefts with hollow tendencies; slabbier peaks breaking both ways as you drift further south. Whatever the swell direction, Narrabeen always seems to have a little more grunt, facilitating a type of high-performance surfing where speed is a given and the cupped-out pockets invite top-to-bottom slaying. As you might expect, a wave of such quality on the fringes of a major city is bossed by a mob of possessive locals. Some of the Narrabeen regulars are not known for…

Hundreds of submissions were received for the 2024, Surfing Australia, Photo of the year. After the judges sifted through the pile of sterling entries, it was this shot by Nick Green that was deemed to be the winner. The Tasmanian photographer was obviously flattered to receive the accolade for this shot of Laura Enever being bucked off as she attempts to negotiate the infamous stairway to hell at Shipstern Bluff. Despite his quiet confidence and obvious talent with a camera, Nick is often self-effacing about his work. In a post that accompanied the winning photo on Instagram, he wrote, “The real award should go to her (Laura) for putting herself in the position.” We’re just happy Laura survived and believe Nick deserves high praise for claiming the most prestigious award…

In the middle of 2023 while Maddie Meddings and I were still touring our first film, ‘Yama’, there was a longboard contest that was planned to run at Kirra with only one prize money division. Sick of these ‘open’ divisions being stacked with men and seeing that there wasn’t anyone entered yet, I put a call out on my Instagram looking for any women who might be interested in entering to try and fill it up. The first person to respond was Pacha Light who had never done a longboard contest before but was willing to pull out the single fin if it meant claiming our space in the lineup. From there, Pacha, Maddie and I decided to do a film together that focussed on Ecuador. Pacha was born in…

When Albe Falzon and David Elfick released ‘Morning of the Earth’ in 1972, Bali was a revelation. In Australian cinemas, surfers hooted and screamed their approval as they watched Steve Cooney and Rusty Miller glide across sparkling, emerald walls at Uluwatu. Enchanted by what they’d seen, many walked out of MOTE screenings, abandoned any other life-plans and set their sights on making it to Indo. As surfers flocked to the archipelago, new waves were discovered and soon other films like ‘Tubular Swells’ and ‘Storm Riders’ fuelled the infatuation with Indonesia. And so, for more than 50 years the story of Indonesian surfing has mostly been told through a western paradigm, with foreign directors and producers framing the action and the narrative – often pointing their cameras at travelling surfers. There’s…

In surfing terms, Joaquin At-Thariq Riveros Rizki was the kid born with Disneyland over the back-fence and a free-pass to every ride. Now 17, Thariq is spearheading a new push from surfers raised in the Mentawai Islands. “I’m very, very lucky living here,” he says with a wry smile as we stand and talk beneath the mid-afternoon beat of the Mentawai sun. Although his dad is Colombian, and his mother is from the Mentawai, Thariq is unequivocal about where his destiny lies. “I want this to be my home forever,” he insists. While most of us venture to the Ments seeking waves of unparalleled quality, Thariq’s fortuitous upbringing means he can flip the script. He sounds like the gourmet diner who is accustomed to eye fillet, but pines for the…

Every surfer must make the choice at some point. That decision between comfortable middle-class responsibility or the razor’s edge path of a life dedicated to surfing. And, yeah, you kinda do have to choose, because there are few who possess the surfing talent and luck and business acumen to wrangle them both. Let’s be honest. You ain’t no Nate Florence or Tai Graham. Neither am I. And ever since I landed back in Oz off the back of this six-month surfing odyssey across Indonesia, I’ve felt the pull of both pathways. On one hand: a beautiful girlfriend, a neatlittle one-bedroom apartment on the fringes of a waveless town, nights out and dinners at nice restaurants, and the imperative to spend the majority of my time earning enough coin to pay…

On most waves straight-line trim will only get you so far before you run out of gas. Viewed in these simple, metaphoric terms, a decent cutback is surfing’s equivalent of re-fuelling. Without it you’re screwed. While it may be a repertoire fundamental, the open canvas between tapering shoulder and pocket is wide open to interpretation and it would be wrong to discuss the cutback in purely utilitarian tones. There are those who elevate the manoeuvre into something other-worldly. A certain tilt of the head and bending of pliable limbs can make a roundhouse into a timeless rapture we can’t help but stare at in film or on the page. The simplest of turns can also inspire one of surfing’s highest forms of flattery. We’ve all been watching on from the…

For obvious and critically acclaimed reasons Peter Drouyn/Westerly Windina has been a recent talking point around the water coolers, so what better way to kick off a new series of nostalgic columns than with this flamboyant character of Australian (and world) surfing. I first encountered Drouyn in the flesh in 1974 when my Whale Beach neighbour, Bob Evans, invited me to a media preview of his new film, Drouyn and Friends at a theatrette (remember them, probably not) somewhere in the city. Of course I knew all about him. Or should I say, I thought I knew a lot about him. I’d seen him surf in a comp somewhere… Was it the Bobby Brown Memorial? And I was really impressed with his flamboyant turns and his constant weight distribution. Very…