Table of contents for Issue 598 in Tracks

Despite being 95% blind Matt Formston claims that for him there is no better feeling than carving across the face of a solid wave “It’s the most pleasurable thing that I do. So if I’m walking through a car park, I roll my ankle, there’s like kids running in front of me. There’s tables sticking out of the back of cars, there’s gutters, everything I can’t see hurts me… If I’m surfing, I can just go across the wave.” And for Matt, the bigger the wave gets, the more fun he has. “… I’m pretty comfortable in up to sort of eight foot surf to just go crazy. Anything under three-foot it’s pretty tricky for me because your transition from the bottom to the top of the wave is so…

Long before John John Florence and Torren Martyn set sail, George Greenough took viewers on a transcendent journey aboard his yacht, the Morning Light. The film ‘Crystal Voyager’ charts that experience from the construction of the Morning Light to its maiden voyage with George and Nat Young. Released in 1973, the movie was brilliantly crafted by David Elfick and Albe Falzon in the wake of their success with ‘Morning of the Earth’. In what is undeniably one of the biggest coups in surf movie history, the final bonus section of the film, titled ‘Echoes’, famously features a Pink Floyd soundtrack. The band were fans of George’s work and David Elfick was able to trade some of George’s footage for music by Pink Floyd when they were at the zenith of…

There is a certain way Matt Biolos looks at a surfboard. It’s the same way he looks at life. As a perfect opportunity to eliminate the bullshit. And he doesn’t just hold a surfboard, he grabs it. He spins it. Weighs it. Slaps it as if he wants to see if it’s awake. Shakes it like he is shaking the coins out of its pockets. He tests its trip. Its integrity in his grip. And when he hands one over to a team rider it looks like he just requisitioned it from a black-market armory. And there is really something there, the way he tests his boards. Aside from the feedback he gets from Griffin Colapinto, Kolohe Andino, Mason Ho, Carissa Moore, Caroline Marks, Yago Dora, Ian Crane, Coco Ho,…

In 2012, Australia’s network of marine protected areas covered over 3,000,000 square kilometres of ocean. But in 2018, the Australian government downgraded protections to these marine ecosystems by more than 30%, opening huge areas to offshore oil and gas, and to industrial trawling. Lord Howe Island, home to a myriad of rare winged and finned creatures, the most southern true coral reef, and the tallest sea stack on the planet is one of the few marine protected areas that was not downgraded in 2018. To celebrate the thriving beauty that an active community and marine protection affords, I directed a short film with Andrew Buckley called KIN. This is the backstory of KIN, which is now available free via Patagonia.com.au/kin We’re 600km due east of Port Macquarie, motoring southeast toward…

My family adopted a stray cat when I was a kid. We found him emaciated, begging for scraps to eat on our back deck. Within a year, though, he had become obese, with his belly swinging back and forth as he waddled around the house. I remember the veterinarian saying that this was common in formerly stray cats. On the street, they never know when their next meal will come, so they eat as much as possible when the opportunity presents itself. Now with food available all the time, he couldn’t escape the scarcity mindset he’d developed, and he continued to binge eat even when he didn’t need to. The same is true in surfing. For those of us who have been transplanted from wave-scarce to wave-rich settings, we continue…

The surfing world delivered its equivalent of a standing ovation when Caitlin Simmers won the 2024 Pipe Masters. To claim surfing’s most coveted event, the diminutive Californian, who’s barely a nudge over fifty kg’s in a wet jersey, had surfed Pipe with all the pluck and precision it demands. Admittedly, she was spurred on by a field of women who were determined to own their moment at what is still arguably the world’s most challenging wave. As Simmers dropped her now famous tag-line for the cameras ‘Pipeline for the fu&*%in girls’ it was clear a new door had been blasted open. However, while Pipe was a fitting stage upon which to crystallize the evolution, much of the real work is done away from the glossy WSL zone. The only way…

As a kid surfer, Peter Howe, learned to read the wind and watch for the southerly swell at The Farm near his hometown south of Wollongong. As a singer-songwriter he wrote our most memorable surfing lyrics with his close-up imagery of a magic morning inside the barrel, all set among the soft pickings and exotic tunings of his beloved guitar. He was driving to work from Newport to Palm Beach where he worked as a painter for a boat builder, on the Pittwater side of the fabled Northern Beaches isthmus. It’s a drive that took Peter Howe directly via Avalon Beach every workday. The chance for a quick pre-work surf at Little Avalon (south) or North Avalon for a young surfer-muso like ‘Pete’ Howe circa 1970 was often a huge…

Uluwatu, Bali 1973 Having travelled to Bali in August 1971, playing the grommet for the filming of ‘Morning of the Earth’, I was blessed to surf Uluwatu as an undiscovered jewel. The unusual visual surrounds, the people and their customs, the sounds, the commanding reef system, and the waves it sculpted combined to create a multi-sensory environment that this wide-eyed, 15-yea-rold surfer from the Northern Beaches of Sydney found alien, slightly confronting, completely enveloping; but also really exciting. Returning to the relatively inconsistent, mostly sand-bottomed surfing options of Sydney, few days went by where I didn’t flash back through that very special time, hoping I’d return to the Island of the Gods. Time warp to 1973, now working for Tracks magazine, the opportunity arose to escape the city with photographer,…

Maybe it’s the fact that most the waves of the world have been discovered, or maybe it’s because surfers like Mason Ho and Dylan Graves and Ben Gravy are seeking out the joyous and bizarre anomalies of wave riding. I mean really, Ben’s effort of having a monster truck push a piece of plywood through a swamp to create a ridable wave? Or maybe it is all Mason Ho. With his suicidal tendencies across those no man’s lands of vicious reef and rocks. Regardless, more and more surfers are seeking out strange wave configurations with more and more vigor. Kian Martin and photographer Simon Dobby are no exception. Finding this monster wedge somewhere in the south east of the Indonesian archipelago. A hydraulic wackyness that is not really meant to…

One of the first shapers to appear in Tracks in the early 70s, Geoff McCoy was as a titan of surfboard design for over half a century. McCoy originally trained as a pattern maker, a meticulous process in which patterns were hand made out of blocks of wood, which were laminated together and then machined to within 100th of a millimetre of tolerance. A keen surfer, McCoy transferred the exacting tendencies of his trade to board shaping and had immediate success. In the early ‘70s McCoy helped popularise the twin-fin, and had most of Australia’s fledgling talent on his team. Future world champions Mark Richards, and Pam Burridge started out on McCoy surfboards, while Larry Blair was riding for McCoy when he won the fabled ’78 Surfabout against Wayne Lynch…

Webby wants to turn to back. His repaired bike tyre is leaking air again, and he says he doesn’t want another ordeal like the one we’ve just had. I suspect, though, there is a little more to it than that. I mean, we’re out a long way from anything we know, and even with a grasp on the Indonesian language I still feel pretty alienated. I can only imagine how Webby is feeling. Probably like some kind of mute, double-headed Martian, capable of generating the odd laugh through some awkward charades. Truth be told, I’m not too upset about his leaking tyre because it’s also a convenient excuse to get rid of him. I’ve discovered he’s not actually the documentary maker I thought he was… he’s actually spent the past…

Rain falling on the tin roof, wind howling through the valley, trees tapping on the window with every gust… I feel the pull of the offshore breeze. It’s a call that’s hard to resist, even in the chill of a two-degree sunrise surf. Bundling up in 4mm of rubber, booties, and a hood, I prepare to embrace winter’s icy grip. The first duck dive stings with instant regret and an ice-cream headache lingers as the sun starts to crack the darkness of the horizon. By the time I’m out the back, orange bursts fill the sky. The high cliffs bounce rays of pink and magenta back toward the lineup as the first set approaches. Out of position for the first wave, I scramble towards the channel and race further out,…

Surfers for Climate polled their members to find out their level of support for the shift to renewables generally and to see what they thought about offshore wind specifically. The results from this survey showed an astounding 98% level of support for the shift to renewable energy generally and 84% support for offshore wind specifically. When asked ‘How much do you support or oppose the shift to renewable energy and the phase out of fossil fuels in our energy system?’ 98% of members either strongly support (93%) or somewhat support (5%) the shift to renewables. While 4% somewhat oppose, and 6% strongly oppose. When asked ‘How much do you support or oppose building new offshore wind projects off the Australian coast?’: 84% of members either strongly support (51%) or somewhat…

We aren’t here to whip people into a frenzy about climate change (although, it’s totally worth being frenzied about). Neither are we about stopping traffic in order to make an activist position on the need for urgent action (even though it really is worth stopping traffic for, aside from EVs…). Surfers for Climate’s contribution to change lives in the space occupied by the vast majority of Australian’s who are grappling with cost of living issues, mortgages out of control, but also who acknowledge that climate change is real and we should probably be doing something about, but not sure where to start doing it. The role we play is about enabling everyday Australians the opportunity to get involved by meeting them where they’re at, not asking them to join us…

SINCE ITS FIRST APPEARANCE IN 2018, THE SURF LAKES WAVE POOL, A PROTOTYPE LOCATED NEAR YEPPOON IN QUEENSLAND, HAS TORTURED US WITH ENDLESS ONLINE CLIPS OF STARTLINGLY FUN LOOKING LINEUPS. It is a bizarre juxtaposition of surreal, steam-punkish machinery in an artificial lake, all situated within an arid, semi-desert landscape. Although the Surf Lakes people were reasonably upfront about the fact that it was only ever intended as a display model for possible investors, the irresistibly inviting set up has had us all dreaming of a session there for six years now. How many buttery, uncrowded sessions featuring surf stars, movie stars and star-fuckers can we endure? As if these elite types don’t get enough bites of the world’s tastiest cherries anyway, they get to feast on even more forbidden…