Table of contents for No. 569 in Tracks

From the moment they watched Steve Cooney slide across a shimmering Uluwatu wall in ‘Morning of the Earth’ in the early 70s, Bali has had surfers under a spell. Since then the wave-blessed Indonesian Island has evolved into a travel metropolis, visited by an estimated average of five million people a year. Despite the crowds, the traffic chaos, the threat of earthquakes and the scars of terrorism, Bali still remains a version of paradise for many. On an island where the sensory overload has always seemed like a constant, Canggu has emerged as a kind of black sand Bohemia, where surfers and travellers can lose themselves in a heady mix of fun waves, surfboard pluralism, trending philosophies, yoga poses and alluring night life. This issue, the colour and dynamism of…

It’s a sad fact that in the current surfing climate we simply don’t get to see enough of the tour surfers doing their thing outside the confines of competition. They don’t drop web edits; they don’t have to. Their sponsorship KPI’s are all geared toward performing on surfing’s elite world tour, not achieving exposure on measly surf sites. The traditional surf media isn’t on their radar like it once was, and feature length surf movies are dying a slow death. Their whole world is wrapped up in the WSL banner, and it seems the only way we get to see our beloved best doing their thing is in 30 minute windows of competition, set to the commercial drone of Joe Turpel and ’89 world champ Martin Potter. Surfing within the…

Ryan’s Return to the Fold At the time of writing, Newcastle’s Ryan Callinan heads to Hawaii with his qualification for the 2019 World Tour sewn up. This year he’ll be able to enjoy his North Shore campaign, safe in the knowledge he will be back where he belongs when the tour kicks off at Snapper. There’ll be no last minute qualification anxiety. No need for biting fingernails or crossing fingers. Just a nice Hawaiian vacation, and if anyone deserves one it’s Ryan. You see, in 2016 Ryan achieved his greatest dream when he first qualified for the tour, but he also came face to face with his worst nightmare with the passing of his father, Gary. Grief took its toll on Ryan’s rookie season and he only managed three heat…

Surf photographers lead a pretty glamourous life. They live like modern-day gypsies, chasing epic swells around the globe and hanging with the world’s best surfers. Their passports are littered with exotic stamps, their Instagram accounts heavy with engaged followers and they seem to have connections wherever they go. If they’re good – and they must be – their carefully composed photographs tell beautiful lies. They don’t show the closeouts, the rips, the rubbish or the crowds. They only show paradise. There’s magic in capturing perfection in a plastic box but to succeed you need more than technical chops and an artistic eye. Russell Ord has been in the game for a good while now. The Margaret River-based shooter has made his name via the hardest route possible - by becoming…

Driving across the Spanish high plains en route to Portugal, I decided on a whim to pull into the old walled city of Salamanca, to grab a cheap hotel room near the Plaza Mayor and spend the last couple of hours of a hot afternoon sipping the good local wine and nibbling from trays of tapas. A glass in hand and some jamon on the way, I flipped open my phone to check my messages. Immediately my eyes fell upon the kind of message every freelance surf hack dreams about. It was from my Portuguese colleague Joao Valente, and after rambling on about catching up for dinner in Figuera da Foz the following night, he cut to the chase: “Anyway, I have something to mess up your life plans a…

It’s 11am when I pull up outside the Bupa Aged Care Homes in Pottsville, on the Tweed Coast. I’m going to visit Phyllis O’Donnell, Australia’s first female World Surfing Champion. I make my way upstairs, and see Phyllis sitting in the courtyard, eyes closed and face to the sky, drenched in Spring sunshine. We take a seat in the courtyard together, and I see that Phyllis has brought her Hall of Fame trophy with her. Phyllis was born in Drummoyne, Sydney, in 1937. She was a late bloomer, she tells me, and didn’t get on a board until the ripe old age of 23. “I didn’t know a thing about surfing,” she says. “I bought my first surfboard from a place called Knott & Kirby’s. It’s like buying a surfboard…

One of the things that makes surfing closer to an art-form than a sport is the surfboard itself. Back in the day many of the world’s best hand crafted their own boards and rode them to glory. The big names from the world tour became the big names in surfboards: Mark Richards, Michael Peterson, Gerry Lopez, Wayne Lynch, Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald. The pro surfer/shaper model has faded now that the tour has become more demanding and its athlete’s much wealthier. You just don’t hear of pros shaping their own surfboards any more. Mulloway’s Shaun Cansdell has long been attracted to mowing foam. It’s in his bones, genetics or where ever the shaping urge lives. Even before he qualified for the world tour he was dabbling in foam and resin.…

CANGGU IS ALL ON ITS OWN. Once a surfing outpost, now a colony, it’s been cut off. The natural disaster known as tourism, combined with a total lack of civil infrastructure to handle it, has resulted in geographical isolation due to snarled traffic. From Kuta to Canggu, once minutes, is now a bad hour of breathing near pure carbon monoxide. This traffic is a result of a massive exodus of adventurers, scoundrels, criminals, dreamers and vegans who have forged Canggu into the most outlandish surfing community in the world. Astonishingly usurping the Holy Grail of Uluwatu as Bali’s prime surf destination. Canggu has morphed into a miasma of every surfing creed, colour and philosophy drawn to its perceived promised land of cool where any surfer on earth can re-invent themselves.…

Those of us who are fans of pro surfing want to see WCT events go down in glorious conditions – behind-the-rock drainers at Snapper, J-Bay with lines stretching to infinity and Teahupoo as a terrifying arena of folding concrete coils. We also like to see new locations introduced to challenge the surfers, spice up the viewing and give the commentators some different raw material to work with. However, in addition to being pro surfing diehards, we all closely identify with a particular stretch of coastline. At our respective locals, the waves we ride, the sand or shelf we walk across, the car park or check-spot we banter in and the memories of the all-time days all give colour and meaning to our lives. The shared experience of such things binds…