In late 1981 on Hunters and Collectors second tour to NSW, we played the far Northern Beaches for the first time. The major venue at the time was Avalon RSL or the ‘Rissole’ to the locals. The place was packed to the gunwales with the Northern Beaches crowd, a goodly number of them from the local surf crews.

They were a raucous, rambunctious, exuberant crowd, seemingly having a goodly knowledge of the songs on our first EP.

These songs, especially any with a semblance of a chorus, were belted out with much gusto by the sweat-soaked crowd, a ragged, boisterous choir of hundreds. Their enthusiasm was infectious. We played with a fresh wind in our sails, carried along by the general bonhomie, soaked to the skin in our own sweat.

One particular raucous group of slightly, inebriated young men, obviously under the influence of various substances, along with copious amounts of fine ale, insisted, between songs, on bellowing the refrain from a track I’d written the lyrics to, ‘Loin Clothing’. The refrain was just a reputation of the phrase ‘Flesh to Flesh to’.

When we finally performed ‘Loin Clothing’, as our last song of the evening, this particular group went absolutely berserk.

We left the stage, soaked and sweaty, fully intending to play an encore, but desperately needing a breather and a water break.

Suddenly, a phalanx of eight members of the raucous group came bursting into the band room, led by two very intense, wiry young chaps,  one smaller and blonde, the other taller and dark. They were accompanied by a fellow who introduced himself as Duke Bombora; a ruggedly handsome fellow with a profile not unlike The Sphinx before it lost its nose.

“If you don’t do another song,” declared, The Duke, “We’re going to kill you, me …

Truly great sporting moments have an ability to transcend generations and remain a topic of spirited discussion in pubs and at office water coolers or backyard barbies for decades to come – the ‘Miracle on Ice’, the ‘Thrilla in Manila’, ‘The Shot’ by Michael Jordan, Shane Warne’s ‘Ball of the Century’ at Old Trafford … the list goes on.

For the generation of grommets seeking to whet their insatiable surf appetites in the pre-internet 80s and early 90s when surf news was restricted to magazines and the occasional surf film at your local cinema (or maybe a five-minute segment from Ken Sutcliffe on ‘Wide World of Sports’ there are a few moments that really stand out – Simon Anderson unveiling the thruster at a bombing Bells Beach in the Easter of 1980, the flash of brilliant pink as Tom Carroll laid into the jaw-dropping ‘snap heard round the world’ under a heaving lip during the ‘91 Pipeline Masters, and raise the topic of the birth of aerials with any surf-obsessed Gen-Xer and almost all will recall with giddy delight spying that fabled magazine cover on the newsagent shelves for the first time.

Which version you saw depends on which part of the world you were in. In Australia it was Dean Wilmott’s cover of Tracks in 1987, while in America it was the cover of ‘Surfing’ a few years earlier in the summer of ’84 but there it was in all its glory. The purple and green Blue Hawaii, or the Town & Country yin-yang bathed in decade-defining green and gold spray, sailing through the air, piloted by British-born South African wunderkind Martin Potter.

Regardless of which continent you were in, the impact was immediate and significant. There could be little doubt that this was a defining moment in the …

Sam Egan is upfront about his head-long plunge into shaping in the early 1960s. “I just grabbed a couple of blanks and had a go,” he says over the phone. “Scotty Dylan helped me a bit … and Barry Bennett.”

Sam, now 82, started out fixing dings at the Ray Richards (Mark’s dad) surf shop in Newcastle. Propelled by autodidactic inclinations, it wasn’t long before he was confident enough to go out on his own. Sam opened his first shop directly opposite the beach at Merewether, next door to the Beach Hotel. However, when another spot came up on Patrick Street, Merewether, where Sam was living with his mum and dad, he figured it was a better option. 

The featured an image shows an ad from the April 1971 issue of Tracks. It shows Sam, (the tall one on the right) and his glasser, Ronnie White, outside Sam’s Patrick Street shop.

Ronnie was a bank teller who, according to Sam, ‘just wanted to fix dings’. With Sam as a mentor, Ronnie soon swapped counting 50 for a trade in fibreglass. “I considered him to be, at that time, the best glasser in the country,” insists Sam. Boards were evolving quickly and to make sales you had to keep up with whatever shape was in vogue. In the ad, Sam and Ronnie are showing off their interpretation of the Tracker model, which was first developed by Bob McTavish under the Morey-Pope brand. “They were fashionable for a while, but they didn’t go that good when you think about it,” says Sam matter-of-factly.

Luke Egan rode his father’s boards when he claimed a famous victory in the 1997, Quiksilver Pro G-Land. Photos: Joli.

While the Patrick Street shop served as a showroom, Sam and his team made about 70 boards a week …

Quiksilver Pro Fiji, May 31, 2002.  Tavarua Rights. (L-R) Kalani Robb, Shane Dorian, Taylor Knox and Kelly Slater.  They all lost in the contest the day before and decided to head to town on the mainland for a night of commiserating. You know how that goes, losers drinking too much resulting in fine hangovers! They returned by boat after midnight in the perilous darkness and were back on the island for finals day.

The contest only had three heats left, two semis and a final.  The whole contest brigade went out to Cloudbreak to finish those three heats, but only one semi was run that morning in maxing Cloudbreak, which was considered too dangerous and not good enough to run heats. Officials and contestants decided to head back to Tavarua and finish the contest at Restaurants. On their way back from Cloudbreak, all the boats drove right by the scene featured in this photo without anyone noticing how good it was.

Unfortunately, the wind was onshore, and the waves were only about four feet in size at Restaurants. Mick Lowe, the quintessential Australian, won with Shea Lopex in second. Mick was a very popular winner who loved everything about Tavarua, especially the barrelling left-hand waves and fishing.

Meanwhile, back on the island, Kelly and friends heard that Tavi Rights was firing. The onshore wind at Restaurants is perfect offshore on that side of the island. Waves were about eight-foot Hawaiian with super ledgy take-offs, sheet glass conditions and draining barrels. Dorian calls it the hardest take-off in the area, including Cloudbreak. So ledgy that backing out is often required at the last second. They snuck out there without anyone else noticing until they broke some boards and needed replacements.  Todd Kline caught wind of what was going on and notified …

If fortune finds you flying over the Solomon Islands, do this: grab a window seat. A window seat for the incredible views, half a Valium for the rattling small plane nerves, and a psychedelic playlist to soundtrack the experience. Beneath you lay a kaleidoscope of islands, lagoons, reefs, and jungle-fringed beaches. Stare a while and patterns emerge: faces, punctuation marks, talismans. Some sections are as lovely as Tahiti’s outer isles yet appear entirely unmarked by humankind. You twist your head in acute angles and imagine pleasing intersections of swell, reef, and island. The mind races. It’s like you’ve found a new planet.

Eventually, the plane bumps down on a grass runway and you emerge, blink twice, and breathe in thick Solomon air. Your senses ping with unfamiliar portents. Things are happening or are about to happen. A storm builds blackly. A rooster crows murderously. A platoon of soldier crabs take the beach. A man with black skin and red teeth grins a welcome. You are here. But just because you are here doesn’t mean you know where you are. Only hours ago, you were in a shiny Brisbane airport, swimming in convenience and artificiality. You could have been in any modern globalised city. But when your twin prop comes to a rest on jungle-crowded Santa Isabel you know right away you’re in an untamed corner of planet Earth.

Isthmus crossing in a tropical kaleidoscope.

 Where are we again?                                                                                                            

“The natives of the Solomons are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain….Heads are a medium of …

Behind the Cover: John Florence by Ryan Craig

It was so peaky and low interval, there was some crazy Backdoor waves. And, you know, a couple guys were on absolute tears, John being very high up on the top of that list. That particular wave he had a pretty standard barrel, but he laid down a mean carve. I think John is someone who excels more than just about anyone with a larger than normal canvas to tear into. It’s kind of like a better version of what he surfs over at Rockpiles, or at least a steeper version. He gets all the reps in at Rockpiles, and maybe Haleiwa… then he’s just silky smooth on the Backdoor turn. It was kind of one of the only manoeuvres I think I saw the whole day. 

John’s very low profile. I will say that him, Ivan and Nathan, surf probably more than any human I’ve ever seen in my life. Those guys are crazy. They definitely do not safety surf. They are not going out when it’s perfect and groomed, like some people kind of wait for Pipeline to do. Those guys are out there when there’s one wave an hour and it’s doubled up, it’s 10-foot, there’s weird patches of sand, it’s super shallow… those guys are just absolutely addicted to surfing.

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When we catch John Florence via a digital portal, the World Champion is sun-kissed and languid with contentment.  Liberated from his WSL obligations, John has been surfing without restraint; reconnecting to the freesurfer’s mindset and relishing the battle with his ultimate competitor – himself. However, between the moonlit dawn patrols at Pipe, the all-day sessions and the nautical ambitions, new responsibilities beckon. John’s obsessive surf brain must now make space for the part of him which simply wants to be a better dad. Meanwhile, he is no longer content to simply lease his board-space to the highest bidder, collect a fat sponsorship cheque and pass go. As the co-founder of Florence Marine, John has a company to grow, product R&D to get done and a colour-coded progress sheet for every facet of the business – including his own performance as a pro-surfer. 

The Pipe wunderkind with the shock of blonde hair, the salt-crusted brothers and the cool mum who surfed, has grown up, but while so much has changed around him, John will tell you so much stays the same.

When you’ve had as many Pipe caves as John, it’s little wonder they all start to blur. Photo: Ryan Craig.

It looks like the waves have been really fun over there.

I don’t think I’ve seen it like this in my life.

That’s a big call. Does that really validate your decision to have some time off? 

It was definitely pretty funny when the Abu Dhabi event was running and Pipe was just 10-foot every day… I was just like, me and my brothers are just, like, getting barrelled all day, every day for like, 15 days straight.

Did you have a little glimpse at Abu Dhabi?  

I watched some heats, and there’s some things I liked about it, …

Ziggy Alberts is parked up at Brunswick Heads behind the wheel of his beloved Mercedes Sprinter.

The van is packed with 10 guitars, half a dozen surfboards – twins, singles, quads – and as many foil boards. “And that’s a downsize,” he chuckles as he flips the camera on his phone and gives me a walkthrough view of the van’s interior.   

Ziggy indicates he’s succumbed to the stability of a fixed address with a front door and a regular bathroom for now; there’s an album to finish and a tour to prepare for. However, for several years the van was home. The Sprinter saw some serious miles as his crew traversed the country chasing waves and playing gigs. “I crossed the Nullarbor three times,” he says with a measure of pride. Ziggy admits, the travel itself becomes part of the creative process, the places he goes and the people he meets get woven into the folk-pop tracks that have earned him a global following and landed him in front of thousands of fans at concerts around the world. “What’s so inspiring about touring; I’m neither a hardcore naturist nor like, a totally socialite person, but having the polarity of those two worlds gives you so much to write about.”  

Enjoying a different kind of rush in a more remote setting. Photo: Jack Dekor.

Despite his success over the last decade, Ziggy, who is on the cusp of turning 30, came late to music. He grew up surfing on Queensland’s Sunshine coast, but didn’t pick up a guitar until someone gave him one as a high-school graduation present. He’d always had an interest writing and during his late teens interned with surf website ‘Stab’ conjuring prose and conducting interviews for blog posts. However, as he plucked away on the guitar and …

Summa Longbottom is a throwback. During a recent trip to the Mentawais, Summa reflected on her competition days and described the transition to a big-wave career, highlighted by trips to Tahiti and missions to assorted Australian “slabs and bombies.” Listening to those reflections, I realised that her mentality hews closer to that of romanticised lords of the 1990s and early aughts than to most of the current generation of professional surfers. Summa is hardcore. Towing at Shipsterns, her weighted board hit her in the face. She may have fractured her cheek, but she didn’t go to a doctor to find out. Her session cut short; she was mostly “Spewing that she didn’t have a good crack” that day. A reluctant sunscreen user, Summa wears sunburns like a fighter with cauliflower ear – a worn trophy.

Over 12 days sharing a boat, I witnessed the ease of the dynamic, and strength of the connection between Summa and her father, Dylan Longbottom. Summa was quick to cite a source for her style and mindset:  “I’m my father’s daughter.” As a new girl dad myself, Dylan’s success in balancing his career as a surfer and shaper while cultivating Summa’s love for surfing, drew my interest.

Spending time with Dylan, I found him affable, adaptable, and discretely ubiquitous. As an example of the latter, Dylan shows up on one glorious wave near the end of ‘Second Thoughts’ – a masochistic surf video from 2004 that follows Timmy Turner, Travis Potter, and Brett Schwartz as they camp out at the end of the Earth and wait for waves. They battle dysentery. They slaughter a goat for meat. They surf in wetsuits and helmets over dry, tropical reef, knowing that any injury so far from civilisation could be fatal.

Dylan and Summa Longbottom including laughter in …

Stacy Peralta’s creative footprint is like someone playing hopscotch in wet concrete.

He leaps from side to side, following whichever muse will satisfy his inclinations, but always leaves his mark. The former number-one ranked skateboarder became a skate-industry magnate with Powell Peralta, before transitioning into filmmaking where he made celebrated documentaries on surfing, skateboarding and LA gangs. According to Stacy, his artistic sidesteps stem from an, “Unquenchable appetite to keep growing, progressing, and experiencing new things.” His latest project involves a series of paintings, in which he revisits his skateboarding roots. We chatted to Stacy online about his ‘Against The Current’ exhibition and why painting has so much appeal. 

How did this artistic bent begin, or was it always there?

I’ve been drawing all my life. All of my drawings were abstract, black ink on white paper. Though I’ve always been drawing, I really wanted to paint and assumed I’d be an abstract painter because of my drawings and because, Kandinsky, is one of my favourite artists. Over the years, whenever I ventured into painting, I painted abstractly and never liked the result, so I kept stopping. 

Powell Peralta was always such a graphic brand. How directly were you involved in the art and the graphics, which became iconic? 

I was involved in every way except in the actual execution of the physical work of drawing up the graphics. My job was to artistically and strategically aim the company in the right direction and our graphic presence was a huge part of our success.

You’ve ridden skateboards at an elite level, built skateboards, made award winning films. You still surf and now you have applied your energy to painting. Are you a renaissance man in the age of the specialist?

The most commonly used word in my vocabulary is ‘Wow!’ …