It might have been dad who pushed me into my first wave, but truth be told my formative surfing years probably owe more to my mother. Indeed, had my mum not surfed I might never have come to be.

The story goes that it was the late 60s when a young carpentry apprentice headed to Maroubra to see a man about a job. Of course when he arrived early for the meet-ing he realised the waves were pumping. Crisp lines wrapping into the long, scal-loped beach that was bookended by a forest of unit blocks at one end and the green expanse of a rifle range at the other. With work on the mind dad had neglected to bring his board, so he tried his luck with a girl who’d just left the water and was clutch-ing a Mal. Few girls braved the surf and the macho Maroubra scene back then, but the way the long-limbed brunette carried the board seemed to suggest she could handle the crowd and the waves. Dad wasn’t after her number, just a go of the board. The outgoing Maroubra girl must have seen something trustworthy in the handsome, young apprentice and happily lent him her log. He had a surf, got the job, and then a few weeks later he was at a dance-hall and bumped into the good-natured girl who’d loaned him a board. And so it was that mum met dad, and some seven or eight years later I came along.

Growing up, I remember other stories being told around the dinner table. Like the time there was a women’s contest at Maroubra and mum was out in the water. She hadn’t officially entered, but when the siren signified the end of the heat, mum had been nominated as the winner. ‘Go …

There are windows in surfing’s history where forces conspire to cultivate an atmosphere of heightened performance and accelerated evolution. This was certainly the scenario on the North Shore of Oahu in the mid-late 70s.

While contest wins on the nascent pro tour were coveted, the quantum leaps frequently occurred in the Free Surf sessions. As the surfers pushed one another to new levels and obsessed over equipment improvements, the surf media was also getting its act together. A few hard-working lensmen helped turn a strip of sand and reef into a stage where surfers duelled on a daily basis, hell-bent on out-doing one another with acts of daring and skill to get ‘the shot’. For those with cameras pointed there was a genuine sense that a rapid and monumental shift in the subculture was unfolding before them. BillDelaney encapsulated the era with his 1977release of ‘Free Ride’. Meanwhile, a clutch of dedicated photographers took the still images that crystallised the radical changes taking place in surfing. Over the following pages,Mark Richards, Rabbit Bartholomew, Shaun Tomson and Peter Townend reflect on a halcyon epoch in surfing that became known as the‘Free Ride Generation’.

MR, Off The Wall. Photo: Merkel

Possibly the best surfing photo of me ever taken. I feel it’s timeless and even though it was 47-years ago, and surfing has changed drastically it’s still a shot that is relevant today. The board was a 7’8” long LightningBolt wing pin, single fin shaped by Reno Abellira. It’s the board with the magenta bottom and yellow deck.

During the 1970s most of the best Hawaiian shapers shaped for Jack Shipley’sLightning Bolt store on Kapiolani Boulevard in Honolulu.

The stand-up bottom turn was not planned, and I remember it like it happened yesterday.

Off the Wall was pumping 6-8’ plus, sun was …

Australian surfers love an out-of-control rebel. Particularly if they surf exceedingly well. We admire their free spirited, devil-may-care approach to life; both in the water and on the land.They do things in their own way, on their own time, and by their own rules, and are often motivated by a raging fire that burns deep within their damaged psyche. Initially, they’re driven to prove themselves, but ultimately, they’re driven to destroy themselves. It’s not pretty, but we can’t look away.

It’s a rare and fascinating flame that draws them in. Predictably, there’s an ever-ending supply of sycophantic acolytes who willingly keep that fire well stoked. I should know, I’m their biggest fan. I’ve known only a few of them, but those few I’ve known well. It’s from these close friendships that I’ve formed the‘Dark Lineage’ theory and provide first-hand accounts of what I witnessed.

Michael ‘MP’ Peterson

It would be impossible to overstate the legend of Michael Peterson in Australian surfing. When my older brothers and I started riding fibreglass surfboards in1973, he was regarded by us as the best surfer that had ever lived. In a country that idolised sporting heroes, MP was recognised as the best so far in the fledgling sport. No-one could have imagined what would become of him over the next decade, particularly since we had such a limited understanding of mental illness back then. His childhood friend and 1976World Champ, Peter Townend, described him as: “Miki Dora, James Dean andMarlon Brando, all rolled into one.” To say he was charismatic is an understatement. But he was much more than that. MP was the surfer who drew our attention to the occasionally sublime connection between madness, creativity, and ultimately, true greatness.

Michael Peterson grips his fang-tail design and whistles in awe at its jagged
edges. Photo: …

It was the age of glassed-in fins, ‘Blue Crush’ and the ASP ‘dream tour’. At the turn of the 21st century, and for the following two decades, one name dominated women’s surfing consciousness.

Layne Beachley. She was the first woman in history to win seven World Surfing Titles.She’s still the only surfer – woman or man– to have won six in a row consecutively. All the while she has been a bullish crusader when fighting for recognition of female surfers and was instrumental in winning equal pay for women on the world stage.Yet for all her accomplishments, there’s a goal that still twangs with the frustration of unfinished business. No – it’s not the fact that Stephanie Gilmore overtook her record in 2022, winning an eighth WorldTitle and officially snagging the Greatest of All Time badge.

It’s that Layne never made the cover of a Tracks magazine.“I made the cover of Surf Girl, and what-ever other girls’ magazines there were. But I was never able to grace the cover of a men’s surfing magazine,” she says.She’s lamenting this as we peer at the cover of Issue 587 of Tracks, a punky design featuring a hot pink border capturing a greyscale photo of Steph in cat-eye sunnies, tongue sticking out defiantly, blonde locks strewn across her face. The image is momentous for more reasons than first catch your eye: a woman on the cover of an historically male-dominated surf rag; a woman who has just become an eight-time World Champion. A cover photo taken by a female photographer in Cait Miers, and a new GOAT in women’s surfing who has done the unthinkable: she has broken Layne’s record. It’s a powerful collage of a message: times, they really are changing.

Back in 2006 Layne claimed her seventh world title and probably …

Kipp Caddy

Kipp Caddy has the green light from his major sponsors, Rip Curl, to live his life on the whim of the next swell. “I just have a retainer each month and it’s up to me todo what I need to do. But it’s been pretty good. It’s been enough to kind of chase all the waves,” explains Kipp via phone from Bali, where he’s busy pursuing another version of heavy perfection.

Kipp Caddy, quivered up and ready to rumble.

The 26-year-old, who uses Cronulla as abase, has certainly been making good use of his stipend. In the early part of 2023, he followed the isobars to the deep south-coast of NSW, Snapper Rocks and Tahiti.Then he hooked up with Nathan Florence to hunt waves on Victoria’s south-west coast, before they zoned in on Tassie for a series of Shipsterns swells. However, there was one strike mission that stood out a little more than others. Still on the come down from his third, consecutive Shipsterns outing, Kipp spied a promising long-period swell sending bottom-gripping lines towards a remote South-Oz slab. “It’s a wave I don’t chase a lot because it’s quite a mission,” he explains.“And you want to make sure everything’s looking pretty good. Because it’s obviously in the middle of nowhere… but it just became super clear real quickly that it was like one of those magic swell events with a really big period, and really good winds.”

Once the decision was made, a flight toAdelaide and a 14-hour drive ensued. Somewhere on the desert highway, Kipp, photographer, Sam Venn, and Tassi grommet, Noah Hassett rendezvoused with Nathan Florence and his film crew who were trailing in another car. Dylan Long-bottom had organised the Jet Ski and also became part of the convoy with his daughter, Summa, and …

For 10 years I’ve dreamed of this.Ten years ago, ever since I first came toIndonesia as a naïve 17-year-old high school graduate I imagined myself here, roaring down this long road to Grajagan, the bare essentials strapped onto my sputtering single-cylinder trail bike.

Two boards: a purple 6’1” Jim Bankstwin fin and a radical 6’9 10-channel PhilMyers singley. A basic first-aid kit. A fewclothes and a computer and some cameragear. And, most importantly, a pocket-sized Indonesian dictionary; language, awindow into the soul of a people.

For the next six months I will ride this bike solo about the archipelago. I’m search-ing for the perfect swells endemic to this country, but riding waves is not the only objective of my trip. Surfing is the catalyst for an adventure that gives me license to explore a culture and interact with one of the most diverse and optimistic peoples on this earth.

Motorcycle
travel in Indo offers a unique sense of
freedom but ‘Ride Carefully’ is always the
motto for roads and shallow reef

The road opens up through villages and rice paddies, late afternoon sun stream-ing through the jungle canopy. This is the Alas Purwo National Park. It is an important place in Javanese mythology. Meaning ancient forest, it is where the Javanese believe that land first emerged from theIndian Ocean and a place many believe still to be haunted.

It is also home to an important place in surfing mythology. G-Land, an Indonesian surfing Mecca. That fabled left-hand erreeling down a divine two-kilometre stretch of reef on the edge of a jungle where tigers and leopards and wild buffalo still roam. Tubes to transport you to a different dimension. Waves so perfect and beautiful you can’t help but stop and ask yourself, ‘have I died and gone to heaven?’Every surfer has heard of the …