Chippa Wilson readily admits he owes much of his aerial wizardry to a 50-yard stretch of bitumen out the front of his childhood home in Cabarita. “We had these really cool, curbed gutters, and I used to barefoot surf-skate those fuckers from sun-up to dusk… I honestly just did little floaters and alley oops, shove-its and what not… Little lines that I have achieved later on in my life surfing.”

There was hard-worn evidence for his skating obsession. “The road was terrible but if you went out the front of my house, it was fucking perfectly smooth, because I just whittled it down so hard. And all the kids from the neighborhood would see that and just hit my little section out the front.”

Although surfing was always in the frame, he recalls skateboarding offering a certain walk-out-the door appeal. “I probably showed more interest in skating at a young age, just because it’s accessible. You know, Dad didn’t have to drive you up to the beach and whatnot. You could just hit your driveway or around the streets and go do it.”

As his surfing evolved in close-step with his skating it was a natural evolution for Chippa to take his barefoot skate act into the ocean. Hours of practice on the bitumen had given him pop and honed his proprioception; made the board beneath his feet more like a fifth limb than a detached object … “I kind of transferred that gutter skating into the surfing, and then once I started doing that on the board, I kind of left that (skating) behind,” explains Chippa who lives in Exmouth in north-west Australia these days, but still spends time on the east coast.   

“Still flying around… that’s something I’ve always done, and something I think I’ll forever do.” Photo: ...