As a tribe of surfers bail on the mainstream and pursue the country-soul dream, Tracks co-founder John Witzig illustrates the scene in Byron Bay and the far north coast. Many will see striking parallels between the issues affecting the region then and the one’s being debated now. This week’s Classic Tracks is an excerpt from a feature in Tracks Issue #9 (June 1971).
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Sometimes when I sit at home. Usually on the verandah looking to the sea. Or else in front of the fire. I can imagine that there are no houses crowding my view and my privacy. That the roads don’t encircle my home and that the cars don’t rip down them on Saturday nights. It’s all part of the country dream. Then I’d have a soup that I made on the stove in case someone came by. Things’d be slow, and of course, happy. Now I open a can of Campbells soup that reminds me of Andy Warhol which is a long way from country soul.
I like to imagine that I am more pragmatic now. That the dream is tempered by useful practical things and’s probably closer to realisation. Though sometimes I deny it, much is still tied in the north. It started there when we thought about living forever where there were those magic waves. Some of us went there and lived and more of us went there and stayed. We rather imagined that we’d found the way. We were pretty evangelical about it all. ‘Come and share the brown rice’.
Now there’s a lot of people living along the coast. At Yamba there’s Newcastle guys and a group from Wollongong and the odd South Australia. Gary Keyes and Chris Brock are talking about when they’ll be leaving. There’s too many people and it’s not like it was they say. Undeniably they’re right. A decent day at Angourie and never less than twelve guys out. Still they were good waves. And May holidays.
At Byron the roots have gone deeper Perhaps it was because ‘God made that coast for surfers’. Land was available in smallish acreages.
Perhaps it took an American or two to show us how valuable our land was. Whichever way you look at it, it’s more valuable now and it’s got nothing to do with the prosperity of the dairy industry. You can’t spend thirty thousand dollars on one piece of land and expect that things will be quite the same as they were before you did it. There’s some feeling that the northern dream has become the American dream. That the yankee dollar has done it again. But some of the Americans up there are my good friends and they’re not particularly Americans but citizens of the planet. And I suppose that each one of them is someone’s close friend. Still it hasn’t made it any easier for a lazy Australian surfie with no money.
There’s digging and building going on and some people are looking pretty good. Life in the country has slowed some down. They’re getting into music. Even Nat has an electric thing for making loud noise on.
At gatherings of the tribe they play some and smoke some. Generally the tribe looks good. Certainly it’s numerous. Some I don’t know. There’s some busts and rumours and generally if you’re quiet you’re left alone like most other places.
Really there’s a lot of people and slow little Byron is taking some notice. At the trial, though there was no one at the Court, one of the Ryan Cafe ladies said that it was nearly two o’clock and that we’d have to be getting back. They knew what was going on. One local resident (he was a stirrer the sergeant said) was openly partisan. I hope you do them he said.
There’s another trial coming up but so far it’s one for the boys. The local cops will have to mind out just a little bit more. It’s not a victory but it’s important. Because one way or another most people were watching. They’ve been fed some weird stuff in some of the papers and it couldn’t quite fit what they see and they’re reserving judgement. Most of them.
In some ways the town sees it as an invasion and in some ways it’s right. There’s a lot of new signs around town and they tell a story. There’s signs telling you that you can’t go in this way and others that tell you that you can’t take your dog on to miles of beach. Somehow it appears to have evaded them (the councillors).
That it might well be more important to let people have their dogs free on the beach than to be paranoid about a bit of dog shit. There are a couple of ‘divided roads’ one or two keep lefts,, one ‘welcome piss off (“whilst welcoming you . ..”) and there’s one ‘merging traffic’.
There’s signs that some of the local citizens are believing what they’re reading. One of the council workers who’s putting up the sign at Angourie (it makes staying overnight an offence liable to prosecution) said to a kid in the back of a car ‘What sort of cigarettes do you smoke?’. The ticket gate man said that did we have any pot because he liked a puff in the mornings. We laughed and I felt like telling him that you have a hit not a puff. When you talk though, you’ll find that they’re willing to accept you pretty much for what you are (a long haired weirdo). If you’ll take the trouble to talk then really you’re doing well. For everyone. There are people who are on side for their own reasons. It’s hard not to question some. But others are just good strong citizens…
