It is with no degree of nepotism whatsoever that I declare my brother Will is one of the best shapers in Australia, if not the world. I know what you’re thinking: “Of course you’d say that!” But having spent most of my life riding my brother Greg’s (no introduction necessary) or Rod Dahlberg’s (if they’re good enough for Occy!) boards, I, and many like me, now choose to ride only Will’s.
He has long been acknowledged as one of the best big-wave board shapers in the land, but it’s only recently that I put aside my other designer’s small wave boards and tried a Will Zircon and have found myself completely converted. It’s like the best of all boards in one. These are just the fastest, smoothest and most radical boards I have ever ridden.
Something else about Will that had been long known in the Land of Oz is that he is one of the funniest people you will ever meet. The fact that he has just found his ‘medium’ online, and I use the term in the psychic fashion as well as referring to his use of the internet, coincides with his backing up of last year’s hugely successful Heavy Metal/Punk music festival Doppelfest in Yamba, on the 27th of this month.
To watch his impassioned impersonations of inarticulate surf event commentators and defensive pro surf mothers on his Facebook page or YouTube channel is an extreme comedic revelation. To be in the audience of his Doppelfest 2 gig at the Yamba will no doubt prove to be just as intense.
(To see some of Will’s hilarious and occasionally disturbing posts go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClO5x-Ar9WzwMcyujt386aQ )
To say Will has gone ‘viral’ is an understatement, as he has been suffering from the Bama Forest Virus for a couple of years now. But as one wit commented as we watched his most recent online comedy post “Damn! Where do I get me some of that Bama Forest stuff?”
Perhaps it is with a far more self-serving bias that I cannot fail to mention that the very next evening I will be holding a surf movie night at the very same venue, where I will be screening a variety of surf movie shorts including Journey On (2014) – The Shane Herring Story, and Five North Swells (1999) – starring an 11 year old Laurie Towner alongside Joel Parkinson, Rasta, Mick Fanning and Trent Munro, all shredding Angourie while they were still in their teens!
Copies of Five North Swells will be available for the first time on DVD, and as I wrote in a review 15 years ago when I made it. “This is not only the best surfing film I have ever seen, it’s the best one I have ever made!”
