ONCE UPON A TIME IN WA
Sometimes the magic happens
It begins with a phone call from an industry insider. “We’re putting a crew together for a trip and would love it if you could come along.”
“Who’s the crew?” you ask in a neutral tone.
“Parko, Taj and Dorian,” responds the voice at the end of the line with unwavering certainty. “World champ, wave-slaying genius and the best big wave guy on the planet,” you think to yourself, doing your utmost to play it cool.
“Where are you planning on going?”
“West Australia.”
“Sharks, slabs, mining and Miss Reinhardt, the richest chick in the world,” all run through your mind.
“Are you in? The plane leaves tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’m in,” you respond with all the assertiveness you can muster, simultaneously shelving every other responsibility you have, including the magazine that’s not finished.
Two days later you are wandering along a talcum-white beach, dizzy with the site of exploding blue A-frames. Out in the water, the world champ explains why it’s hard to go back to thrusters once you’re under the spell of quads, Taj Burrow is talking about ‘Tee-pees’
(barrelling peaks) and Shane Dorian is calling you into waves. After a few mesmerizing moments of Indian ocean lip-shade, thoughts of toothy monsters fizzle and you feel wealthier than the troll-like chick who hoards all the prized stuff in the ground.
You catch a ride home with a local guy, Mal, who is the trip’s oracle for swell. He has a knee-deep collection of empty, ice-coffee potions on his passenger seat floor and a lifetime’s collection of wild-west stories. As Mal spins his tales, including one about a recent 36 hr battle with a wildfire, you stare out the window at a land that makes you appreciate the Dorothea Mackellar poem they drummed into you at school.
“I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea, Her beauty and her terror The wide brown land for me!
You fall asleep that first night with images of gleaming barrels spinning through your brain and then when you wake up the next morning, Taj leads you through a labyrinth of dirt trails. Emerging at the top of the cliff, you look down and it’s as if you’ve arrived at last night’s dream.
For three days you’re enraptured by the tube-wizardry of a trio of the world’s best. Taj Burrow makes you welcome at his castle, Joel Parkinson doesn’t stop smiling and Shane Dorian shows you how to use his bow.
At a local brewery you are served a platter of delicious-tasting ales and afterwards you feast on the finest, locally farmed venison while Shane Dorian regales you with pro surfing tales. And as the sinking western sun turns the sky into a pastel slide show, it dawns on you that this wasn’t just another trip, it was a surfing fairy tale that happened Once Upon A Time in WA.
