Reading Time: 8 minutes
For a man who has had his name misspelled all his life, Marco Luciano Occhilupo maintains a very happy place in our hearts. His 1999 World Championship remains one of the all-time greatest comeback stories in sports history. Even though all he really wanted to be was a lounge singer. I think this feature is a portrait of a very simple young man wrestling with what he was about to become. Note: The following is an excerpt of the original story (Surfer Magazine, USA, 1987), which appears in full, in Matt George’s new book ‘In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings’.
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Perched on a boardwalk railing, Mark Occhilupo and I sat waiting on the white-cliffed ocean’s edge of Cronulla. There wasn’t much daylight left. We had just strolled down to look at the surf for the third time that day and found it the same as the first two checks. The moist, blustery onshore breeze was still pressing against the headland’s surf, tattering it to pieces. Mark had been gazing into the tidepools, softly smacking his lips to himself. He was somewhere else. He is always a little somewhere else. During the last couple of days, a time he had deliberately spent away from his professional surfing career, much had occurred. Mark continued to stare at the rocks and into the small, mirrored bowls of low-tide sea life. As a row of foam swept in, erasing a hundred identical images of the sky, he shared a secret. “Sometimes when I’m surfing, I look at my reflection on the surface of the water and… well, mate, I mean it just seems… this reflection… it’s like a second person staring back at me from the ocean.” Mark stopped there, perplexed, and then smiled. “But it is me, isn’t it.”
I was silent. The thought just hung there, tapping its foot for a bit, until it was dismissed with a shrug and a chuckle from Mark. But this tiny scrap really stuck with me. As we walked back up the hill toward his place, I wondered who or what was going to answer that question for him. Seven storeys above the streets of his hometown, Mark Occhilupo stands on the balcony of his new penthouse apartment, showing me the view. A startling, after-dark panorama spreads before us, stretched like a glimmering blanket from the glamour of Sydney, a half-hour train to the north, all the way back to the hustle of blue-collar Cronulla like a serfdom below our feet. Pieces of the night song floated up to us. Someone yelling for a friend across the main intersection of town, the squealing tires of a car in an underground garage, the loud hiss of the ocean two blocks to the east. We could see clusters of people making their way through town, drawn like moths to the brightest place on the main drag. A muffled thumping coming from a windowless, dangerous-looking cinder block bar called Northy’s Pub. We’d be headed there ourselves as soon as Jenny, Mark’s girlfriend of two years, was ready.
Mark stood there with his hands clasped behind his neck and stretching as full as a cat. Earlier in the day, the 86/87 Pro Tour had ended for him with a loss to Tom Carroll in the semis of the Coke Contest up in Manly. It was already being called the best heat of the Australian season. Mark seemed unaffected-hadn’t said a word about it since I’d arrived. Probably because this had been one of the first opportunities he’d had to enjoy his brand- new digs, having bought the new condo sight unseen while he was in Hawaii earlier in the season. The place was sparsely furnished. One couch, a TV, and a couple of bedrooms. One he called his ‘board- room’, where 12 surfboards of varying sizes leaned up against a bare wall. There were windows everywhere, three plants, one framed cheap poster of some flowers, and Mark’s Pipe Masters Samurai Kabuki Helmet trophy displayed on an end table. Not bad spoils for a 20-year-old surfer kid who had yet to shave. He just stood there taking it all in, slowly shaking his head back and forth with that faint smile of his.
“I know, mate… I can’t believe it either. I can’t believe I’m standing up here, woweee!” There was a genuine surprise in his voice, mixed with his high-pitched chuckle. He was wondering just what the hell he had done to deserve such luck. The elevator descended with just the three of us inside. Mark and the very pretty, very blonde Jenny were arm-in-arm, a picture of youthful ardour, cooing and teasing. “Mark, look at you, you’re such a slob,” Jenny said as she poked at his arm. I had to admit, he was a sight. If there was any single description that fit Mark’s general appearance in life, it would have to be wrinkled. Tonight he sported a white, long-sleeved shirt that at one point, had the collar not been stained and frayed, might have belonged with a suit. He had one sleeve pulled up tight, the other not. He had too-big corduroy pants on that he had to hang on to by their belt loop as he walked, and he’d finished with smelly looking, blown-out, low-top sneakers and one sock. One of his shoes was untied. His hair was longish, a palm pushed through it its only grooming.
Mark answered simply, “Yeah, but Jen, I’m comfortable like this.” Jenny fussed her best to straighten him up, then gave up with a sigh. The elevator halted with a thump and opened. “Street level,” a recorded voice said.
“Wowee,” said Mark. “Like a spaceship!”This luxury condo living was all new to him.Across the elegant lobby stood the double security doors and a guy in a uniform. He opened the door for us as we neared. Mark went to help him.
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The three of us accepted the attention when we walked into the notorious Northy’s Pub and took a place in the corner. The whole town had turned out for ‘Church’, local slang for the Sunday-night rager at the North Cronulla Pub. The smoke-choked dance floor was dominated by the Black Uhlans, a heavily bearded biker gang. The band onstage, name of Bandana, crashed through‘Sweet Home Alabama’ as the Uhlans soused them with beer. The bikers all bellowed“Crownulla” instead of Alabama. Got areal kick out of it, too. A mob of boozed-up clubbies, the local lifeguards, had staked outa good portion of the bar, each with a differ-ent silly hat on his head. Seems it was Silly Hat Night for them. All the bricklayers and the rest of the working force, still wearing the cement and paint-stained t-shirts, had taken most of the ‘leaners’ or standing tables. Over in the corner where I had stood with Mark and Jenny, the local surfers had established a perimeter. The whole place stunk of burning cigarette filters, beer-soaked carpets, and the promise of bloodshed. The ghost of surf legend Robert ‘Bobby’ Brown was in the room too. Back in 1967, Bobby, like Mark, was also a Cronulla surfing prodigy. A sure thing for the World Title. Except that Bobby was killed in a bar fight with a broken beer bottle to the throat just up the street at the Taren Point Hotel.
Mark leaned over, sloshing a little Tooheys Gold beer, and yelled into my ear, “I always used to fit in as the young grommet, you know? I used to get patted on the head a lot, that kind of thing. But now that I’ve grown up a bit, I can walk into this pub and just be one of the boys. That is the best feeling. I have a strong blood tie with Cronulla. A strong tie for sure”. Just then a belching contest broke out next to us. Mark just shrugged, held Jenny away from it as best he could and said… “For what it is”.
The madness continued to swirl around us as the evening gained momentum. All girl-friends had long since given up on their men and now just schooled for safety near the bouncers. Gary Green and Kiwi champ IanBuchanan showed up and bought a round of bourbon for anyone that was in the contest, raising their glasses to the day’s competition, a distant memory at this point. Mark’s presence was a quiet one, almost sleepy, and he spent his time observing the proceedings through half-mast eyes. Once in a while, someone would bellow, “Good onya, Occy!”and clap him on the shoulder. He’d throw them a smile. He seemed a simple object of pride to this wildcat town. But in Cronulla, a town that’s steeped in the lore of its under-ground heroes, the admiration is pure Aussie working man’s soul.As I returned from the bar with more beer,Mark spoke again. “Even apart from the surfing world, I’m beginning to feel like life is starting to happen. I’ve got a flat, a girlfriend. . . well, mate, it’s unbelievable, really.” There was that surprise in his voice again.
WHAM! Two figures in a violent embrace suddenly smashed into the cigarette vend-ing machine we were leaning against and bowled over onto the floor, both combatants began clubbing each other with their fists. “Oh God” said an exasperated Jenny, “Not those two again. Don’t worry Matt, they’re brothers. They do this every Sunday.” At this new development, Mark, Jenny, and I slipped out of harm’s way. A circle was forming around the fight, with the Uhlans roaring their approval. The evening had finally broken wide open. Down here at Church Street, the first official fight of the night was on.
Much, much later, I found myself standing on a curb out front of Northy’s Pub with some new, very drunk friends of mine. Everyone was milling about, finishing off their smuggled beers and optimistically planning tomorrow’s surf before drifting away. Mark and Jenny had left an hour or so earlier, and from where we all stood, if you wanted to, you could see Mark’s new luxury apartment. The lights were on up there. Bluey, I think his name was, Cronulla Boardriders Club captain, had been star-ing up at Mark’s balcony for a long while.When he was done, he saluted and then he mumbled “Oh, lucky bloody you, Occy.”The salute had put him off balance, but here covered nicely. Then Bluey finished his beer with a dramatic burp, turned back tome with a thumbs up, and walked off toward the darker streets of Cronulla with his arms crossed against the chill of the night.
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Click here to purchase Matt George’s new book, ‘In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings’
