Wow, 600 hundred issues of Tracks! I’m happy to have enjoyed an association with the masthead since some of the first pages were printed in 1970. Now the magazine has reached a milestone in global surf publishing that’s difficult to match. When pressed by current editor, Luke Kennedy, to come up with a fitting submission for the celebratory issue, I had to think. Then I remembered I still had the original images that appeared on consecutive front covers – September and October 1975 – both featuring two of the best surfers on the planet at the time. Yes, the covers were embellished by some pre-photoshop manipulation but they bring back some of the best memories of being employed on the mag, working out of the original Tracks house in Whale Beach on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. Back then, we organised our magazine duties around optimal conditions for the two waves that bookended ‘Whaley’. At the north end of the beach was the reliable summer left known as ‘The Wedge’. Meanwhile, the southern corner was home to a fickle right-hand wedge that relied more on the southerly swells of winter. Each was a high quality wave on its day and both were distractingly visible from the windows of the house, making it easier to time our tide/wind run between Tracks tasks. 

To say the least, the environment in the house was liberally creative… and irreverent. The ground floor was equipped with a dark-room to process and print black and white negatives. Meanwhile the top floor housed the design area so we could photograph a concept, process it and put it straight onto pages. Known as ‘layouts,’ the cardboard sheets, which were printed with light blue guides, emulated a page of the mag. Spray glue would hold the sheets of type ...