The very first album I ever owned was a vinyl copy of D-D-D-Dance by Sydney ska outfit, The Allniters. The year was 1983, and I was an 11-year-old sponge. It was also around this time that I got my greasy mitts on my first copy of Tracks surfing magazine (the October issue).

The very first album I ever owned was a vinyl copy of D-D-D-Dance by Sydney ska outfit, The Allniters. The year was 1983, and I was an 11-year-old sponge. It was also around this time that I got my greasy mitts on my first copy of Tracks surfing magazine (the October issue). Printed on shitty paper and predominantly filled with black and white photos – it transported me into a brave new world.

It was a wonderful start to the summer; banging away on my first fibreglass board (a 5’8” McGregor single fin) at North Avalon’s right-hand shorey known as Suck-up by day and disappearing to the other side of the world to witness Tom Curren win the OP Pro in California by night. Sick!

To understand how heavily those pages impacted on me you’d just have to ask my mates, who constantly hassled me for trying to surf like Curren, “except, in slow motion.” I still maintain if you wanna be busted for emulating a surfer’s style, who better than Curren?

Back then Tracks was the most up-to-date, freshest, and informative source of surfing news and gossip in Australia (and arguably the world).

We lapped up every single story, photo and rude cartoon. There was also highbrow political stuff that was way too much for a grommet my age, but had dads banging on dunny walls and turning up their Midnight Oil records, which I guess meant it was pretty important stuff.

Col Bernasconi still banging away at North Avalon. Photo – Roy Leggo

With the explosion of online news the magazine has changed to become more a vehicle for timeless images, exclusive stories and interviews. Where does that leave the grommets of today? Where will they get their first taste of international surfing news and behind the scenes tomfoolery? Well, this little website right here if we can get it right. And hopefully it will feed that hunger forever more?

You see Tracksmag.com was pretty much the first fully functional Australian surfing magazine website to grace our screens, over eight years ago. Despite it resembling a haggard old drunk in its latter stages of life the website was a groundbreaker.

At the helm on day one was Ronnie Blakey who did a great job and has since gone onto become a journeyman across many media platforms in the surfing jungle. One of his major scoops from memory was posting Laird Hamilton’s Teahupoo millennium wave well before anyone else.

So… after months of hard work from our IT and design staff, and a re-invigorated editorial team – we proudly present to you Tracks magazine’s brand new official website. Without wanting to sound like a car salesman I can tell you this highly polished piece of machinery has all the bells-and-whistles you’d expect from a fully operational Death Star! Err… I mean website.

Wanting to maintain Tracks magazine’s integrity as the surfer’s bible, we aim to enhance your online experience with plenty of news, videos, stories, interviews, photo galleries, hot girls, product info and plenty more. As always Tracks remains a surfing community-minded bunch of burnouts and up-starts so please join us by registering and earning the glorious opportunity to comment on all our uploaded material as well as join in on forums, receive our newsletter and other stuff.

There’s plenty of interesting shit going down in the surfing world at the moment, and so many changes in everything from board technology to environmental issues, and of course on the world tour. Your opinions count big time. Nothing in the world beats wasting your time surfing, so why not lose yourself online talking about it too.

Cheers for now

Col Bernasconi – Online Editor