Tracks December 2015

Taj Burrow is sitting next to me wearing that trademark Cheshire grin – the kind you couldn’t wipe off with a well-swung cricket bat. As far as life lotteries go Taj’s numbers definitely came up but he never seems like he takes his good fortune for granted. “Wow, look at the ocean,” he enthuses, as we stare towards rogue peaks in the distance from atop a storybook-green, New Zealand headland. The view is undeniably spectacular but beyond that, Taj’s voice carries all the wonderment of a child who has laid eyes on the sea for the first time. His optimism is so infectious you find yourself shelving petty concerns and feeling better by way of osmosis. Over the past few days Taj has led the charge on the pool table,…

I first laid eyes on an asymmetrical craft underfoot of Ryan Burch. It was a clip of the rubber-limbed, Californian goofy-footer dancing down the line at Desert Point and G-Land in a refreshing display of self-expression. Curious, I delved into his Instagram feed to discover he had been cooking up shapes like this for a while and a small tribe of his disciples had been road testing his crafts all around the globe. One such fellow is Angourie’s Bryce Young, son of Nat. Bryce is a solid 6’3, natural footer who oozes a groovy vibe from yesteryear. I noticed Bryce on the North Shore last winter, posted up at Rocky Point with a gaggle of surfers with similar foam fetishes. They lined the foreshore with photographers, filmers and cool looking…

Schooled by the likes of Matt Archbald, Shane Beschen and Christian Fletcher on the punt-friendly shores of San Clemente, Chris Ward soared into the limelight as a teenage prodigy. In an interview Matt Biolis once told Tracks that a young Ward was "other-worldly" to watch. Early in the 90s Biolis became Chris's shaper and chief sponsor with Lost. Ward reciprocated by unleashing a devastating comp and free-surfing act and together he and Lost surfboards rocketed to surf-world stardom. In Lost vids from the mid-late 90s and into the early 2000s Wardo was cast as the hedonistic hell-man who was living large while the rest of surfing took a more conservative and corporate turn in pursuit of mainstream bucks. Despite the renegade rep', by age 17 Ward's surfing was supporting his…

SERENITY NO MORE Hi Tracks, here is a photo that shows the land development taking place at Moonee Beach / Catherine Hill Bay. We can all say goodbye to the serenity and isolation that Moonee and Ghosties beaches has provided for us over the years! The price of progress. Stephen – Belmont, NSW BALIBOARDSCAMEXPOSED The following is a letter from a surfer to the Consulate General of Indonesia in Melbourne enquiring about the so called ‘Board Tax’ inflicted on many surfers upon entering Bali, and the response from the consulate office. Interesting. Att Consular Office: Good Morning, I am writing to you to make the Consular office aware that there is a terrible problem in your customs area at your Denpasar airport. I travel to Bali and The Mentawai’s very…

“I totally smash him,” says Jay Occhilupo when asked how he goes in mock heats with his old man. Straight off the cuff, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the son of 1999 World Champ Mark Occhilupo has inherited the same cheeky demeanour his old man showed the world in the early 80s, 90s, 00s and current day. And much like his old man, Jay also has his old man’s genetic ability to take scalps on the competitive circuit and not just the mock heats with his old man. This year, he’s managed to take out his old man’s namesake grom event on the Goldy as well as the Skullcandy, where he managed to post a nine-point ride for one single frontside snap that left people with their jaws on…

On a recent visit to my hometown, the surf community was divided over the dunking of an overzealous young grom. It was surfing’s own version of The Slap – the Australian classic by novelist Christos Tsiolkas, which shows the ricochet effect on a group of friends, after one man slaps a child who is not his own at a suburban barbeque. Just as ‘The Slap’ raised questions about the contemporary family and notions of child rearing, so too did the dunking get us all thinking about the modern surfing community and what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour in the water. Grommet abuse was once a common enough occurrence, and for the baby boomers and their kids, who bore the brunt of it and learned to take it in their stride,…