Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 37 i White Horses

BREATHE IN, SLOW DOWN…

The Red Pat Rawson board (17½” wide) behind me is one of my remaining Pipeline boards from the early 1990s. The pink board from “the snap” is in halves and on display with my black Gath helmet in Barry Kanaiaupuni’s Boardrider store at Haleiwa. The Red board is a stepped-up, more extreme version than the ’91 pink one. It was made in ’94. I hold it close and haven’t ridden it since the late ’90s. In 1985 my glasser Mike Rogers said. “You have to get a board from this guy Pat Rawson, his boards are amazing. You got to do it!” So I did and that was the beginning of a good relationship. Pat is so meticulous, a cosmic treasure. Tuned in and a great musician. I really trust…

CAPTIONED BY TOM…

“THE ROAR OF THE FALLS ECHOED IN MY MIND, AND IN THE QUIET OF THE WILDERNESS EVENING, I WENT HAPPILY TO SLEEP ON EARTH.” BOB BROWN Over the years, I’d see people running. I never understood it. I’d pass judgment watching them sweat themselves into psychosis… I mean, why would you put yourself through it? I’m 41. Three kids. I’ve seen the spare tyre come and go above my waist line, more prominent with each child. That former life – surfing hours on end, days on end – now replaced with three-wave surfs and half-hour ‘Dad’ windows. Wouldn’t have it any other way, of course. A good mate asked me to come for a run one day. The thought of gasping my way through jolted pavement strikes wasn’t enticing. However, he…

BREATHE OUT, THERE YOU GO! THANKS! Though there’s too many people to thank individually for their amazing contribution to this edition, we’re gonna give it a crack anyway. First up, when we set out to commission artwork for this edition of White Horses, we had no idea one of them would end up on the cover, but such was the quality and spirit of Mike Woning’s submission we are thrilled to run it there. Thank you Mike! OK, for sharing your stories: John Florence, Tom and Nick Carroll, Johnny Abegg, Phil Usher, Dale Chapman, Michael Carson, Pacha LIght, Corey Graham, Jim Davidson, Matt Dillon, Adriaan van der Wallen, Linley Hurrell. Thanks so much! For contributing commissioned artwork, Pepa Ivanoff, Dave Homer, Dave McArthur, Campbell Milligan, Brad Smith, Simon Riviere, Ed…

Before we got Taka, he was called “Tucker” – as in “Bush Tucker”. We decided to modify his name to “Taka”, after the character Prince Ashitaka, from one of our favorite movies, “Princess Mononoke” – an extraordinary Japanese film. Ashitaka’s role is central in the struggle between the gods of a forest and the humans who consume its resources. It’s worth a watch! The COVID lockdowns had just started and this dog popped up for free on Gumtree in Maclean, just down the road from our home in Iluka. Taka might have been collateral damage in a marriage breakup or something, and the owners just wanted to give him to a good home. He was nine months old when we picked him up. He’d never been to the beach before,…

Still hours ’til daylight and the carpark’s chokkas already. Vans and utes, strewn with guns, parked bumper to bumper for the length of the street and around the corner. Reaching the lineup after paddling the requisite K or so, it’s not yet light enough for seascape and landscape to distinguish themselves from each other, jet skis in the channel resemble dairy cows in a paddock. And when the escarpment before me folds over the valley beneath it, the heaviest wave I’ve seen in a long time – black, backless, and overwhelming me with awe – I struggle to comprehend what I’m watching. And when a black dot appears beneath its lip, my mind loses its ability to keep reality in check. This wave is far larger than anyone has ever…

PHIL USHER PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE FAR NORTH COAST BY ANDREW SHIELD MICHAEL CARSON PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE NSW SOUTH COAST BY RAY COLLINS COREY GRAHAM PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE SURF COAST BY ULA MAJEWSKI DALE WILSON PHOTOGRAPHED ON THE GC BY ANDREW SHIELD PHIL THE COL SMITH CHANNEL We were just doing normal pintails and round tails and stuff like that in the late ’70s period. I’d known Col for quite a few years before he became famous. Anyway, we met up and decided we were going to do the “Col Smith channel design.” He came up from Redhead, and we started doing them. We used my templates, and he showed me how to put the channels in. We ended up selling heaps of those boards over a three-year period. We did six,…

CAPTIONED BY THE PHOTOGRAPHER…

I live at Avalon and I’m a PDHPE teacher (sports and health teacher) at the Northern Beaches Secondary College. About 17 years ago, two year-eight students asked if I had a spare fibreglass board for them. They were doing the Learn to Surf program. Word got out, and the year-seven Learn to Surf kids started asking, and I kept looking. I lent out my 6’ 1” competition board and a few spares. Eventually friends started bringing me their old boards and I got boards from council clean-ups, auctions and garage sales – buying boards for between $10 and $20. It kept growing, and after a decade I had so many out there in the community I couldn’t keep track of who had what, so I started an Xcel spreadsheet. Borrowers…

TO OUR TRULY AMAZING ADVERTISING PARTNERS JOSH AND JOSH FROM HURLEY NEIL FROM RIP CURL BUTCH, TIM AND KAZ FROM REEF NATHAN AND TOM FROM LEISURE COLLECTIVE RAZ, WAZZA AND ZANE FROM FIREWIRE IAN FROM ATOLL TRAVEL DANE, NAIMA AND HAYLEY FROM PATAGONIA JD AND BAINY FROM O’NEILL BRIAN AND DONNA FROM MATANIVUSI JOHN AND JOSH FROM WORLD SURFARIS JANET AND PETER FROM CLASSIC MALIBU PETE AND ROSS FROM FUTURES FINS (IT TRULY IS APPRECIATED) We’re supremely stoked for the support of the seriously wonderful humans and the brands listed above, and we urge our readers to give them your custom!…

I imagine most of my possessions will outlive me. It’s a sobering thought. I’ll be burned, and chucked into the water by some young relative, then there will be all this shit sitting around for someone to deal with. Or will there? The tree behind me is a camphor laurel. They were popular a century or so ago as wind breaks on small farms. I think this one might have once filled that role. We live on the edge of a desire line, a walking passage between Pittwater and Newport Beach, once used by Indigenous people, then by visitors from Sydney who would trek over from the ferry landing to the surf beach. From the 1850s the area was farmland. The roots of this camphor laurel occasionally turn up remnants…

I was 19 when I got hooked on sailing. It was summertime on the North Shore and my friend, Erik Knutson, had a tiny little sailboat. My brother and I jumped in one day and we sailed from Ehukai down to Waimea. And it was just so much fun. The next week, another friend of ours was selling a similar little sailing boat – a Laser 2 – so I bought it from him and started learning on that. The Lasers are so small and lightweight, you can just push them up the beach when you’re done. From the start, there was something about the challenge of getting from ‘here’ to ‘there’, that was really engaging – it was one of those things that just clicked for me, with my…

“I’m an Australia-born, Costa Rica based artist and designer. I live and surf in Playa Negra. My art and my life is a constant and evolving exploration of travel, murals (I have painted 263 in six countries), surfing, photography, tarot, colour (especially pink), textiles, taoism and all things tropical. PEPA IVANOFF MIKE WONING “I’m a father, husband, surfer and painter from The Netherlands. In everyday life I’m a project manager for a knowledge/research institute. Both our kids (13 and 16) are getting into surfing too, which is most awesome. Homespot is the dark, murky and often cold Northsea (Maasvlakte) where we surf all year through. Illustrator & painter Dave Homer grew up on the Sunshine Coast surfing uncrowded beach breaks and now lives in Bondi, battling the hordes for scraps in…

I’ve always been into timber work and my boat building apprenticeship heightened that interest, but during a trip to Hawaii in 2015 I saw this friendly-faced Hawaiian man carving a Tiki in a back alley market in Waikiki. He was wearing a singlet, shorts and thongs, sitting by himself on a mat with a few small Tikis in front of him. The log was held with his feet while he chipped into the log, I bought a Tiki off him. I didn’t ask many questions, but while I was watching him a large chip of timber came off which wasn’t supposed to. I remember asking him if he’d glue it back in, or re-shape it to compensate for the missing chip, to which he replied, “Nope, the tree didn’t want…

LINLEY HURRELL ON THE PLEASURES OF QUIETUDE The ocean makes me feel alive. When you’ve seen yourself die, and then you’re given the opportunity to surf again, that’s the ultimate silver lining. When I’m in the ocean, I feel connected to the world again. I believe that everything’s a balance — whatever you take from the ocean, you have to give it back, in some form. I grew up just north of the 90 Mile Beach, in Gippsland, eastern Victoria. I spent a lot of my childhood in a remote place called Woodside. About 40 people live there permanently. My family still live in Gippsland, but I left when I was 18 and went to Uni in Melbourne. Two years into my degree, I moved to the Surf Coast and that’s…

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