Even when it started to appear on the swell charts about a week out, I didn’t really believe it. If we get swell in mid-winter it’s usually from the south and most of it sails right past the points and across the bay. But last week’s swell event came right on cue, and suddenly it was February in June!
First came the rain – buckets of it – and then out of the gloom little lines began to appear midweek. By Thursday it was pumping, and then it jumped again for Friday, and again on Monday. A shocking sweep to contend with on the lower tides, and a bit lumpy and bumpy on the surface at times, but some real diamonds in the rough.
And this was no solitary low, sneaking around the corner of a Pacific island group. As swell forecaster Ben Matson noted on Friday: “It’s a very slow-moving system, and expected to meander within our swell window for quite a lengthy time. This will prolong the plateau of the event, and its long tail is expected to persist through until next weekend thanks to a stationary fetch holding steady to the south-east of Fiji through much of next week.”
I’m writing this on Monday, but this means that it’ll still be pumping today, and on into the weekend! Give my crook back and spaghetti paddling arms strength!
Israel: messiah or naughty boy?
An epic swell event in the middle of winter is pretty strange, but I suppose in a week when radio shock jock Alan Jones comes out (so to speak) in favour of both Israel Folau’s vilification of gays and the legalisation of all recreational drugs, including ice, just about anything can happen. “Pity these Christians,” wrote David Marr in The Guardian. “They’re lashing out, angry and terrified.”
Not that Alan Jones can be considered a conventional Christian. Way back in the mists of time I worked for him, helping him concoct a book (never published) that described in torturous detail how he and he alone – never mind the bloody Ella brothers – directed the historic Wallabies Grand Slam of 1984. I’m not sure if profanity is a mortal sin, but after the vivid blue tongue-lashings I got during every pointless hissy fit, I ran out the door of Jonesy’s hell-hole in the old Employer’s Federation in Sussex Street, never to return.
But back to Issy, and David Marr, who continued: “The madness is dialled up to the max. But I’ve been reporting faith and politics in Australia for nearly 40 years and I’ve seen all this before: militant Christians all over the shop, blind to their arrogance and contradictions.”
Now as much as I admire David and his significant body of work, this is nearly as whacky as the fire and brimstone mob that Issy follows. What has struck me about this highly emotional debate is the common decency of the approach taken by some of the true leaders of the Christian faith in this country. I was inspired to seek out what other leaders were saying when driving home from the surf I heard the Very Reverend Dr Keith Ronald Joseph, the Anglican bishop of North Queensland being interviewed on ABC radio.
An outspoken supporter of same-sex marriage, the 69-year-old cleric argued persuasively that Israel Folau would better serve his faith by showing compassion, and that his own interpretation of the scriptures did not consign gays to hell and damnation. In fact, he said, many Christians define hell as an everlasting life without a god, rather than a cave full of red hot coals.
And he wasn’t alone in preaching moderation. The Very Reverend Dr Peter Catt, Dean of St John’s, Brisbane, told the Nine media: “Religious persecution is a very serious matter, a matter of life and death for many Christians and people of other faiths throughout the world. To align oneself with them, because one’s teaching about women being subservient to men or the proclamation of approaches to human sexuality that lead to increased rates of youth suicide, is being called out as self-indulgent and trivialises the plight of those who are genuinely threatened for holding to their faith.”
Meanwhile, at least the silks are happy as Issy trots off to court to fight the good fight with $2 million stumped up by well-meaning folk who think that freedom to vilify should be a two-way street. Not that I’m taking Rugby Australia’s side in this. If their punishment had fit the crime, rather than the absurd overkill of a life sentence, then maybe this expensive mess wouldn’t be happening.
