Right now you could be forgiven for thinking that Noosa’s fastest rising surf star, just finishing a stellar year in which she became the Australian under 18 junior champion, and starting a year in which she is first pick for the Irukandjis team for the International Surfing Association World Juniors in El Salvador, might have stars in her eyes.
On the contrary, Tewantin’s smooth as silk natural-footer Coco Cairns is putting her foot on the brake, anxious to slow down her forward trajectory to a sensible pace. “I’m not trying to get on the world tour tomorrow,” she tells Noosa Today. “I think I need to grow up a bit first.” It’s a great attitude for a 17-year-old to develop, since Australia’s surfing history is littered with child prodigies who crashed and burned. And at the start of last year California’s Caitlin Simmers passed on her qualification for the championship tour at 16 to give herself more time to mature. After a great year on the qualifying series, Caitlin has qualified for 2023, but Coco and her surf-mad family are wisely taking it one step at a time.
Typically, asked to nominate her highlight of 2022, Coco goes not to her courageous victory at the Nationals in challenging conditions at North Stradbroke in early December, but to a month-long California sojourn with a few Noosa surf buddies. She says: “It was my first time there and it was just sick. We surfed [famed surf break] Trestles just about every day, but it was a girls’ fun trip, no competition. But we did get to watch the WSL finals series, when my favourite female surfer in the world, Steph Gilmore, won her eighth world title and surfed brilliantly. That was pretty cool.”
The greatest of all time in women’s surfing, having surpassed Layne Beachley’s seven world titles last September, Steph Gilmore is a hero and role model for Coco, as she is for so many young surf girls on the way up. But over the past couple of years as Coco has developed as a surfer, stylistic comparisons with Steph have been made by several observers. Whether she’s free-surfing the hectic Noosa points or competing in crunchy beach breaks, Coco has the ability to smooth out the rough edges on even the most explosive manoeuvres, creating a flow to her surfing that is beautiful to watch.
But as much as she admires her, Coco is no Steph clone. Something of a surf sponge, she says she takes ideas and inspiration wherever she finds it, whether it’s from local longtime rival and friend Lil Bowrey or fellow serial finalists in the junior divisions, like Keira Buckpitt and Oceanna Rogers. She’s also following the careers of the young qualifiers for the 2023 championship tour, like Molly Picklum and fellow Sunny Coaster Sophie McCulloch. She says: “I surfed quite a bit with Molly when I was young, like in the pro juniors, and she’s always been an inspiration. We surf very differently but I love her style, a bit like Tyler Wright. And Sophie McCulloch won at Haleiwa and qualified for the tour on the same day that I won the Aussies at Straddie last month. I was so stoked for her!”
With South African-born parents Carol and prolific videographer Shaun Cairns, along with younger surfing brother Kaimana to keep her grounded, Coco is not drawing a timeline to the top just yet. She knows that making the championship tour requires a lot of hard work and commitment as well as ability. She says: “Right now I’m just focused on improving my surfing, but I’m thinking of the free surfing option because I don’t want to put too much pressure on myself. I’ll just do the qualifying comps that are close by, like Cabarita.” With her final year of school coming up, that’s smart thinking, but there’s also the World Juniors coming up in El Salvador in just a few months.
Coco says: “I’m so excited about that, representing Australia, but I’m also excited about going free surfing with friends and improving by surfing different breaks. I really want to qualify for the tour, but in an ideal world I’d spend a year or two being a professional free surfer first.” And with several years’ experience as a Roxy Girl and a growing sponsor list that includes surfboards from Noosa’s Campbell Designed, she is sure to get commercial support for that.
But right now, Coco’s got her first car – a 1980s Jeep with a couple of hundred ks on the clock, just right for heading up the beach to avoid the crowds – and it’s summer time and there’s swell, and in the words of the old Cyndi Lauper song, “girls just wanna have fun”.
