The diminutive, muscular, wild-eyed, thoughtful and creative two-times world champion was a popular hero through much of his career, but for more than four decades he has been revered as a “surfer’s surfer”, widely respected for his all-round waterman ability and his extraordinary affinity with the moods of the ocean.
We speak, of course, of Tom Carroll, who will be a very special guest at next month’s Noosa Festival of Surfing, returning to the event he helped put on the map a quarter century ago.
Born in Sydney in 1961, younger brother by two years to Nick, Carroll spent his early years in a creative family environment presided over by father Vic Carroll, a leading newspaper editor.
When the boys and older sister Josephine lost their mother to cancer when Tom was eight, he and Nick sought solace in the waves in front of their Newport Beach house, and soon became leaders of the Newport Peak crew.
Neither brother seemed particularly naturally gifted, but they were both enthusiasts from an early age, and tiny Tom was determined to kick every wave he caught into submission. At first there was a lot of energy and not much style, but by the time he was the star surfer of Newport Plus club, and making an impact at state junior level, Carroll was becoming an explosive goofy who could smoothly link his moves in the manner of one of his mentors, Col Smith.
When he won the inaugural Pepsi Pro Junior at Narrabeen in 1977, the grom with the wicked grin was on his way, nominated by Tracks magazine as the hottest emerging talent of the year. Carroll finished school before joining the world tour in 1979, where he finished ranked 24, having made the final of the Pipe Masters.
For a tour rookie, this wasn’t a bad result, but the freckle-faced teenager made much more of an impact in Hawaii that season for his mature and fearless approach to riding big waves. His free surfing at Pipeline earned him instant respect amongst the veterans, and despite a city surfer penchant for cheekily stealing other people’s waves, he was given a life membership to that esteemed pack.
Having interviewed Tom as the pro junior champ in 1977, I was shocked to find how much he had matured, both as a surfer and as a person, when I encountered him on the North Shore of Oahu in 1979. One morning we chatted while he took photos of Sunset Beach from every aspect. “I just love the feel of this place,” he said. “I want to take away the memory of it, and have it with me all the time.”
(Years later he would write in the foreword to Cyclops Press’s Waterproof: Australian Surf Photography Since 1858: “Like many surf photographers, I was drawn to taking photographs when recovering from an injury. It was the healing nature of calmly resting on observation through the frame of the cameras lens that tissue was able to replenish itself without me in the way. Photography was a way to slow down a rapidly moving environment and make sense of the world around me.”)
Tom’s crawl to the top of the world tour took a few seasons, somewhat impeded by the dominance of Mark Richards, but in 1983 he won six tour events and convincingly took his first world title. The second year was tougher, and at year’s end he just scraped over the line in front of Shaun Tomson, with just two wins from 24 events.
Back to back world titles stamped Tom Carroll with greatness, but he found the mantle hard to bear, and became a little lost in the cocoon of fame for a few years, living the high life but not living up to his own expectations. By 1988 he was back and in the best condition of his life. Quiksilver, who had dumped him for bad behaviour in the early ‘80s, re-signed him as surfing’s first “million dollar man”. Tom earned his keep, finishing third on the world tour in 1991 and winning the Triple Crown, but contest victories were not his major value to his sponsor.
He quit the tour in 1993 and became a full-time surf adventurer, seeking out mid-ocean reef breaks to conquer or presiding over a boat-load of high maintenance groms while a movie was made. In the 2000s, Tom and longtime Quiksilver teammate and friend Ross Clarke-Jones became tow-surfing partners, and over the coming years they charged some of the biggest, scariest, mid-ocean waves ever ridden, turning their death-defying feats into a film and television series.
This might have been the bravest thing Carroll ever did in a daredevil life, but in 2013 he surpassed it with the publication of TC, a book cowritten with brother Nick which tells the full story of Carroll’s career-long battle with drug addiction, including a tragic period of crystal meth abuse which cost him his marriage.
He wrote: “I did all sorts of things to try to score, because it was pretty scarce. It brought me into contact with some really seedy people. People who died doing it. A guy I knew committed suicide. That was a really frightening thing because I realised that was where it leads, that was the end point. But understanding what happened to that person didn’t stop me … The nature of the beast is to keep going until it stops.”
Clean and sober since 2007, Tom Carroll and partner Mary live not far from where he grew up, meditate, eat healthy foods and stay very fit. He remains close to his three grown daughters, and now in his 60s, still surfs like a man possessed.
Tom Carroll and 1976 world champion Peter Townend will be the special guests at a double-barrel The Immortals/Big Wednesday night at Noosa Surf Museum on Wednesday (of course) 13 March. Tom will perform the surf festival launch of The Immortals of Australian Surfing – which features him on the cover – and an Immortals surfboard exhibition, while PT will host a special celebration screening of the 1978 surf classic Big Wednesday.
Tickets available at events.humanitix.com/big-wednesday-x-immortals-launch
