As this weird and not so wonderful winter of the pandemic winds down, surfboard sales continue to fly high but the surf travel sector is struggling and will continue to do so while restrictions on overseas travel remain in place.
But necessity is the mother of invention, and while perfect waves have gone unridden from the Mentawais to the Maldives and beyond, some long-time “secret spots” within the state borders are back on the radar big time. While surfers in the know have known about the Swains Reef passes off Central Queensland for a generation now, since the seasons that a young Gary “Kong” Elkerton would crew on his dad’s fishing boat with his trusty Mt Woodgee stick stowed down below ready for the evening glass-off, when I spoke to World Surfaris boss John Finlay this week, he was less than enthusiastic about Swains as a reachable alternative to Sultans or Kandui.
Of course John might have been foxing, saving Swains for a select client list, but word on the vine is that two pilot surf exploration trips recently with crack Indo surf skipper Jody Perry along as guide turned up plenty of fish but not much clean surf. It was ever thus. I went out there on a fishing trip many years ago and never saw a rideable wave, but I was also floating around Tavarua in the ‘70s in the right season and never saw the reefs we now know as Cloudbreak and Restaurants fire. Or maybe it was the angle of the view.
And don’t even talk to me about Middleton Reef on the Lord Howe Rise, a perfect horseshoe with almost makeable zippers around the perimeter, stuck there for five days on a fishing mission with plenty of bait and booze but no boards.
Finally, on the subject of surf dreams that must remain so, my invitation to last weekend’s media famil at the Surf Lakes R & D centre between Rocky and Yeppoon must have been lost in the mail. I could have sworn that at the last meeting of the Secret Society of Former Tracks Editors, one of our number who has gone to the dark side and now labours in public relations, promised me a go-out next time the coffee plunger wave maker was open to the privileged few.
There must have been some mistake. Does not Australia’s best regional newspaper qualify as “media”, or is that word code for “mates”? Which I thought we were anyway, but there needs to be some butt-kissing. With a photo of Surf Lakes ambassador Mark Occhilupo cruising into his zillionth wave pool murky barrel while Noosa Today’s surfing columnist remains barren, I rest my case.
Go Fitzy
Last weekend in the Sydney Morning Herald former rugbyman and republican Peter Fitzsimons gave former tennis star Pat Cash both barrels for his incessant and ignorant peddling of conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and everything else. Apart from letting Queenie be someone else’s sovereign, I don’t agree with Fitzy that often, and this has nothing to do with the fact that the sales of his historical fantasies have quite a few more noughts on them than mine do, but on this we concur absolutely.
Fitzy thrashed Cash for using his fame as a sports star to assume the posture of global expert on pandemics and the treatments thereof, of warning people off vaccines and accusing Bill Gates of seeking world dominance for chucking a few billion at saving lives across the third world. Cash pukes this stuff out of his social media platforms incessantly with the certainty of the totally uninformed, and Fitzy was right to put him in his place. Everyone is entitled to express an opinion, but when an influencer of considerable clout uses that power to peddle dangerous nonsense, it deserves to be called out.
Unfortunately, Pat the Prat is not alone in using his master’s degree in temporary sports stardom to educate the masses on epidemiology and other subjects you might bone up on while waiting out a Wimbledon rain break. Surfing has its own professors of profound piffle who equate their ability to free-fall down the face with a lifetime’s study of molecular structure , and the like.
Such delusions of adequacy in these complex areas are often compounded by months and years of watching swell patterns on remote peninsulas, accompanied by frequent topping up on conspiracy theorist internet threads. I’m sure this is all good clean fun, but do you really need to share your fear and ignorance? Just enjoy it as a solitary pleasure and wonder when the world will finally awaken to your profound wisdom and guidance.
I’m talking to you, Jimmy!
