Can it really be five years since the World Surf League put on an LQS pro longboard event at the Noosa Festival of Surfing?
If my memory serves me correct – and that’s pretty much all I have to go by, there being no real archive to go to from either WSL or the festival – the last LQS to actually run was in 2020, and that only happened because the festival was brought forward to February to fit around the shortboard tour calendar. If it had been part of the festival’s normal window in early to mid-March, it certainly wouldn’t have happened since by then the Covid pandemic was sweeping the world.
Possibly the WSL scheduled another Noosa Pro Longboard event for 2021, but that, like the entire tour of 2021 would have been cancelled. Since then, the Wossle has gone hot and cold on longboarding, most recently warm (literally) with sending the longboarders in as the canaries in the coalmine as it were in the Abu Dhabi wave pool a couple of months back. While predictably no one seems to know what’s going on with the longboard championship finals series in 2025 (ie a few weeks away) the calendar is full of LQS 1000 regional qualifiers, starting with Burleigh in February and Noosa over the final weekend of the festival March 20-23.
At this stage entries haven’t opened for Noosa so I have no idea who might be competing, but I’d say there’s a fair chance we won’t be seeing the 2020 Noosa Pro champion Joel Tudor coming back to defend. Being one of Donald Trump’s noisiest supporters on social media he’s more than likely waiting to hear from the Donald or the Elon on his appointment as secretary of surfing, or some such. But Joel could prove me wrong, as he so loves to do.
To be honest, I’m a bit surprised that the WSL is coming back to Noosa, considering the bad run they had with conditions leading up to 2020. Whereas a decade earlier, when the ASP was running the show, we had a run of regional qualifiers in pretty good First Point, but when the WSL came in the for the first time in 2018, my last year of running the festival, they got skunked for two years and again in 2020, although I think there was a day on the points, but Tudor and Kelis Kaleopaa won their crowns in dribble at Noosa West.
Thinking back over those years, I experienced a huge dose of nostalgia for all those great years we all enjoyed, pros, ams and old codgers, when at least part of every festival saw true form at First Point. As I trolled the computer files for a bunch of old photos to prove to myself I didn’t just dream it, my mind went back to the first day of the over 70s heats last year, when I paddled out from high tide Johnno’s with old mate Eric Walker into a beautiful lineup. We both looked at each other as a gorgeous set rolled through before the siren for the start, and we just hoped they kept coming.
It was a good omen, Eric and I thought. At last First Point, buried under a Sahara of sand these past several years, was on the way back. And there have been a few good days, even a few rock hoppers between the tides, but there’s a long way to go before we see true First Point back.
Let’s hope it happens this coming season, that the WSL gets to experience it, and that there are enough waves to go around. Meanwhile, enjoy the pictures of what once was.
Vale Kevin Barr
The name won’t mean a lot to many who don’t go back 50 years or more in competitive surfing, or don’t know much about the surf industry, but Kev Barr, who passed away on 23 November after a long struggle with cancer, was a champion of both.
When I first encountered him, the kid from Kingscliff was going knee to knee for Australian kneeboard titles with my mate Peter Crawford (and Kev got him in ’75) but I think only the once. They were both great kneeboarders and great blokes, and they grinned and bore it when I started a kneeboard column to feature their exploits in Tracks mag, even though I insensitively titled it Cripples Corner.
Later in both our lives, with Kev heading up his own successful Barz Optics Sports Sunglasses and me a Quiksilver exec, we would collide at trade shows around the world and have some great slap-up dinners. But Kev, despite his successes, was a quiet, unassuming guy who always wanted to hear your story first. In this and so many other ways he was a true gentleman of surfing, both in and out of the surf, which he continued to enjoy through his health problems. Gone too soon.
Kevin’s life will be celebrated on the Tweed Coast this weekend. RIP, old mate.
FOOTNOTE: There were so many people at the launch of Josh and Anna Constable’s Creative Army showroom in the Junction (200 in total, I’m told) that it was no place for an old man with a gammy leg, bit I did manage to grab a quick IPA and a couple of snaps. Well done, guys!
