It’s funny the things you miss the most when you can’t have them.
In surfing the thing I miss the most is the freedom to travel to my favourite places in the world to ride waves. But I’m luckier than many. I squeezed a surf trip to New Zealand right after the Noosa Festival of Surfing in February 2020, was rewarded with some excellent waves and some fun times, only to come home to find the world had changed and I had to self-isolate while a good east swell pumped into Noosa’s points.
But the memory of that trip – particularly the clean little swell we got at Raglan – kept me going right through the year, and I’ve only just started to feel surf-deprived quite recently. With no prospect of international travel this year, my 70th, I decided to enter every surf comp in Queensland with an old farts division. And it all started last weekend.
What caught me by surprise was how much I enjoyed getting the coloured jersey on and paddling out to win or die trying. Look, at our age the truth of the matter is if you get to your feet on two waves, you’re probably going to win, but that doesn’t mean we take it any less seriously than we did at the peak of our powers. And you know what they say about old age and treachery!
Anyway, your humble columnist managed to find a few green faces on some pretty dribbly waves, didn’t disgrace himself, had a few laughs and a few beers and brought home a little bit of wood (very little) for the trophy room. By the time you read this, he’ll be rewriting the record books at the Agnes Water comp.
If you’re interested in the serious results, here they are:
Men’s Open
1 Josh Constable
2 Harrison Roach
3 James Parry
4 Zye Norris
5 Bowie Pollard
6 Thomas Bexon
Women’s Open
1 Mason Schremmer
2 Emily Lethbridge
3 Charlotte Lethbridge
4 Kirra Molnar
5 Kathryn Hughes
6 Jade Gower
Old Mal
1 Harrison Roach
2 Zye Norris
3 Matt Cuddihy
4 Sierra Lerback
5 Dylan MacLeod
6 Bowie Pollard
Men’s Over 40s
1 Glen Gower
2 Josh Smith
3 Russell Brennan
4 Keith Crocker
5 Brett Rogers
6 Glenn Currie
Men’s Over 50s
1 Damian Coulter
2 Charlie O’Sullivan
3 Wally Allan
4 Matt Fleming
5 Reid Johnson
6 Alain Sauvage
Men’s Over 60s
1 Mick Corcoran
2 Rick Wilder
3 Phil Jarratt
4 Mick Vaisnys
5 Ian Borland
6 Scott Paterson
Junior Boys
1 Sam Ticknor
2 Kaiden Smales
3 Jayben Poy
4 Dallas Rogers
5 Lennix Clay Currie
6 Spencer Dye
Junior Girls
1 Lucy Bowen
2 Luca Doble
3 Tia Coulter
4 Mia Waite
5 Nyjah Duazo
6 Layla Oheir
Micro Groms
1 Ryder Worthington
2 Lennix Clay Currie
3 Harper Smales
4 Ella Grace Barker
5 Zade Currie
Women’s Over 45
1 Peppie Simpson
2 Kate Perry
3 Kate Dwyer
4 Linda Keam
5 Luciana Battel
Gidget is 80 – no way
One of the many great things about a surfing life is the lasting connections you make with all kinds of people from all over the world, whether it’s someone you shared waves with at a remote break long ago, or one of the legends of our sport and culture.
I’m still in touch with a long-haired hippie Kiwi hairdresser I surfed with in Portugal in the summer of 1973, and I’m still in touch with Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, the real Gidget, whose father wrote a book about her surfing adventures that became a film that spawned a culture, and who turned 80 earlier this month, and was celebrated in a big feature article in Vanity Fair magazine.
We flew her and husband Marv out from California for the Noosa Festival of Surfing more than a decade ago, and she has never forgotten that wonderful week of friendship and nostalgia. We’ve since seen each other in Los Angeles and Hawaii a couple of times, and stay in touch a bit via email, which is where we corresponded last week and she sent me the Vanity Fair tribute.
She wrote: “We are well. We go to the beach daily and walk … Thinking of you and my fab time in Noosa and also when you came to the ‘Bu.”
She told the reporter from Vanity Fair a bit more: “I am the girl that surfed,” she said. “I am the daughter of Frederick Kohner, who wrote a wonderful story. I am not a movie actress, I am not an influencer. I’m a pretty private person…. There’s Gidget and there’s Kathy Zuckerman.”
And they’re both legends in my book. Happy birthday, Gidget!
FOOTNOTE: Keen readers will recall I gave the Noosa Turtles a mild serve in this space a few weeks back for not observing the time-honoured tradition of feeding the media with freebies. When I reported on their 10th anniversary celebrations, everyone in the room except your columnist got a free tee shirt and a cap. You will be relieved to read that King Bob and his loyal subjects made good at a small and dignified ceremony this week. I now have my full kit and the Turtles, those wonderful civic martyrs to many causes, are back in business.
