The Australian leg of the WSL Challenger series wouldn’t normally command my fullest attention, but I have to admit I’ve barely missed a heat, either live or on replay.
The main reason for that is because the waves on offer at both Snapper Rocks and North Narrabeen have been interesting and at times, well, challenging. But also there are so many careers on the line.
In the men’s, this year’s favourite underdog Jackson Baker came off a throwaway 25th at Snapper to absolutely fire up at unruly Narrabeen and show everyone why he deserves to be on the big tour again. His third place in big bombs on finals’ day puts him on track for a recall if he can make the finals’ bracket just once or twice more.
In the women’s, where only top five requalify, India Robinson and Sally Fitzgibbons are already closing in on requalification at the top of the Challenger rankings, but Coolum’s Isabella Nichols really needed a result at Narrabeen, and boy, did she produce it.
It was a tricky final for me to watch. Effervescent Sally has been a favourite for years, but Bella has won me over these past couple of seasons, and at Narrabeen she showed me why. Smooth, carving surfing coupled with smart tactics. Keep it up, girl.
Enough is enough
I’ve been pretty patient, by my standards I’d say.
I’ve listened to all my disgruntled surfing mates complaining about illegal campers taking all the parking spots in the National Park and down in The Woods – where bears may not defecate, as the old saying goes, but apparently campers do.
I’ve never seen this happen and I’ve never stood in one while moving off the made path on an urgent mission of my own, so I’ve generally taken a position of laissez faire on the issue, we don’t want to live in a nanny state etc etc, taking the lead of council, who say they warn them in the evening and fine them a few hundred bucks in the morning, or rather they would if they had enough staff for compliance duties, which they don’t.
But they’ve crossed my NIMBY line, except that it’s not in my backyard, it’s more or less in the front, or at least in the riverfront park adjacent to it, and now I’m mad!
The other chilly morning, right on dawn, as is my habit I arose and padded to my home office in the front room overlooking the river to check the surf cams. While waiting for the Mac to boot up I gazed out the window at the beginnings of another gorgeous river sunrise. My heart filled with joy until I lowered my line of vision to the park, and spotted a pup tent wedged between the council bin and the park bench. I waited a while, hoping I would soon spot a well-heeled pre-dawn fisherman who spends too much time and money at BCF and had erected it to keep his bait out of the sun. Eccentric, but allowable.
There being no waves on offer until the tide backed off, I went downstairs and made coffee. When I came back I spied the offenders, crawling out through the tent flaps with coffee mugs of their own. A young couple, attractive, possibly European, they positioned themselves at the river’s edge to catch the first warming rays coming over the headland.
Was I tempted to go over and advise them that overnight camping in public parks in our shire is verboten? Well close, but suddenly I flashed on a memory from a northern summer 50 years ago, when on a surf trip through the Iberian Peninsula, a buddy and I had stumbled from a roadside in northern Spain with our own pup tent and swags in the pitch black of night until we emerged in a clearing lit slightly by a crescent moon. This would do us. We whacked the tent up in three minutes flat, rolled out the swags and fell asleep.
I still remember waking to see the silhouettes of several men who appeared to be carrying submachine guns and were shining torches into our tent. They were making signals with their gun barrels for us to come out and face the music. I hoped they couldn’t hear the pounding of my heart, and I hoped that whatever we’d done, our punishment would be quick and painless. We climbed out and the uniformed men – General Franco’s Guardia Civil as it turned out – started laughing. Verbal communication was stilted, to say the least, but one of them started practicing his golf swing, and we looked at the manicured turf around our tent and realized we’d camped on a putting green – on the ninth hole of one of Spain’s most exclusive country clubs, as it also turned out.
We were let off with a warning, I think, and allowed to pack up and leave the way we’d come in.
Would I go and deliver a similar warning to the kids over by the river?
Nah. Touché. But if they come back again with a dozen mates there’ll be trouble.
