Aussie surf legend Ian “Kanga” Cairns will be Annie’s Books on Perigian on Saturday April 6 from 10am to noon to promote his tell-all memoir “Kanga”. Kanga was fearless in giant waves and won seven major world tour events before forming the Association of Surfing Professionals (now the World Surf League). He said he was looking forward to catching up with fellow pro surfing pioneers and surfers he competed with while in Queensland for his book launch.
“When we analyze our careers and remember the people we competed with, many of us had competitive tussles in and out of the water,” he said. “I look back with a smile because intense rivalries are part of what makes sport so wonderful. Surfing in contests, I viewed my fellow competitors as enemies to crush. It was that intense. I always saw sport as a metaphor for war. I am honored to have fought hard against super competitive guys like Michael Peterson, Mark Richards, Shaun Tomson, Michael Ho, Jeff Hakman, Rabbit Bartholomew, Terry Fitzgerald and others of their stature. All of them have truly enriched my life. To have stood and be counted as a worthy adversary in the heat of battle with these brave men, it still fortifies my very being.”
In his memoir Ian “Kanga” Cairns has an even bigger story to tell than the giant waves he rode in Hawaii. “KANGA” is a sports biography, adventure and surf history wrapped into two volumes. In the 1970s Cairns and pioneering professional surfers dreamed of being recognized as legitimate sportsmen. In these books they tell how it became reality. Volume 1 is set in Australia, South Africa and Hawaii’s awesome North Shore. Cairns features with other surf legends, heroes and hard men in conflict. They provide a detailed narrative of surfing’s transformation from the drug-infused hippy era of the late 1960s to a fledgling world tour in the late 1970s. Volume 2 charts the spectacular fall and resurrection of Cairns in the USA as surfing becomes a multi-billion dollar industry with Olympic Games status. We follow Cairns on his odyssey from a stoked kid with a passion for waves, to an outspoken young man who rises from the obscurity of Western Australia to become an acclaimed big wave champion, trail-blazing sports administrator and winning coach in USA. Cairns is confronted with many life-threatening challenges along the way as his remarkable journey reaches the absolute pinnacle of world surfing.
