With a little over a month to go before the Noosa Festival of Surfing gets underway, event manager Josh Allen has released the highlights of a sensational entertainment program on the beach and beyond.
This year it’s actually 10 days of pure stoke as the party gets underway on festival eve, Friday 4 March, with a fundraiser for SurfAid, the 2022 festival’s major beneficiary.
Since SurfAid was launched at the 1999 Noosa Festival, its programs in dozens of developing world surf zones have saved countless lives in remote villages. Special guests for the early evening ticketed event at the Beach Bar will be seven-time world champion and long time ambassador for the Noosa Festival Layne Beachley, and the first female chief executive officer of Rip Curl and former pro surfer Brooke Farris. Surf scribe Nick Carroll will get in the middle of a lively conversation between two powerhouse women who have well and truly smashed surfing’s glass ceiling.
Opening day Saturday 5 March will feature the Vetshop surfing dogs, followed by the traditional opening ceremony, welcome to country and paddle-out. The crowd in the Beach Bar will be going nuts. Then Sunday kicks off with a Melanoma March, hosted by Backslap. Add your presence to this great skin cancer awareness drive.
Tuesday 8 March is International Women’s Day and Queensland’s Sirromet Winery will host a celebration of girl power in the Beach Bar, including an all-female art show and a presentation from the Gold Coast Women’s Surf Festival.
Wednesday 9 March will feature one of the most highly anticipated events off-beach, when Creators and Innovators Night comes to the Noosa Surf Museum on the river at Noosaville, featuring historic and contemporary surfboard shapers and designers including ‘60s legends Bob McTavish and Hayden Kenny, plus Stuart and Ryan Campbell, Joel Fitzgerald, Josh Constable, Thomas Bexon, Tully St John and Mitch Surman. Hosts will be Matt Chojnacki and yours truly.
Thursday 10 March will see another great event at the Surf Museum when Noosa World Surfing Reserve introduces the Surf Film Archive. This event was just confirmed as we went to press, so you’ll hear more about it in coming weeks, but briefly, film-maker and archivist Jolyon Hoff was so blown away when veteran surf film-maker Dick Hoole took him down to the basement of his home in the hills behind Byron Bay and showed him hundreds of reels of decaying surfing footage from the pioneer years stacked to the ceiling, that he decided to do something about it.
The Surf Film Archive is now a national initiative that aims to seek out and restore old film footage of Australian surfing and is now turning its attention to the Sunshine Coast.
Jolyon and his team have been searching the country for the past year, uncovering hidden gems, some of which reveal a who’s who of Australian surfing history. Jolyon will be showing some restored highlights as well as presenting a behind the scenes look at how the restoration works. This is a must for surf history buffs.
Continuing the theme of surf film history, on Friday 11 March, Tracks Magazine will host the first show of a double-header at The J, when they present the completely remastered 50th anniversary edition of ground-breaking Australian surf movie Morning Of The Earth, with some of the stars in attendance.
Following that, the second show of the night will be big wave legend Mark Mathews’ Life Beyond Fear. This visual and spoken presentation by one of the world’s truly fearless surfers has captivated and inspired audiences around the world.
Friday and Saturday also sees the return of the skate ramp in The Woods where local skatey guru Mat Chigwidden will present a pro event and demos featuring street legend Jackson Pilz among others.
For more information on all these events, including how to buy tickets, visit noosafestivalofsurfing.com
Surfer burnt by GOAT
In the countdown to the WSL season-opening Billabong Pipe Pro, every pro and his dog was in the lineup last week as one of the cleanest swells of the year hit the Oahu North Shore. It must have been even harder than getting a wave at Tea Tree during Seth, so I suppose we have to forgive the man who has ridden more perfect waves than just about anyone on the planet for this horrendous burn. Or do we?
Proudly unvaxed, Kelly Slater has spent most of the past two years turning up at the world’s best surfing playgrounds and dominating in uncrowded perfect conditions, so maybe he’s just forgotten that there are other people! Anyway, I’ve liked and respected Kelly as a surfer and a human for long enough to give him the benefit of the doubt, but this drop-in on Kalani David at Backdoor last week makes it tough. The irony is that Kalani is such a good surfer he almost made it out anyway.
FOOTNOTE: I was sorry to see Maritime Safety Queensland’s Noosa River Officer Jake Hennessey leave Noosa last weekend to take up a new role based in Gladstone. Although he’s only been based in Noosa for a relatively short time, Jake, a keen surfer as well as a maritime safety specialist, has been a real asset to the local surfing and marine community, and his wise counsel over the duration of last year’s surf safety Council roundtable was much appreciated. Good luck up there on the Discovery Coast, Jake, and see you when Agnes Point is pumping.
