Slam Skateboarding 223 Winter 2019

Filthy cockroaches. They’re the only creatures able to survive a nuclear holocaust. It was these intrepid insects from New South Wales who destroyed the mangy mutts from Victoria and wiped out the pesky cane toads from Queensland. Congratulations to Team NSW for winning Red Bull Skate of Origin 2019, retaining their undefeated title and bringing the fire back to Australian skateboarding’s only state-versus-state battle after a nine-year hiatus. Respect to Shane Azar and his army in blue for winning three in a row around a decade ago. By this point you’ve no doubt seen each team’s clip – maybe even voted for your favourite one – but now we present you the inside scoop behind the competition. This year, we chose 15 skaters, threw them into three state teams, sent them…

How it all started I was 18. I finished high school and went straight into uni for film and TV, just because I really liked editing and post-production. Around that time, I learned that online poker was a thing. I deposited $50 and I was playing $2 stake cash games. I’d buy in with $2 and maybe play a hand and bet with 10 cents. But what’s cool about poker, is that no matter what stakes you play, the strategy is the same. So it was good that I could learn everything about playing by just playing for $2. Managing risk I was playing $2 stakes and learning a lot online, reading forums, reading poker books. Around that time I hurt my knee skating and had to have surgery with five screws in…

When it came to finding the soundtrack for Team Victoria’s Skate of Origin clip, Geoff Campbell decided to enlist the creative genius of Sydney skateboarder, Rhys Grogan, who’s in a band with his friend Luke called This Is Authority. Their music is quite experimental and not easy to define in terms of a genre. As Rhys puts it, “We don’t know what we’re doing, and every gig is a complete shit show disaster that resembles one of us publicly having a nervous breakdown while the other plays nonsensical, out-of-key, repetitive bass lines.” Geoff’s brief for the song went something like this: “Can you make a stupid song for our Skate of Origin clip?” Rhys agreed and was then sent an official dossier of Thomas Robinson’s yet to be published photographs and…

“It was amazing and horrible,” said Dane Burman of the week that was Skate of Origin, 2019. Specifically, he was talking about the book of challenges that we’d put together, many of which were stabs in the dark about what was possible and what wasn’t. He explained, “It’s fun for new ideas for things you’d normally not think you could do, but when you’re a few hours deep on a trick that isn’t all that fun, then it gets horribly torturous.” But even if Dane thought parts of it were “horribly torturous”, he and the boys from NSW were playing to win. And when it came to putting together a team of five solid skateboarders to represent The Blues, NSW looked strong from the get-go. Between Dane, Jake Hayes and…

“Queen-land, come back to me. I need you and I love you, baby.” If you can imagine these words being sung to the tune of Afroman’s 2001 classic, “Palmdale”, that was the Queensland team’s anthem for the trip. Now imagine Jackson Pilz, Red [Jesse Noonan], The Wombat [Jake Duncombe], Mashy [Mitchell Howse] and Ash Linaker in the back of their team van, speeding through the streets of Canberra, beers in hand, chasing the Victorian van into the night, howling those lyrics at the top of their lungs. For some reason, Mashy is naked and soaking wet. Photographer Wade McLaughlin and filmer Neihana Tonkin are in the mix too. I’m behind the wheel and the fuel light has been on for ages. This was the scene four days into the trip, when…

“We had such a blast talking shit on the other teams,” Geoff Campbell laughs. “I honestly have to say that was one of the funniest trips of my life.” While the Victorian team didn’t take home the prize money, I think it’s fair to say that they had different ambitions to the other teams. The Vic van was all about the laughs, the ruthless shit talking, some memelordery, a few hangovers and some of the most stylish street tricks to go down on the whole trip. What they lacked in competitive drive, they made up for with smartarsery. Between Callum Paul, Bryce Golder and Jack Kirk, the Victorian team had the quintessential Melbourne city skaters – three dudes who have known each other forever and who have all made their unique marks…