Surfing World Magazine

The Indonesian archipelago is full of so many natural wonders that draw visiting surfers from all over the world to its beautiful coastlines. Beyond the perfect waves and idyllic beaches many remote communities don't have access to proper health care and services. SurfAid helps to improve the health, wellbeing and resilience of some of these remote communities by implementing accountable and transparent community led development programs. You can support SurfAid by donating at surfaid.org or purchasing wax through needessentials.com All profit from needessentials / SurfAid wax is passed on to help remote Indonesian families access healthcare, clean water and local food production and economy through agriculture.…

HOTBUTTERED.COM incoming… A radical stab, creating an alternative to the Thruster. The Drifta Series it’s width and emphasis on skating speed pre-dated the revival of fish-style boards in the late 90’s. Main features include: an updated classic single-to-double concave, running a decade ahead of the Performance School. Fluted and pinched wings, stepping down to a stubby swallow, or, chopped square tail, a round nose and mini side-fins, giving the Drifta it’s almost spaceship-like appearance. A 7 1/2” wide-based single fin completed the revolution to hotdog happiness. Driftas hide a typically uncompromising design capable of extraordinary down-the-line speed combined with the ability to break tracks (vertical or horizontal). Truly a board about transition, from singles to tri-fins. From speed to advanced modern performance surfing.…

We don’t actually own a complete set of Surfing World magazines going back 60 years, but fortunately for us Bob Smith, who lives just up the road, does. North of 70, Bob remains a total surf nut. In 2020, his goal was to catch 2020 waves over the course of the year. He did it by July and lost count after that. Bob realised the significance of Surfing World – now the oldest surf magazine in the world – turning 60 and was gracious with his collection. We rented the holiday shack, picked up the magazines, and disappeared back in time. It felt like the act of bringing the archive together for a ceremonial reading opened some kind of gateway between worlds. As we scrolled through thousands of pages and the…

It’s really better not to look back at the early issues of Surfing World. Everything, from the photographs to the writing, and maybe especially the production quality was simply terrible. The magazine was printed by letterpress, a process already being consigned to history by modern offset printing. I managed to get an article run in the seventh issue – Volume 2, No. 1 in March 1963. It was an awful story, and easily met the poor standards of the day. A couple of years later I prevailed upon Bob Evans to let me do the design of an article called ‘Rincon is where you find it’ – the first published photographs of Noosa Heads that I’m aware of. We didn’t say where this most prized of ‘secret spots’ was. Finally…

That first trip with Bob was great – Kevin Platt, Bobby Brown and me in his new Holden station wagon. The old Pacific Highway was a two-lane donkey track in those days. We had to cross two major rivers on punts which carried cars and their passengers, one at the Nambucca River south of Coffs Harbour and the other the Clarence River near Yamba. It was a real adventure going up and down the east coast of Oz in the early ’60s. There were two tick gates that were abolished in the mid-’70s. Bob said when he used to come to the North Coast with his brother Dick and their dad, there were five punts between Sydney and Coolangatta. When we crossed the Queensland border and stood peering out at…

Next thing you know, I move out of the Central Coast and I’m down working in Farmer’s Store in Sydney, in the photographic division. Bob walks in one day in his suit – he always had a suit on just in case he happened to run into someone with money – and he came up to the counter. He said, “Look, I’m going up the coast to do a filming trip. Would you like to come?” I resigned and walked out of there in two seconds. I went up to the manager and said, “I’m out of here.” The manager said, “You can’t leave, we’ve got plans for you.” I said, “Well, sorry, I’ve got plans for myself.” So, I went up the coast with Bob; he was filming, and…