Surfing World Magazine

“I first started surfing out there when I was eighteen or nineteen. We used to go out on these little foam boards, called Coolites. When we got smashed, the board would come up in bits and pieces – so that was the end of that. Before that we used to go down to Caves Beach. There’d be a mob of us, you know. We’d go down there and when the guys out there surfing lost their boards we’d take ‘em back out. That got us interested in trying it. They’d give us a loan of their boards for 15 minutes or half an hour to have a go. It took us a very long time before we even tried to go out there [to Pipe] on surfboards. “The first guy…

“Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck,” wrote Horne. “It lives on other people’s ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.” Horne wrote about how the luck we enjoy as Australians – endless white beaches, riches in the ground, a fish on the first cast – had lulled Australians into becoming culturally lazy. The Lucky Country was published over 50 years ago now but would be horribly relevant if it had been published last week. The above passage couldn’t sum up modern Australia any better. When the Black Summer fires burned up and down the eastern seaboard two…

A popular part of the state. Barren out there but not quite. The sandstone fences are numerous, as I’ve seen for months. Trees minimal. You wonder how far a crow flies for a drink. It’s easy to sit on 130 kays, no cops for miles. If the situation arose you could talk your way out of it with some local slang or knowledge – one cop for the next hundred kilometres is my guess. Before losing reception I download Diesel and Dust in its entirety to play, eventually caught in my own world. I’ve wanted this trip for decades, alas unfortunately without the trusty horse, so there’s no decent car stereo and I’m reduced to $6 headphones. Clutch problems in the new car. A quick fix and a week goes…

* The title refers to the mysterious spoken lyric in the background of Midnight Oil’s famous instrumental, Wedding Cake Island. The band has never confirmed what was actually spoken. If you were there at the start, back when the Narrabeen Sands was the Narrabeen Antler, when Peter Garrett had cropped blond hair, when the ceiling rained sweat like a tropical downpour, you might remember Midnight Oil the surf band, singing about Wedding Cake Island, long swell lines, and the low coast road. It was a carefree time, but the Oils were just finding their voice. A few years later Midnight Oil cared about everything, from American militarism to Aboriginal land rights, an activist rock band like none before or since. With a ferocious live energy and high musical IQ, they…

It’s a type of magic the Oils perform when they walk on stage, pick up their instruments and begin channeling Australia. You sense goannas in their songs. Waves crashing into cliffs. Wide open spaces. Holden wrecks and boiling diesels. Over four decades Midnight Oil have refined their pummeling pub rock into something singular. It’s sensory and immersive. It hits you in the hips and the head. Somehow the Oils make you want to dance to songs about nuclear proliferation, Indigenous rights, the climate crisis and the perils of asbestos mining. Somehow, it’s angry and joyous simultaneously. The Oils begin their farewell tour in Newcastle with the slow burn title track of their new album, Resist. The band appear silhouetted and solemn in front of a slideshow of protest imagery while…

As a fresh-faced, tipsy 21-year-old, Noa Deane infamously shitshowed his way onto the awards stage at the 2014 Surfer Poll in Hawaii and uttered the famous words, “Fuck the WSL”. The oxygen vanished from the room. It’s an awkward topic to start an interview with and whilst prepared for the line to go dead, it’s an obvious starting point for the narrative arc of the maturing of Noa Deane. The incident still echoes today, even rating a call out from ‘77World Champ Shaun Tomson on a recent podcast. Somewhat awkwardly, Tomson’s call to see “Guys like Noa Deane, he’s always flapping his mouth, let’s see him [out at Pipe] when it’s ten foot…” neglected the evidence. Noa’s charged out there. He’s even had a heat win over John John out…