Table of contents for Issue 603 in Tracks

BEHIND THE COVER: JAKE STEEL BY NICK GREEN I was under the knife getting my hip replaced almost 24 hours to the hour after this photo was taken. I’d been running a hip that had been slowly rotting away for a few years and it was finally time for it to be replaced… but this particular patch of reef doesn’t break often, so as soon as I saw the forecast the day before surgery, I knew I wanted to get amongst it – one last swim in some juice for a little while. The surfer is 24-year-old, Tassie underground local/charger, Jake Steele. He grew up mainly riding paddle boards and foils, surfing as a hobby until the last few years. The natural pull of Tasmanian big wave chasing eventually lured…

The thruster looked like revolution. Sounded like revolution. Threw fire around with a ‘fuck you’ kind of third fin. It was Curren on Black Beauty, Occy on Rusty ‘84, Tom Carroll on Byrnes, Kong on ‘Hot Stuff’. It arrived in the early 1980s, under the arm of a beer-loving natural-footer from Narrabeen and was embraced by neon, tank-topped alpha types with habits for car park punch-ups and cocaine. By 2020, it was high time for the pot to get stirred again in the way that we ride surf-boards. The world had changed enough so that the craft would have to follow suit in some way. We braced for stronger, faster, sharper — a new weapon to stake its claim. But what we got was an egg. A round, smooth, perfectly…

Photographer, Russell Ord recently collaborated with Alex Workman to produce ‘Life Around The Sea’. The premium quality tome showcases Russell’s expansive body of work, while Alex’s pithy vignettes provide welcome context to the places and characters, which give Australian surf culture its many shades of meaning. Below, Alex writes about his connection with Russell and the journey they embarked upon to capture ‘Life Around the Sea’ I first met Russell Ord in his home town, Margaret River, during my early days at Tracks magazine. The world’s best surfers were heading to Western Australia for the next stop on the WSL Championship Tour, and I jumped at the chance to leave the office behind and cover the event. Tracks editor Luke Kennedy suggested Ord as a potential host. A phone call was…

Julian Wilson is sitting in the yard of his home in Whitebridge, just south of Newcastle. The night before he’d driven eight hours back from Burleigh with his three kids in the back seat and a monumental contest in the rear-view mirror. As we speak, Julian tells me he’s perched in exactly the same spot he was when I’d spoken to him a month earlier about his decision to return to the competitive fold. In the first interview he’d quietly dropped the fact he’d been given a wildcard into the trials of the Gold Coast Pro. Of course the world looks and feels a little different for Jules as we talk for the second time around. “It’s a bit surreal to think that all this has transpired since we last…

Having a parent who works in a surfboard factory is like being a kid in a sweet shop with pocket money to spend. The possibilities feel endless, and you can sample whatever flavours you fancy. For Lilliana Bowrey, the rideable palette spans across longboards, twinnies, quads and thrusters. She attributes the diversity of her quiver to the influence of her father Jake Bowrey, who, alongside Thomas Bexon, started Thomas Surfboards when Lilliana was five-years-old. Over the last 15 years the Noosa-based board builders have earned a rep for producing a range of longboards and alternative craft, which strive to intersect the ideals of aesthetics and performance. “If it wasn’t for Dad, then I wouldn’t be the surfer I am today,” professes Liliana Bowrey, who is talking to us over the…

In late 1981 on Hunters and Collectors second tour to NSW, we played the far Northern Beaches for the first time. The major venue at the time was Avalon RSL or the ‘Rissole’ to the locals. The place was packed to the gunwales with the Northern Beaches crowd, a goodly number of them from the local surf crews. They were a raucous, rambunctious, exuberant crowd, seemingly having a goodly knowledge of the songs on our first EP. These songs, especially any with a semblance of a chorus, were belted out with much gusto by the sweat-soaked crowd, a ragged, boisterous choir of hundreds. Their enthusiasm was infectious. We played with a fresh wind in our sails, carried along by the general bonhomie, soaked to the skin in our own sweat.…

Truly great sporting moments have an ability to transcend generations and remain a topic of spirited discussion in pubs and at office water coolers or backyard barbies for decades to come – the ‘Miracle on Ice’, the ‘Thrilla in Manila’, ‘The Shot’ by Michael Jordan, Shane Warne’s ‘Ball of the Century’ at Old Trafford … the list goes on. For the generation of grommets seeking to whet their insatiable surf appetites in the pre-internet 80s and early 90s when surf news was restricted to magazines and the occasional surf film at your local cinema (or maybe a five-minute segment from Ken Sutcliffe on ‘Wide World of Sports’ there are a few moments that really stand out – Simon Anderson unveiling the thruster at a bombing Bells Beach in the Easter…

To be honest, I didn’t really want to be there, but you can’t say no to a heartfelt request from the biggest-hearted of all Big Kahunas, and in recent times, when Jack McCoy said, “Jump!” all I could ask was, “How high?” So I was at Nambour for the last picture show. Jack and I have been helping each other out in different ways for 50 years or more, probably since he pulled up on his bike at my losmen in Kuta Beach in 1975, interrupting my banana and tea breakfast by hollering, “Man, have I got a scoop for you!” I was the new editor of Tracks, and Jack and Dick Hoole, his partner in Propeller Productions, were our Bali correspondents, among other things. The scoop, it was soon…