Surfing World Magazine August 2017

I met Vaughan Dead when he was known simply as Adam, one lifetime and 200 issues ago. Adam Blakey was a gangly kid who occupied the corner desk in “The Pit”, the open plan office in Rushcutters Bay that was home to several action sports magazines, all crammed in together like a Chinese sweatshop. The office smelled like an armpit, was hotter than the equator, and there was a hole in the wall in the exact size and shape of the editor of the skateboarding mag. Several of the staff were actually squatting in the office at the time, a reflection of the Third-World wages paid by the magazines’ neo-colonial British owners. Adam was editing Waves magazine, but was more famous at the time for having recently punched the editor…

Chelsea Georgeson 2005 World Champion SMAC Airways in Indo. Damien Hardman X2 World Champion Dodgy planes in Mexico. Pilots with Vietnam trucker caps on and air hosties sharing sips of one water bottle between all the passengers. Otis Carey Artist, shredder, Sophie’s man South Sumatra. The cars didn’t have seat belts and the drivers were on the wrong side of the road playing chicken with oncoming traffic. Greg Webber Shaper, Wave Pool Visionary A mossy slimy log that was only just buoyant, while trying to paddle across a black, tea tree stained stream because I was scared of eels. Doug Lees Surfing World Publisher Jetstar. Or any other airline that wants to charge you excess for surfboards. Toby Cregan Filmer, Skegssie Sri Lanka. On a Tuk Tuk playing chicken with…

Sitting around the breakfast table on Namotu Island, we watch on as the islands pet Labrador, Banjo sleeps on the deck nearby, his jowls twitching and his paws in synchronised flight. “He must be having some crazy ass dream,” chuckles Matt Wilkinson. “It’s raining sticks.” Wilko tells us about the dream he had the previous night. He’d been involved in some kind of kitesurfing enduro race, his subconscious having mashed up his first attempt at kitesurfing the previous day with the fact his brother was currently involved in a motocross race in the Australian desert. The race inside Wilko’s head went all night. He looked exhausted. “That was fucked,” he whines as he jams vegemite toast into his mouth. Wilko had already lived a dream, three weeks earlier in the…

Down the line from the take-off at Winki, past Lowers and across the short expanse of puddled rock platform, up the cliff and through the scrub, there’s a stretch of lawn that’s mowed so perfectly you just want to wriggle on it like a happy mutt. On that glorious lawn a couple of weeks after Easter this year, something rather wonderful took place. A group of women from five different fields of surfing sat down together to record a conversation: about making art, building a career, venerating your heroes and much, much more. The participants were: Brooke Farris (36), former women’s world tour manager and now GM of Digital at Rip Curl; Belinda Baggs (also 36), professional longboarder and now Patagonia ambassador; Fran Miller (30), surf photographer; Sal Fitzgibbons (26),…

I Sunshine Coast photographer Woody Gooch has mad skills. In a profession swamped with a billion frothing wannabes he has quickly managed to rise above, developing a signature style that has already seen him nail commercial and artist endeavors with equal measure of success. After 18 months spent documenting the Tokyo rat race with nary a glimpse of the ocean, Woody got the call up from good pal Harrison Roach for a late season run to Hawaii. He stepped off the plane, did the 40 minute drive from Honolulu up to the North Shore and was greeted by the electrifying spectacle of a 12 foot day at Pipeline. Not the first young Aussie to be tested by such magnificent Pacific power Woody grabbed his housing and swam out with nothing…

The first surf mag I owned was a Surfing World. It came in a mustard envelope with my name on the front. I was 11, just getting into surfing, and Mum had organised a subscription as a birthday present from my grandparents. I was absolutely frothing when I pulled out the contents and saw that it was a surf mag. I got lost in that thing. Read it over and over and over. It’s no exaggeration to say that this magazine changed my life. Surfing went from being something I’d try to do every now and again to something that consumed my every waking moment. If I wasn’t in the water, I was reading my SWs. Eventually, I started buying an extra copy whenever we went to the newsagency, so…