travel...
October 2011 - Bali, Indonesia...
Well, just returned from another short trip to the land of the happy people, Bali!
Had a couple of fun surfs up Canggu way & Seminyak beachies with the highlight on the day of the Oakley Pro Junior girls final where the girls were surfing very impressively indeed.
They had absolutely smokin' Canggu rights to themselves whilst the rest of us battled the super sucky & wedgey left bowl that was serving up some mighty fine waves for all the pros including Conner Coffin & a cuppla Brazilians with one of their finest landing a super impressive double rotation super man thingy right in front of me (nearly on top of me actually)
Gee those juniors are surfing such a
level above the past generation it's mind boggling... Gerr, Sascha Stocker & Tommy Whit's were surfing really well and dominated their short yet sweet surfs, particularly one big backhand snap by Tom Whit's.
Now I had heard a whisper of this low key cult underground hip club up Canggu way called the 'Lip Avoidance Crew' which had me intrigued, so much so in fact I signed up with some dude behind the big plastic condo contest tent and ended up avoiding the lip my entire surf that day.
Judging from the image to the left & by all reports on the beach I easily one the LAC title, super smooth... The above images are from the ever accessible Slim @ baliwaves.com.
June 2011 - Bali, Indonesia...
Had a quick 5 day Bali injection a few months back, the image was taken by resident photog Slim @ baliwaves.com (.) @ yep, you guessed it, Canggu.
He is always an easy guy to work with & a cruisey guy to boot! Had a couple of fun sessions there with the crowd not so intense for early season but one thing I hadn't experienced in Bali before was how cold the water was!
I have visited the islands many many times over the years and been there every month of the year bar 2 and never experienced the water temp so low. Not sure why or how but to be honest I was a tad hungover via a belly full of Potato Heads very smooth Expresso Martini's and feeling a little slow that day so that may have contributed to the overall feeling & questioning of what am I doing? where am I? How did I get here?
Jan 2011 - South East coast Western Australia...
This trip saw 3 families with tribes onboard & camper trailers attached head out to the remote South East corner of Western Australia to Esperance & beyond.
Stunningly beautiful beaches that helped cleanse the soul and bring some normality (albeit for a brief window!) back into our little worlds.
As a bonus it also help expand the minds of our precious young ones and provide them with lots of fun memories forever, gee campings a great thing...
2011
Last year saw me travel to Rottnest Island, Sydney, Darwin, Singapore, Broome, Bali & many trips down south of Western Australia (not all surf based as work rears it's ugly head sometimes...)
2011 is shaping up to be a great year of travel with an already conquered 2 week camping trip to our deep south east coast (images up soon on both news & travel pages) Bali x 2, Sydney, Broome & Tasmania all in there through the year along with the many trips down south.
Will update again with images from past trips to the above mentioned destinations & thanks again for your patience & checking in.
Gee travel is a good thing huh...?
25/10/10 - Bali...
Okay, I know, it has taken a while but I have finally got some travel images uploaded from a recent Bali trip a couple of weeks back.
Had a great trip with my family and caught up with friends there for a buddies wedding which was great fun.
Spent some time at the Deus Temple of Enthusiasm in Canggu but I have reported on that in my news & music pages so won't bore you here (for more surf images check out my images page)
As we all know Bali is a beautiful place with beautiful people, the pace is one of the attractions to the island for me and also the way all your senses are awoken each & every time you arrive.
August 2009 - South Africa...
South Africa was a really short trip with 5 days focussed on the coast south of Durban scoring some incredibly fun, long, sand bottom point right handers with not a soul around except for Frankie Oberholzer & his buddy the hammerhead shark who was cruising around us 3 in the line up @ Green Point.
Gee he's a funny dude, he came out ranting & raving & making a whole lot of noise about this hammerhead of which I kinda ignored as I was too busy trying to get over the jetlag. You see I was fresh off the plane & in the line up within a couple of hours.
Now he is a man with lot's of energy who absolutely rips and obviously knows Green Point very well judging by his wave count & positioning..
Caught up with photog Kelly Cestari (fulltime ASP shooter) who took some great shots unfortunately just after the best day of the trip (no, honestly..) Geoff North & I had Banana Point all to ourselves & was absolutely smokin' @ solid 6ft, long wrapping rights off this boulder point ending on the sandy beach. A long paddle back out against the rip but man it was a no brainer & surfed it till dusk.
The images above were from the morning after when it dropped & onshore kicked, still lot's of fun but nothing in comparison (was also after a night of drinking in a backpackers bar where we stayed somewhere near the point, had a lot of fun those guys...)
The line up image below was of the arvo just before we paddled out into perfect solitude...
Now the whole of this coast south of Durban was absolutely littered with ridiculously long & empty right handers as far as the eye could see. Blew me away as I am so use to our south west coast of lefts, lefts & the odd right beachie or bombie.
For a shock to the system & a change of pace we hit Durban for some fun surfing the piers and drinking at Joe Kool's (one of the best & busiest Sunday sessions I have ever experienced, like the Cottesloe Hotel sessions of old with jam packed wall to wall people..)
Stayed in 5 star luxury right on the beachfront over looking the piers which delivered the morning conundrum of which peak to surf as I struggled with yet another slight hangover.
Also had a fun 1 hr try on Flow Rider @ one of the biggest shopping centres in the world (strange joint) Yep, that's me in the background behind the pimple faced punk of a staff member who shredded the thing!
Gee it's hard if you have never done it before but I eventually got the hang of it just as you can see here, well...
I couldn't help but pick up Siouxsie & The Banshees playing throughout the shopping centre which meant they are either still (yet again) stuck in a time warp or are actually on top of the 80's revival kick.....
All up a great trip with some fun crew along the way, now, next time I head there it will be a little further down the coast to a place they call J Bay....
August 2007 - Manggudu Island, Indonesia...
Now Manggudu is a very remote island in the eastern end of Indonesia, actually closer to Timor than Indonesia which scores some solid open ocean swells unlike anything else I have surfed in Indonesia.
I am not sure how we as a group stumbled upon it but we set off on an overland expedition from Bali by plane, a full days slow crawl in an open tray truck (cattle class) from one side of an island to the other followed by an overnight journey in a classic leaky fishing boat.
Gee it was an ordeal to get there but well worth the trip when faced with solid deep water lefts wrapping around the outer reef off this tiny tiny island in the middle of nowhere. It reminded a lot of Sunset in reverse, such a big take off arena that everyday it felt like a totally different wave.
Snapped a 7'3 on our last day there @ solid 8 ft + as the wave just broke out further & further, so hard to gauge. Knowing I was in the wrong spot for the looming set, I swung for a very late 8ftr, missed it only to turn & cop a solid 8ft set to the head.
I duckdived (as I always do) only to have the board snap right where my hands were on the rail, never experienced that before...
Won't say much more except we were the first group to stay there with our Norweigan snowboarding hosts who didn't surf or do much else for that matter but were employed by the local Colonel Kurtz, aka Dave the big Australian who had set up camp right on the beach via marrying the local kings daughter.
A classic Marlon Brando Apocolypse Now figure, happy in his domain with his minions tending to his every whim & fancy.
One day I will return to try and get a better hold on that wave, don't like it when a wave gets the better of you!
March 2001 - New York...
From what I remember I had a great trip filled with mental images of Central Park in Spring, The Hudson Hotel, meat packing district bars, waking up with a gash to my knee with no recollection, hangovers, trying to find a dudes warehouse pad downtown to only become temporarily lost and kindly diverted into an Irish Bar.
Riding the subway with a 5 board coffin attached to me, an unimpressed record company exec, lost luggage for 3 days, riding in a big black limo with 5 boards sticking out etc...
Aahh, the usual happenings of a New York journey, images and stories sometime...
Feb 2001 - Hawaii...
Brazilians, wonky wheeled cars, hand made bikes out of scrap pieces, huge Sunset, 2 door Caddy coupe stuck agauinst the Backpackers wall as no reverse, big Ken Bradshaw's jaw an arms length away from me after a solid hold down by a Sunset west peak, hitching a ride with grass smokin' Brazilnuts from the Airport to the Northshore only to be asked how to get there after they had just driven from there an hour earlier, waking up in a car in the overly friendly Velzyland carpark etc...
These are just some of the life changing memories I have of the North Shore and I can only stress to every surfer they should visit the 'Rock' at least once in their surfing lives.
