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contents
/ » Surflock Competition Share ya facebook friends / » Editor’s Note Living the dream / » Three Perspectives The view from the photographer, surfer and boat captain
/»A person who takes photographs Jon Frank / » Excuse me darling, what’s your name? Stefanie Crowley-Clough / » Young Dudes Mitch Parkinson / » The Delicate Dance Old perils in Java, land of the free / » Feedback form Your thoughts?
Cover: Mick Fanning as seen through the love heart Photo: Jon Frank
WIN CAR KEY SECURITY PADLOCK
got a coupla facebook friends? Then have we got a giveaway for you! If you want to flip your middle finger at pricks who find surfers’ keys and steal shit from cars then read on. Or if you just want piece of mind when you’re going for a paddle, keep reading. The good folk at Surflock have kindly swung a few padlocks our way and we’re passing them on to you, loyal readers. How do you get one? Well how about another facebook competition? Okay done. This time the first person to get five friends to “Like” 18seconds wins. For four weeks we’ll be uploading an image, which you’ll need to get your friends to comment on with your name – remember they must drop your name so we know they came from you. They could write, “I like you thanks to my radical friend, Darren Bouville.” Too easy. Look for this Surflock image on our facebook page to kick-off proceedings. Terms and conditions One Surflock per person. International winner pays postage.
CLICK HERE
EDITOR's NOTE “It’s Monday morning mate – you’d better not be surfing and living the dream. Call me back you c#%t.” Charming words coming from a 31-year-old male doing the nine-to-five grind in Melbourne, selling Australian equities to financial planners. You know who you are (Michael Baquie). Truth be told I wasn’t surfing. South East Queensland was solid four-foot and piping (has been for weeks. Months!), the phone had been vibrating all morning, but I was confined to four walls dealing with the delightful demands of magazine deadline. Stuff gets hectic… but we no complain. We froth, we thrive, we love crafting each issue. But contrary to firm belief, running a magazine reduces surfing time compared with other careers. The real people living the lifestyle are guys like Chris ‘Ibis’ Bennetts pictured here making fun of a bodyboard. He surfs at the drop of a hat or swing in wind direction. Can choose weekly lifeguard shifts based on his intimate knowledge of South East Queensland’s weather and surf. Has his own jetski and loyal photographer. Is regular talent on Channel Nine’s Gold Coast surf report (so he’s a bit of a big deal on the goldie) and takes a lid over to pumping straddie just for fun, ‘cause he knows he’ll see it firing again. What about competing on the dream tour. They’re living the dream? What dream tour? And as for Mr Baquie. He recently spent a week working on the Gold Coast. All his client meetings were finished by midday and his afternoons were spent washing off the cobwebs covering his Melbourne based, backhand tube style. It just so happened he timed his trip around an east swell, all day offshores and straddie was as good as it gets for four consecutive days. That’s it. I can feel the soft winter sun on my back through the glass. There’s a complex low sitting in the Tasman Sea, the trees are blowing the right way. Tools down, I’m off to the beach. Andy Morris
chris ‘ibis’ bennetts making fun of a bodyboard. PHOTO 18seconds
1 8 S E C O N D S MAGAZINE
3 PERS
PECTIVES
The view from the photographer, surfer and boat captain as they slip inside the wildest Indonesian waves of the year to date. Mikala Jones, Dylan Longbottom and friends are the surfers, Brad Masters is the photographer and wayan is the boat captain.
dylan longbottom
PERS PECTIVES
3
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the photographer
Y
ou’re glad to be in the water. You relax and let the solid wave pull you skyward. Your swim fins trailing softly. A baptismal rise. You look down the face of the pitching beast. A warping, green, serpentine wall of moving water, its hollows gaping and crashing into the reef. You’re flirting with her and you know it. You hug your camera a little closer, grab a breath and kick hard through the back of her. Like standing on a train track and stepping off at the last second as the train roars by. You’re all flow now, part of the passing wave. In it. Your eyes open, hair pulling at your scalp.
Y
ou break the surface. And it’s raining hard. The offshore winds have torn the top off the wave and the deluge is blinding. Stinging almost. When the smoke clears you look outside and your mouth goes dry. A bomb is approaching. You get serious. You swim like a madman, you check your camera, lick the port with one eye on the surfers moving like chess pieces to meet her. You feel the water change around you. It’s running. Draining. Muscular. Fish begin to scatter along the surface. You stop, insane now, position yourself, stand fast. You see the surfer paddling hard. You move in a bit. The wave catches him. And both wave and rider are coming to crush you. You take a deep breath, exhale and move in closer, taunting. The great wave, silent until now, cascades and screams in perfect symmetry. The surfer is driving, driving. You can hear his board. The wave engulfs you both and together your breath the cool air; that suspended cool air you can only find inside a wave. You trip the shutter, it’s why you’re here. The surfer rockets by inches from you and you follow him with your camera. And then he’s gone.
Y
ou kick hard. Inside the wave’s gravitational field, you feel the first oily sensations of fear. It wants you. It wants to send you with it, in a great arc of suspended water and drive you into the reef headfirst. You kick hard. Harder. Hugging your camera to your chest. Then, on the edge of disaster, it releases you. You break free. You surface, let the rain clear and look outside. The oily feeling is back in your stomach. This one is even bigger. You had a feeling this was going to happen.
Drew Courtney and I found the place in 1998. We scored it similar and have been trying to get it like this since. This swell came together beautifully and we had a cool mix of chargers who lucked into it. Dylan Longbottom
dede suryana
3
PERS PECTIVES
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the surfer
Y
ou wish you’d taken more time to wax up. But the waves were so goddamned outrageous you just couldn’t wait.
N
ow you’re here. The waves are twice the size you thought they were. Dropping in to a monster with your feet all wrong. You get to the bottom, adjust your feet, bank into a stalling turn, and square-off. Whatever this thing is going to do, it’s going to do it now. You feel the reef shaping the wave. It’s almost at a standstill as it loads up. If you’re going to eject, now is the time. You don’t. You plant your stance and lean into it. It will be too big a tube to crouch. This is going to have to be something else. You’re moving with it now. And then it happens. An avalanche of water lunges toward shore like a massive tongue and you’re inside its mouth. You feel the photographer more than see him. He’s inside with you. He’s there. Then he’s gone. Your mouth is agape, but you’re not breathing. Your face pinched in a silent scream. You drive. And drive. Impossibly fast. Your board feels much too small. The hole in front of you is sliding further away. Getting smaller. The tail of your surfboard begins to lift. You’re inside a liquid tornado. In the eye. You hang on for one more moment, then crouch and eject into oblivion. The world explodes. And you’re inside the bomb.
daniel jones
Your mouth is agape, but you’re not breathing. Your face pinched in a silent scream. You drive. And drive. Impossibly fast. Your board feels much too small. The hole in front of you is sliding further away 26
3
PERS PECTIVES
mikala jones
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PERS PECTIVES
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the captain
Y
ou’re Indonesian. And you cannot swim. You have been on the sea all your life.
F
ishing and now this. Like a taxi. Taking these bersilincar (boats) to this outpost reef so they can ride their little boats on the massive, crushing waves. All your life you’ve avoided reefs and waves. But you’ve learned from these bersilincar.
I
n the midday heat, you sit on the small aft deck of your boat, one foot on the tiller, watching these insane men ride these insane waves. You recognise it’s a craziness which drives them to this place. You can see it in their eyes. A madness. “The” madness. You watch them try to destroy themselves and you’re astonished they don’t die. Makes you wonder what gods they’re praying to. You watch them hurl themselves into the mighty beasts, slide inside them and then get annihilated. Over and over. What gods are they praying to? You ask yourself again.
Y
ou see the man with the long hair, his camera in a yellow box, flop over the side and begin kicking towards the waves. He looks like a sea creature. You've seen these men swimming in the waves with their cameras before. Flirting with certain death. They seem the maddest of them all. It’s all extraordinarily silly to you. The surfing doesn’t mean anything. Just men at play. It makes no rice. No money. Although the surfers do pay well for this madness.
It’s all extraordinarily silly to you. The surfing doesn’t mean anything. Just men at play. It makes no rice. No money. Although the surfers do pay well for this madness
dylan longbottom
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3
PERS PECTIVES
daniel jones
The tail of your surfboard begins to lift. You’re inside a liquid tornado. In the eye. You hang on for one more moment, then crouch and eject into oblivion. The world explodes. And you’re inside the bomb 32
S
o you sit with the patience of a cat and watch. You can see the drama in it. The thrill. But mostly, you see a ghastly kind of courage. A courage and a manliness which seems worth something. However misguided. And an unquestioned skill and verve.
Y
ou can hear a howl coming from the other boats and from the surfers themselves as a massive hump of water marches toward the reef. The biggest one you’ve ever seen here. The surfers are scrambling like ants in the water. The photographer is swimming a direct line for it. Then the great wave arrives and begins to crash and roar, and grind itself. You can see a surfer inside the wave with the photographer. The wave seems to get bigger. More deadly. And this is when you stand up and watch the surfer get eaten alive. You wait and wait until finally his head pops up, and he clambers back onto his board and begins paddling out to do it again. Then you realise you’ve been holding your breath. So you exhale and sit down and laugh softly to yourself. Because that's when you realise you have caught some of the madness yourself.
F
our hours now in the sizzling heat and you haven’t been able to take your eyes off a single wave.
3
PERS PECTIVES
Damien Fahrenfort
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3
PERS PECTIVES
mikala jones
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dede suryana
3
PERS PECTIVES
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1 8 S E C O N D S MAGAZINE
/
a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
/
Jon Frank has an uncanny ability to capture moments in the ocean we rarely see. A friend of mine once said, "he doesn´t take shots. He creates shots." Jon´s unique seascapes are so charming his work has won international acclaim. Quite simply he´s the man. Taylor Knox digs his work saying, "Jon is a creator of good things... his v ision makes me happy." And Derek Hynd once wrote, "he is not normal, his work is not normal."
40
You’ll never see the 39-year-old standing in the pack, rather slinking around for a point of difference. Jon has also worked in cinematography where he directed the minor surf cult flick, Litmus, Super Computer and Mick Fanning’s biopic Mick, Myself & Eugene, yet as you’ll see in the interview, he’ll always consider himself a photographer. Here are a couple of words with the man.
AT What age did you realise you were going to become a photographer? I suppose there was hope I might when I was in my early twenties, but really I had little idea where I would end up. Still don’t.
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/
a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
/
Was there a defining moment? There was a hell of a lot of error and the occasional fluke when it all came together and I’d claim those moments as inspired. Traditionally, why don’t photographers follow the same line as most other professions where you study at university then work in your qualified field? Most start out working jobs to fund their desire to shoot whether it be working factory production lines or in a soy milk factory like you did. Many other types of photographers do follow a career path but surfing photography is not traditional in that sense. Charles M. Schulz (American cartoonist) said the secret of life is just hanging around until you get used to it.
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What did your parents want for you? I don’t think they ever cared too much for material wealth, preferring the riches that come with a life fully lived. How do you describe your photography? Pretentiously. My mate Dave reckons it’s, “like blackened chunder, three stops under.” What drew you to the ocean? The feeling of being immersed I suppose.
Derek Hynd wrote in his introduction to the book, Waves of the Sea, you are not normal and your work is not normal. Welcomed compliment? Derek has a way with words. I’ll take it as a compliment. What do you see as normal surf photography? Shooting the action to capture a tube or a turn. To record an athlete being athletic.
/
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a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
/
You’re a decorated cinematographer and photographer, but which one grabbed you first and how did the second one come about? I consider myself a stills photographer primarily even though the majority of my work in recent years has been moving pictures. I called my magazine editor from Hawaii in January 1995 and told him I was quitting surf photography. He told me he was thinking about quitting the magazine and we should make a movie instead. So we did.
Surfing is saturated with photographers. Does that make it challenging for you to have a point of difference? Do you consciously avoid the packs and walk to the other end of the beach or wait for the majority of photographers to leave before you start shooting? Or is it an unconscious act, which comes naturally? My default setting is anti-social so I avoid crowds quite naturally. There's not much point in twenty lenses on the same thing so I lose interest in that very quickly.
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There is a strong relationship between the two. Do you agree? Yes, there is a relationship with all art-forms actually. Music and writing and the visual arts are all closely related. If you had to choose one? I prefer photography because making a film is such a massive commitment: by the time it’s finished you've forgotten why you wanted to make it in the first place. My dream to hit the road with one camera, one lens and a few rolls of black and white film: that gives me great pleasure.
/
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a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
/
I remember watching Litmus as a teenager and being blown away by the honesty and purity it portrayed in surfing, but was curious as to the lack of hifi surfing. I wanted to see futuristic surfing but wasn’t disappointed when I didn’t. What made you and Andrew Kidman take it in that direction when others were producing movies which at the time, felt very action fantastic? Litmus was a direct response to what surf movies had become for the momentum generation.
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At the time of creation did you have any idea the lasting effect it would have on the surfing community? Why do you think it holds minor cult status? I was just glad it was over. What are some of your fondest memories from creating the movie? Punching on with Andrew in the gutter outside our favourite pub in Ireland at midnight.
When shooting, you’re known for critical positions in the water where you put your body and life on the line to get the shot – tell us about some close calls you’ve had. Just the usual trips over the falls, heavy hold downs, ten wave sets on the head... all surfers can relate to these.
/
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a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
/
/
a person WHO TAKES PHOTOGRAPHS
Jon Frank
You’re well travelled but are there places you regularly re-visit because of a special bond? Some places just feel right and are conducive to a certain type of work. Tahiti is nice like that, but also the water is warm and the fish fresh and the beer cold, which doesn’t hurt. Why did you choose to collaborate with Richard Tognetti (Artistic Director of the Australian Chamber Orchestra) for ‘The Glide’? (a concert of ocean-related imagery set to classical music). ‘The Glide’ just evolved from a friendship RT and I share, and our mutual respect for the sea I suppose. It’s satisfying to collaborate with an artist who really pushes you in ways beyond the ordinary.
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/
You’re currently working on a photographic book deep inland to deep sea. Where did the idea come about? All photographers are working on a book aren’t they? This one has been banging around for a couple of years and it continues to challenge me. The latest is I’m going to reshoot the entire bloody thing, but we will see how that goes. It’s a work in progress constantly evolving.
Are you going to stop and pause where the land meets the ocean and focus on waves for a chunk of the book? Yeah, it’s fair to say that at least half of the book will be pictures of waves and where the sea meets land.
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Getting back to the industry, what are you thoughts on accessible pro cameras and the explosion in surf photography? It has changed everything but in most respects the dance is still the same. The plethora of images now out there actually makes the special ones more valuable I think. Do you have any last advice for aspiring surf photographers? I would recommend taking a chance in life. You might not end up where you thought, but the journey is what it’s all about anyway.
‘The Glide’ is being performed in Sydney and Melbourne as part of the Australian Chamber Orchestras 2011 season.
For prints please visit www.jonfrank.com.au
1 8 S E C O N D S MAGAZINE
Steph is wearing gypsea bikinis & roxy clothing/accessories
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Favourite surf breaks T iger Tracks in Java, Snapper minus the crowd Surfing advice for men Be nice to me and let me get waves For woman Keep shredding! Advice for men in general Confidence is good, arrogance is bad
Age
22
Lives Coolangatta. Migrated from Point Lonsdale, Victoria Uni Southern Cross. Bachelor of Business with Marketing Major and Diploma of Sports Management
Ten things you like to do in your spare time Go to cafés with the girls and drink lots of coffee Shop Surf I have to say it, ‘facebook’ Beach Go out, party Watch full TV series back-to-back Paint my nails Play with my friends Plan my world trip
Years surfing Six
Nicest thing you’ve done I saved a baby turtle in Bali with my friends. We helped it get better and then paddled it out the back so the big waves didn’t hurt it. I’m nice to my grandma too
Board choice
Something cheeky
Work Fit model for Roxy
Underground
I suppose I’m a fair smartarse
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video
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson 76
1 8 S E C O N D S MAGAZINE
photo 18seconds
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson Fifteen-year-old Mitch Parkinson has one of the most famous surnames in surfing. The day he picked up a surfboard, was the day expectations were set. Sure they weren’t going to be very high for a four-year-old, but as the years passed and his cousin Joel Parkinson began making massive inroads into competitive surfing, people began labelling Mitch the next big thing. If you ask him about his surname, expectations and labels, he’ll politely shut you down. Fast forward to today and there’s even more chatter about the next coolie prodigy. Talk is cheap as they say, but not in this case. If you’ve seen him surf, you’d say he’s well on his way. As testament to his competitive capacity, he recently won the 2011 Rip Curl Gromsearch International final. Mitch doesn’t think he’s the next big thing. As grommets do, he’s just trying to have fun and surf as much as possible. Eight hour surfs aren’t uncommon. Any given day you’ll see him at Snapper or Duranbah throwing his featherweight around, clearly having bags of fun. When asked about heroes he responded, “Andy (Irons) and Joel I guess.” He also said Joel helps him a lot with surfing, but gives him a load of shit too. Well, what are family for? We asked him if he wanted to be a better surfer than Joel. “If it’s possible…haha,” he replied. “I’d like to surf a heat with him on tour one day.” Stranger things have happened. There could be a time where he overtakes Joel on the World Tour ratings. And as for competing, Mitch thinks being a freesurfer would be cool, but he’ll always prefer winning. “That’s the best feeling,” he said. If you’ve surfed Snapper or D’bah chances are you’ve been dropped in on by Mitch. He’s mastered the art of the fade at his locals. “It’s pretty fun because I get dropped in on so much when I’m away, then I come home and I’m an all-round-dick!” As for doing the deed on Mick and Joel. “No way! They’d push me off… it’s more like they drop in on me,” Mitch said. “Every now and again, I’ll get one off them though.”
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photo hilton dawe
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
photo 18seconds
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video
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photo 18seconds
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
photo 18seconds
/ If it’s possible I’d like to
surf a heat with him (Joel) on tour one day. /
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photo hilton dawe
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photo simon muirhead
/ I get dropped in on so
much when I’m away, then I come home and I’m an all-round-dick! /
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
photo hilton dawe
/ I don’t think I’m the next
big thing, I’m just trying to have fun and surf. /
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video
90
photo 18seconds
/ Freesurfing would be
cool (for a living), but I’ll always rather win contests… that’s the best feeling. /
YOUNG
DUDES Profiling the groms of the future
mitch parkinson
Like wastin time at wor Like us. 92
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1 8 S E C O N D S MAGAZINE
Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
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marlon gerber
stephen walsh
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Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
Y
ou’re watching Java reel past your passenger side window. The sun is
slanting in from just above a massive, smoking Mount Merapi rising
rampant in the hazy blue distance. The serpentine road is winding up into
a coastal jungle ridge giving you an even view of the giant city Jogjakarta, nestled around its base like Pompeii, awaiting its next wrath. You know the
facts, you’ve been here before when the same volcano erupted in 2007 and you came as an aid worker and had one of the adventures of your life evacuating
villagers from its steaming slopes. You can now see yourself in the car window
superimposed against the giant and you smile a private smile at the memory. Java: the most famed of the 17,000 plus islands of Indonesia, home to 60%
of the population, the hub of Indonesia’s political and economic life whose massive gravity draws to its cities millions of migrants from the four corners of the archipelago to its deafening, polluted, graft ridden, stinking confines.
B
ut you’re hell and gone from the rancors of the cities. You’re in old Java
now on your way to a new coast, whose hushed whispers of waves are
just becoming bellows. And you’re on a modern surf trip with professional
surfers: Marlon Gerber, 26, Bali. Rizal Tanjung, 35, Bali. Lee Wilson, 24,
Bali. Anthony and Stephen Walsh, Australia. Koby Abberton, Australia. Betet Merta, Bali.
“The twin waves you’re all seeking can handle five good surfers in the lineup. Five good friends at most. You think of thirty on her someday and you shudder. And yet, you somehow feel this time it could be different. Can be different. Or at least at this point it feels like it has a different chance.”
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Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
A
nd you know this is considered a small crew these days. Organised for a quick strike into Java under the advice of internet swell predictions and
the need for ads and articles, and films and clips, and sections and megapixels, and the ever hungry and devouring World Wide Web. And you know it’s people and journeys like this, discovering treasures, that will inspire a new exodus, an avalanche of surfing colonialism which will inevitably follow in its
wake. Then surf camps will spring up with package deals and cold beer. Then the waves of development and environmental and cultural disasters at which we have proven ourselves so adept in the past, will follow.
T
o say nothing of the overcrowding. The twin waves you’re all seeking
can handle five good surfers in the lineup. Five good friends at most.
You think of thirty on her someday and you shudder. And yet, you somehow
feel this time it could be different. Can be different. Or at least at this point it feels like it has a different chance.
Y
our destination today is a different coast. A wilder coast. With
undiscovered waves of greater consequence than its sister Bali to the
south. Or its idyllic Mentawai cousins to the north. This coast is craggy, young, volcanic with tall vertical cliffs and massive blowholes. There are
confused currents and great massive sluices, and an explosive power that’s
going to take more will and courage to ride than anywhere else in Indonesia.
anthony walsh
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“There are confused currents and great massive sluices, and an explosive power that’s going to take more will and courage to ride than anywhere else in Indonesia.”
Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
M
ost significantly, this is an Islamic land: a place whose people have
a greater resolve against the influences of the West than its Hindu
sister to the south or its Animist island cousins to the north. And you find
yourself thinking…perhaps the Lords of Bali are the right men for the job.
T
he Fisherman watches the surfers eat like tigers. The morning’s catch
laid out before them on the front porch of his home within eyeshot of
the great waves they’ve come here to play in. Nearby, three big, shiny black
cars bristling with familar surfboards and of course, more riches in the forms of cameras and equipment than the entire village has known.
H
e knew the tall ambitious one, Rizal, from Bali. Had even helped him
buy all the land up on the hill overlooking this village and the waves.
They had discussed it at length over the years. How Rizal wanted to create an escape, a getaway for his family. Away from the madness of Kuta Beach, Rizal
explained, where because of tourism, the bones of the Bali were held together with little more than memories. And in return for this help, Rizal could bring
him the business of the visiting surfers who were sure to come and perhaps this time, together, they could control things, manage things better. Keep it
pristine. Balanced. Surfing brings money. That much he knew. And where
there is money there is life. And where there is life there is hope. Hope for
the fisherman’s child. Education. Comfort. Ease. And the fisherman believed.
Because it was already happening.
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Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
A
s predicted, over the past ten years, the trickle of surfers had become, if not a torrent, then at least a steady stream. A few at a time. And for
the most part had been respectful and quiet, and always astonished by the
beauty of this place on earth. There had only been a few gross incidents and they all involved beer. Alcohol was frowned upon here, forbidden by Islamic
tradition. But the fisherman had his wife keep a refrigerator full of cold ones for the visitors. It was the steadiest business he had.
A
n Australian man had even set up a small bamboo structure on the berm
with dreams of starting a surf camp here at what the Westerners called
White Sands. But the first undisciplined rumblings of the West visited one
night not long ago when the Australian was rumored to have become drunk and had jumped up and down on the beach, with no clothes on, screaming
at the moon. This would never do here. This could cause many problems. The fisherman was already keeping his young, beautiful daughter indoors more these days. A storm was coming. That much he knew. He wanted to be prepared. But other than having enough to sell, how?
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“The first undisciplined rumblings of the West visited one night not long ago when the Australian was rumored to have become drunk and had jumped up and down on the beach, with no clothes on, screaming at the moon. This would never do here.�
anthony walsh
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“Where there is money there is life. And where there is life there is hope. Hope for the fisherman’s child. Education. Comfort. Ease. And the fisherman believed. Because it was already happening.”
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Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
B
ali has grown up and these Balinese surfers with it. Smart enough to take full advantage of the stampede of tourism that claimed their
paradise home long ago. These surfers are now well paid, earning more than doctors here, with families and homes, living in a paradise of endless perfect
waves with no need of the world tour because they have created their own. The Indonesian Surfing Championship Tour (The ISC), is what they call the “real” dream tour. It visits the best waves in Indonesia and has enough prize
money to keep them in spades. They’re famous here on an island home where surfing is a highly respected profession appreciated by the myriad merchants and surf companies that feed off the popularity of not only the place, but of
all of them on a personal level. Regardless of the headlong overdevelopment
and tourism that runs as rampant as a herd of rogue elephants in Bali, these surfers exist in a symbiosis with it.
R
izal Tanjung, now having risen to General Manager of Hurley clothing
Southeast Asia, restaurateur, top ranked ISC surfer, friend to and
connection for every famous surfer in the world, you listen to him talk of Java...
“Surfing will bring more than just money here, it will bring hope.
Life. Like it did for us in Bali. But this time it has to be different. Different than Bali. We are talking to Unicef right now about making this place a World Heritage site. This would keep the Warung culture. Small beachside businesses run by the local people. Keep the pollution down, things like that.�
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“We have learned three things in Bali: Small money? Big problems. Big Money? Big problems.
But just enough money? No problems. Money can kill things, yes. Look at Dreamland in Bali. Destroyed. The magic is gone. The devil took its soul and now tourists are herded there like ducks. But money can also make things live. You just need to know what kind of life you want. I think this place knows. I think it has known forever.�
- Rizal Tanjung
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video
betet merta
A
nd a quiet falls on this moment. A rooster crows. A plate is scraped. And one of the surfers gets up, brings his empty plate to the nearby
kitchen sink, thanks the fisherman’s wife for lunch, pays her generously and then moves off to wax his board for the second session.
A
nd it’s in that moment you realise this new place, this new coast, with its new discoveries, will soon have an army marching on it. An army
of surfers, dreamers, capitalists, developers and interlopers alike. And you
think of the Nias slum, the madness of Kuta Beach, Puerto Escondido, Costa
Rica, Cloud Nine, Scorpion Bay… and the long litany of the other innocents
lost to our dreams. And you realise that it’s our army that’s on the march. As inexorable as the tide. And that it’s our delicate dance with the ocean that will be the genesis of it all.
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video
Dance The Delicate
Old perils in Java, land of the free
A gang involved in crimes such as running guns down to the beach when it's ten- foot- plus and illegal carry- on luggage weights:
the 18seconds' posse andy morris
founder & editor andy@18seconds.com.au
Alicia Smith
Art Director & interactive magazine design alicia@18seconds.com.au
Angela Liccardi graphic designer
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