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D E E TA L E S A STORY OF TRAGEDY, TRIUMPH OVER ADVERSITY AND THE ROLE THREE WORDS PLAYED IN IT ALL Words by Luke Kennedy
“RAISING THREE KIDS WEIGHED HEAVILY ON MATT’S MUM AND AT NIGHT HER ONLY WAY OF FINDING RELEASE FROM THE STRAIN PLACED UPON HER WAS TO LIE IN BED AND SCREAM, ‘FUCK THE WORLD’.” Matt Dee began his surfing life under the most desperate of circumstances. Ninety nine percent of the time Victoria’s Port Philip Bay is a waveless expanse that offers pleasure to nautical enthusiasts and a supply route for much of Melbourne’s imported produce, but precious little for surfers. However, on the infrequent occasion a swell did whip up in the ’80s, Matt and a band of bay-surf diehards, including his older brother Jon, would hit it with the kind of zeal you’d expect from wavelusting groms. “If it wasn’t a 20 knot sou’ wester it wasn’t on, reflects Matt, “But there were still about 15 of us with our own garage club-house and there were some good surfers too.” What they lacked in the way of waves they easily compensated for with passion, “We could recite the words to Big Wednesday word-for-word,” Matt insists, and proves it by dropping a few lines with flawless delivery. In the Dee house, waves were not the only thing in short supply. “We didn’t have a lot of food really,” Matt says with the slight grimace of shame that poverty brings. At the time Aspendale, the suburb the family lived in, was the crime capital of Australia and a natural gathering point for families who knew all-too-well the meaning of the term skid
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row. The stifling urban setting, coupled with the pressures of being a single Mum raising three kids weighed heavily on Matt’s mum and at night her only way of finding release from the strain placed upon her was to lie in bed and scream, “Fuck The World”. Their mother’s ill-contented cursing was fully in earshot of her three children and as much as it made them despair, her wail against the injustices of the world became a kind of family mantra, a code by which the three underprivileged siblings would live by. Surfing, rapidly became the primary source of escape from their troubles. Once old enough they joined the Eastern Boardriders Club, which was associated with the beaches on the Mornington Peninsular. “If we wanted to get to the beach we’d ring every name in the club, in the hope of getting a ride out,” recalls Matt. When those options were exhausted they’d resort to hitchhiking. “By the time I was 12, I was on the highway with my thumb out,” Matt continues. “If we went to Bells we’d just sleep in the bushes out at Birdrock… it was cold but it was worth it.” With the home scene and waveless Port Philip Bay becoming increasingly less appealing, it
wasn’t long before the teenage Matt gravitated to the south side of Sydney, where he qualified for homeless assistance from the government. He lived at a friend’s place, washed dishes at a chicken shop on weekends and picked up labouring work whenever he could. Although he was officially at school, his hitchhiking quests became increasingly adventurous. “I hitched to Byron a few times. I remember one time I stayed in a garage near Tallows and lived off of food stamps from St Vincent’s for six months.” Fiercely independent and nomadically inclined, when Matt left school he made it his mission to find waves in hard to get to locations. One trip to Indo in his early 20s almost cost him his life. Inspired by a rough map, drawn on the back of a beer coaster by a few Narrabeen boys, Matt and his mate, ‘Crazy Ray’, found their way to an isolated coastline in malaria-riddled southern Sumatra. They scored world-class waves for three weeks and lived like feral kings but things went awry when they stumbled into a civil war hot zone while making their exit via a town called Bengkulu. Discovering they’d missed the last flight out for a few days, the two mates found a cabin and a few