1967 Memoirs of a weekend surfer [by Craig Woods]
The year is 2021. I am sitting in the lounge room watching the 6pm news with meat and vedge and a full glass of Margs Merlo close at hand. Halfway thru the TV News there is a very brief coverage of recent surf competition being held at Margaret River.
I watch in amazement as a young teenage girl performs a backhand re-entry on a ten-foot wave. So much ability at such a young age [mentoring, family, fathers, Evolution?]
Late 1960s South Point on Cowaramup Bay at Gracetown.
It sets me thinking back to 1966, when I paddled out very cautiously at Margs main break to ‘’ have a go. ‘’ I don’t remember everything on the big day but the swell was 8 to 10 feet with a very strong offshore easterly breeze. I remember an unusual metallic taste in my mouth as the breeze aided my easy cruise out, hopefully behind the fall line. On arriving in the middle of ‘ocean nowhere’ I am looking for the take off point as I don’t have a clue where it is!
Meanwhile the swells are marching through, great masses of moving ocean now lifting me up 10 feet, now dropping me down 10 feet. Look to the left and a wave extends half a mile to the river mouth, and I look to the right and the wave extends halfway to Antarctica. Where the duck is the take off point!
At this stage I ask myself what I am doing out here without a life jacket and a motorised surf ski! This is not Triggs Point. Duuh!
1960s South West swell.
OKAY, yes, time to bite the bullet, so I start paddling like a flailing maniac to try and slide onto the next wave, but the offshore wind comes up the wave face and blows me back over as I try to take the 10-foot drop. Sitting there humbled, I remember something Steve said to me the previous day.
He said ‘’ When you surf Margs you have to do a proper bottom turn and not a parallel slide because the wave is so steep and you could wind up going over the falls backward’’. And so, as the next wave passed and drenched me with a sobering shower of Indian ocean salty spray. I resigned myself to the long paddle shore ward and kept saying to myself. Bottom turn, bottom turn, I really need to work on my bottom turn. Have to talk to Steve about that – and also how do you find the take off point? Where is the trucking take off point at Margaret River or anywhere! Just putting it out there!
Anyway – I am guessing there are enough bad Margs experiences out there to fill a book. When I think back now, weekend surfers were ignorant about how much experience and skill is required to ride “big waves”. [Nazare – that’s another story] In my opinion these guys are equivalent to Olympic athletes in their abilities, and they enjoy what they do. They get up at 4-30 in the morning to find a wave because they love surfing – not to win a gold medal.
1960s South West swell lines. Photo Greg Woods.
So it’s now about 60 years since my big day at Margs and experiencing the surfing revolution in the sixties in the west. Looking back now, it was a time before computers and smart phones insinuated themselves into our hearts and minds and transformed our lives irrevocably. Before that life was simpler in the sense that there weren’t so many options, so people had more in common and shared fewer archetypal paradigms of the day. Okay for most, very difficult for others. So now we are hurtling along a global freeway with some nasty potholes ahead and very few off ramps in site.
No answers from me but the least we can do is climb into Jim King’s Surfing Down South time machine blogg and enjoy fading memories of the good old days, almost the same as being there sixty years ago. Well — almost!
1967 Golden Summers.
Thanks Craig for your contribution.
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