Tabla de contenidos para No. 577 en Tracks

The morning session goes down in junky, East-Sydney peaks, an urban battlefield where waves are typically hard won. Today the crowds are thinner than usual as a light onshore ruffles the unruly easterly swell that is a precursor to cyclone Uesi’s quick march south. Courtesy of the heavy rains, the sea is littered with scattered debris that makes the lineup into a minefield of potential misfortune. I watch a friend haul a tree towards shore, lest it be the instrument of his decapitation on the next ride. Despite the floating obstacles and the unfavourable winds, the waves are punchy and rip-able. Unscathed and at least semi-satisfied my friend Luke (yes another Luke) and I cut the session short; well-aware that the Sydney airport run is always a lottery-dip with traffic.…

MY NAME IS TERRY ROSS, AND IF YOU HAVE A MINUTE I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU A SHORT STORY. During the mid-80s there was this young guy from Avoca Beach who was my best mate. We grew up together, played together and surfed together. He was a young athlete on his way through the surf club ranks and local surf comps, and I was his nerdy mate who could surf ok but was never going to make anything of it. I was into photography, and even in my early teens had a darkroom and this kick arse 800mm Tokina lens that went on my old Ricoh XR1-S 35mm film camera. This was the era of Mark Eymes, Bryce Ellis, Cheyne Horan and of course Jeff McCoy, so there was no…

IF YOU ARE UNPREPARED IT’S NOT PRESSURE YOU FEEL, IT’S FEAR. Experience can help too when it comes to being a famous surfer, but the only one way to get that is to put yourself in harm’s way. In Hawaii. On the North Shore. At Pipeline. The crucible of the surfing world, where top flight pro careers are lost or found, Pipe’s reef holds more weight on its square shoulders than Teahupoo. There is a reason for this. Pipeline is a natural coliseum. Seen and felt from shore. Teahupoo is seen from boats full of beer drinking photographers and the ballyhoo of Brazilian bikini girlfriends. Yes, Teahupoo might be more pneumatic, even heavier, but it is not as tall an order. For one thing, you either paddle in at Pipe…

The Marina Sports Club. Situated in the bowels of a restaurant that bears the same name, overlooking the sluice of this ramshackle harbour town. An inauspicious place to start a trip – avoiding eye contact, drinking tiny stubbies of beer, and listening to the broken dreams of someone in up to their neck in this remote corner of the sea-faring world. “You owe me 10K, Daniel,” says a sailor into the payphone across from us. “I know. I know you are in deeper than me… No, I’ll pay your man once you pay me… Stop that, I told you… Don’t you dare bring my son into this you bastard.” He hangs up and downs the last of his beer in a combined flourish, a true pastiche of the washed-up seaman…

A LITTLE FURTHER ON IN THIS ISSUE YOU’LL STUMBLE UPON A FEATURE TITLED ‘AFTER THE INFERNO’, IN WHICH TRACKS SCRIBE, KIRK OWERS WRITES ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE OF VISITING THE SOUTH COAST OF NEW SOUTH WALES AFTER THE DEVASTATING BUSHFIRES TORE THROUGH THE REGION. It’s a part of our country that holds a special place in many surfers’ hearts, including Craig Anderson and photographer John Respondek. The duo spend a good chunk of their free time traversing the coastline together shooting. John even relocating to the area permanently a few years back after falling in love with it. The pair were working together on the coast as the crisis reached its peak. “We were about 50 kilometres away from the big fires at Bawley,” Remembers John. “My town escaped the flames,…

At 75kg Dom Walsh cuts a lithe and sinewy figure. It’s a musculature that speaks of long hours in the water with a little yoga and cardio on the side – a far cry from the 95kg he bulked up to when he was playing football for the North Queensland Cowboys. Many kids grow up in Australia with the dream of playing professional Rugby League. For Dom Walsh that dream was much closer to a reality. Maroubra Beach was young Dom’s regular stomping ground, but his talents as a footballer were identified early, and he honed his skills as a hard-running lock forward at nearby Matraville Sports High. Fast-tracked for a career in Rugby League, he relocated to the Gold Coast to finish school at Palm Beach Currumbin Sports High…

IT WAS BACK IN MID-FEBRUARY THAT TROPICAL CYCLONE UESI JUMPED OUT FROM BEHIND NEW CALEDONIA AND SPRINTED SOUTH INTO QUEENSLAND AND NSW’S SWELL WINDOW. THE STORM’S URGENT PACE MEANT THE SWELL WAS SHORT LIVED, MOSTLY PRODUCING ONLY ONE DAY OF CLASSIC WAVES IN EACH LOCATION AS THE SWELL WRAPPED INTO THE COAST LIKE A GIANT BOAT WAKE. It began in Queensland, with Noosa and the Gold Coast lighting up, before the swell moved south into NSW. Everywhere from Byron to Bega felt its influence. One of the more memorable sessions occurred at Cape Solander in Sydney, a wave not normally in the conversation when the topic is classic cyclone swells. But try telling that to lifeguard Lukas Street, pictured here inside what is possibly the heaviest, throatiest tube of the…

THE RIPCURL AD – TRACKS, MARCH, 1972 When you ‘have’ to take advertising pictures, you make use of what’s available… and that’s how Doug ‘Claw’ Warbrick got to star in one of his own advertisements, and why we used the grand surroundings of my Whale Beach house to shoot it. Those are the downstairs bathroom windows behind Claw. He’s standing in the ‘garden’… or possibly what might’ve been ‘lawn’ once. It’s questionable for me to suggest that there were more characters… well, a higher proportion of them, in surfing in the ‘olden days’. I knew a lot of the people involved back in the 1960s and much of the ‘70s. Now I know no one… not a single person. Maybe today’s competitive stars are a wonderfully rich collection of idiosyncratic…

Interim Champion Stevie Noble is over a knee injury and awaits the prime contender from the Top 5 Challenge series. At short notice, and without public knowledge, the first official RAT Championship will be settled sometime after Easter under base rules of five one-hour freeform sessions, and cumulative ’rule of thumb’ scoring. Currently being appraised are submissions at freeform locations from Kyle Kennelly, Newport USA; Rangi Ormond, East Coast NZ; Elliot McLeod, Burleigh; Matt Delahunty, Palm Beach(Qld); also Jordan Rodin, W.A. north. The ‘Back 5 Top 10’ series runs through March, and from there, the ‘Back 10 Top 20’ series. No one is ever eliminated under RAT rules of engagement. The experience is as positive as competitive surfing has ever been. Simply, the rankings sway. Impress – and rise. Fail…

West Australian photographer, Russell Ord, is a natural raconteur. Whether regaling you with tales of his bold surfing adventures or detailing an encounter with a pompous, celebrity chef he had been assigned to photograph, Ordy is a captivating storyteller. However, despite his gift of the gab and sharp eye behind the lens he is reticent to reveal the specific locations of the more glorious waves he stumbles across in his travels. Ordy is old-school in that respect; he’d rather preserve a little of the mystique surrounding surfing’s treasures. Below, Russ muses over a recent trip to New Zealand and pretties-up the pages with a selection of his enticing images – just don’t expect the exact GPS coordinates. TRACKS: ISOLATION/WAVES/LANDSCAPE? Russell: NZ is a fantastic place to work as a surf…