Table of contents for Issue 600 in Tracks

Dropping Issue 600 puts Tracks on par with ‘Surfer’ magazine as the most prolifically published surf magazine in the world. Maybe we’re even a nose in front when you consider all our non-numbered special editions and the fact ‘Surfer’s’ most recent mag dropped after a five-year hiatus. Ok, we’re being a little boastful, but there has always been a healthy rivalry between the USA and Australia when it comes to competition surfing or claims about who has the greatest influence over surf culture. In 1967 Australian surf journalist/photographer, John Witzig, wrote an article titled ‘We’re Tops Now’ for ‘Surfer’ magazine. NatYoung had claimed the 1966WorldTitle andWitzig felt the US surfing fraternity had failed to give him due credit. So Witzig lit a fuse under the noses of the Americans by…

As the calendar kicked over to the year 2000, Steph Gilmore was a prodigious 12-year-old from the NSW north coast who regularly hopped the border to feel the glide on Coolangatta’s points. Her dad, Jeff, loved surfing and guitar, and would pay Steph a buck to play the major scales when she wasn’t whipping through turns. Maybe the music helped, but from an early age she rode a wave like someone stringing together a series of perfect chords. One of the first songs Steph learnt in full, was Bob Dylan’s ‘TheTimesThey are a-Changin’. By 2005 Steph had become an instrument of that change, ushering in a new era of women’s surfing when she skipped class to claim the 2005 Roxy Pro as a 17-year-old wildcard. En route to victory the…

Gabriel Medina is suspended God-like, bolt upright, three feet above the water, an index finger raised in glory. There is no other sign of life, or movement, just bilious clouds in the background, a rough-hewn ocean line below his feet and Gabe, centre of the world, still, but moving. His board trails six feet behind, but still in sync, shadowing its pilot. It’s an image that will become one of the iconic frames of the 2024 Olympics. Surfers around the world, even Australian ones, felt proud. This is what we do. This is how we do it. The sport is different. Remarkable. Unique. And, well, so is Gabriel Medina. The question is, why has it taken the non-Brazilian surfing world about 15 years to come to that conclusion? Has he…

One Saturday night in the mid-60s in the old Melvic Picture Theatre in Belmont, NSW, a group of young Newcastle musicians and boardriders were watching the latest Bruce Brown surfing movie on the big screen. From that screening came the inspiration for surfing’s most powerful rock song of the 70s… and way beyond. They were all members ofThe Four Strangers who had recently renamed themselves as The Sunsets and Lindsay Bjerre had recently joined as the youngest member to take on the key role as singer and rhythm guitarist. With him at the Melvic were lead guitarist, Alex ‘Zak’ Zytnic, drummer Dannie Davidson, and Eric Connell on bass. Young Eric was old enough to have a licence to drive his surfie/muso friends to the movie that night, but the car…

Tracks Magazine and its staff acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which we operate our business, the Arakwal people of the Bundjalung Nation & the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging. We also extend our respect to all the Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander people across all of Country. Tracks celebrates the rich history of the world’s oldest living culture and their continuing connection to land, water and community.…

The year 1966 saw the release of the most loved surfing film of all time, ‘Endless Summer’. The film was produced, directed, photographed, edited, and narrated by Californian, Bruce Brown. Ten years earlier Brown had enlisted in the US Navy right out of school and served as a submariner. He shot his first home movie of surfers from California with an 8mm camera while stationed in Honolulu in 1955. After being discharged, Brown returned to California and enrolled in Long Beach City College but soon dropped out to work as a lifeguard at Long Beach. ‘Endless Summer’, Brown’s seventh surfing film, follows surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, on a surfing trip worldwide and was tag-lined, ‘The Search for the Perfect Wave’. Despite comfortably warm water in California, without modern…

The thought occurred to me last month in Bali while pathetically trying to do battle with Putin’s alt.army. As ubiquitous local surf instructors from Canggu to Kuta Reef and Balian to Bingin employed the double wedge technique, propelling every Nikita and Svetlana down the face like human torpedoes in order to keep stupid old bastards like this writer off every set wave. As this shitstorm of frustration came crashing down around me, the thought came seeping out of me like pus from an infected reef cut, that we have come full cycle. That the global staph of the soul from which surfing will hopefully recover actually had its beginnings – or at least its gestation – here on the Island of the Gods in the immediate wake of the Morning…

Wow, 600 hundred issues of Tracks! I’m happy to have enjoyed an association with the masthead since some of the first pages were printed in 1970. Now the magazine has reached a milestone in global surf publishing that’s difficult to match. When pressed by current editor, Luke Kennedy, to come up with a fitting submission for the celebratory issue, I had to think. Then I remembered I still had the original images that appeared on consecutive front covers – September and October 1975 – both featuring two of the best surfers on the planet at the time. Yes, the covers were embellished by some pre-photoshop manipulation but they bring back some of the best memories of being employed on the mag, working out of the original Tracks house in Whale…

BEHIND THE COVER: STEPH GILMORE BY NATE LAWRENCE Steph Gilmore has spent the last year untethered to the WSL. No jerseys, no sirens, no post-heat interrogations, no mid-year-cuts, no pressure to ride a particular board. Free to roam, she has been going slow in Indo and all down the line in Africa; leaving a deep furrow and a geyser of spray in her wake wherever she travels. Steph has been a rapturous presence in surfing for the last two decades and is worthy of the title ‘Surfer of the new Millenium’. Somehow Steph manages to perform at otherworldly levels and have a good time doing it. This makes her the perfect pick for the cover of Tracks #issue600. Turnto page 26 to hear from Steph on her trajectory from school-girl…

Tahlija Redgard is somewhere “near Yamba”, on the NSW north coast, where she has been plundering late winter swells and catching black fish. The next destination will depend on what the waves are doing and where the fish are biting. Equipped with her self-styledToyota Troupe, her rods and her boards, Tahlija knows she can go anywhere she likes on a whim… “There are no plans in this camp,” she says proudly, over the phone, the co-conspiratorial chuckle of her Swiss partner, Charlotte, clearly audible in the background. This sense of freedom has become second nature for Tahlija, who has been using various customised vehicles as mobile homes for the last 15 years. She first hit the roads as a bold teenager, busking her way along the east coast with a…

It’s an iconic Australian beach scene. A gaggle of wetsuit-clad grommets escape their parents’ clutches and clatter toward the freedom of the whitewash. They crunch excitedly across the sand, moving as quickly as their little engines can propel them while hoisting miniature shortboards under twiggy arms. Hair in various colours and stages of rat’s nest tangles along behind them, caught in zippers and neoprene. The next generation of surf ratbags has arrived; but one thing is different these days. They’re female. It’s a sight that’s strikes 1990World Champion, Pam Burridge, as evidence of the momentous steps women’s surfing has taken towards equality in recent years. “To see so many young girls as little frothers, I love that. They see their full potential; they’re not affected by gender politics. They just…

In just a few words, a quote can capture the essence of an era, sum-up an icon, or say something universal about surfing, which still resonates with truth half a century after the words were first uttered. A pithy quote might conjure a treasured memory, inspire a hearty chuckle or an earnest nod of approval. Committing a few classic lines to memory always makes good road trip or dinner party conversation. In the following snapshot of verbatim from the pages of Tracks, the surfers reach for the profound and risk the profane. The esoteric and the irreverent both find homes in the columns of Tracks, which has never been afraid to explore the various tentacles of surf culture. There are thousands more quotable lines in the Tracks archive (you can…