The Depth Test The Readers Digest Guide to the Australian Coast

In: The Depth Test by Stu Nettle 30 Comments Tue 2nd Aug '11

Tags: readers digest , beastie boys , kelly slater , steve woodall , Kirra , south stradbroke island , the spit , coolangatta

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Join me on a journey. But don't fret if you're feeling idle, it requires no energy or exertion on your behalf. This is a journey of the mind.

Let's go way back in time to when DOS ruled the desktops and the internet was confined to academia and Kraftwerk lyrics. Back to when Kelly Slater had hair, the Beastie Boys were relevant, and fat dacks paired with puffy-tongued Globes were considered de rigeur. Oh yeah, it's the early 90's.

It is here that I first laid my eyes on this book, the Readers Digest Guide to the Australian Coast. With a tagline, 'For all those who swim, sail, surf, fish, picnic, sightsee or holiday by the sea', the Readers Digest were casting a wide net for themselves. Though I doubt any other user – not the swimmers, not the picnickers – ever treasured this book as much as any surfer who scored themselves a copy.

With a thin grid of aerial photos the Guide to the Australian Coast gave a full-colour, 2-D reply to the question 'what's around the next headland?' And this was well before Google Earth blurted the answer to any rubberneck with a modem. It was a treasured pre-internet artefact.

I was recently gifted a copy and despite the prevalence and popularity of Google Earth the Guide to the Australian Coast is still a page-turner. Perhaps it's the visceral quality of paper and ink (says the website editor) that helps it retain appeal, yet in one clear and tangible aspect this book trumps Google Earth.

Unlike GE, which regularly updates and overwrites old information, the Readers Digest version provides a snapshot of the Australian coast in the year it was published – 1983. It makes an excellent curio to see how the coast has been altered, with some of the most obvious changes being on the Gold Coast.

See the Spit before the groynes went in, with South Straddie an unsurfable mess of shallow channels and shifting banks. Or Kirra before the Tweed River bypass sparked up and water splashed against the road. In fact, the whole Coolangatta Bay area resembles a 'before' and 'after' shoot for Weight Watchers except in reverse: the coast has been fattened up.

The written information also belies the changes the coast has gone through, 'Lennox Head pop 843', 'the two-lane Pacific Highway connects Sydney and Brisbane'.

Yet for mine, the most curious, and slightly troubling, aspect is that some of our more recent surfing discoveries – a few breaking under heavy swell conditions with reef-hugging whitewash tracks - are clearly visible in the photographs. How many people were surfing them when I first laid eyes on the Guide? And why the hell didn't I pay more attention to them the first time around?

The Guide to the Australian Coast was published by Readers Digest in 1983. There was only one edition and it has never been reprinted. Your only chance of getting a copy is by scouting second-hand bookshops or your oldies bookshelf. I got mine care of Steve Woodall who shall receive three set waves next time the Point is pumping. Cheers Woody! (and get well soon)

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