The Reef Finless freaks in the desert: No soft options, just hard edges.
In: The Reef 20 Comments Wed 16th May '12
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The Reef is a gathering of surfers and musicians in the West Australian desert. Organised by the crew who made Musica Surfica it features the two main protagonists of that movie, surfer Derek Hynd and violinist Richard Tognetti. Writer Steve Shearer is sharing the campfire with them and the other surfers and classical musicians who make up the travelling party. He'll be logging on with stories and photos as the bizarre experiment in the desert unfolds...
Struck dumb in the desert. Unable to write, not wanting to write. Happy to let the scouring wind, red dirt and open sky reduce the human organism to feeling and not thinking. It seems natural to wander here with no desire to mark record of the passing. But we must.
And so with the desert sun just set and Venus low in the sky, with the white flowered shrubs exuding a strong fragrant scent which attracts a delicate white moth, let us take stock of the opening stanza of finless freaks and classical longhairs in the desert.
Many memories crowding in on the waits between sets, on the walks in the dust, through the moonscape of the sand dunes. I camped here fifteen years ago, hitched out of Carnarvon two days into a dole fortnight with a sack of spuds, a sack of oranges and a fishing rod. The surf pumped for days and fishing was impossible so I scraped oysters and limpets off the rocks for protein, rationing oranges and potatoes to ward off the worst of the hunger pangs. Weeks before I'd endured a savage break-up with an American girl who sailed across the Pacific with me. She chased me up the beach at Broken Head screaming and flailing at me with fists and feet before collapsing into my arms and sobbing bitter, bitter tears. I came to the desert to escape that pain. The pain I'd caused. Some pain is clean and vitalising, like the sharp, pure feeling of reef slicing skin. Some pain is dull and heavy and the desert is the best place to start again, let the pain get sloughed away like dead skin by the scouring wind and parched landscape. And it did, eventually.
But we digress, though other men may be in pain in the desert as we speak, broken hearted and trying to forget. Maybe that pain had a small role in Derek Hynd's opening wave. On a double overhead set he executed two edged-in speed pumps before taking the only line possible into the ledge section, the low line into the barrel. He pulled in as the lip detonated on the back of his head. An outrageous opening gambit. Death before dishonour.
But this finless surfing and classical music combo, what the hell is it about?
It's not meat pies and sauce, it's not radical performance or triple claimed floaters, or wide stances and MMA fanbois. These cats claim it's minimalist surfing, going back to the cut and trim in the search for speed unhindered by fin drag and the pre-determined lines of modern surfing.
Taking finless surfing to the heaviest left in the desert and scoring a classical music symphony to the attempt sounds, on paper, something like the wank of the century. A hungry man in the desert only needs a drop of water, not champagne and oysters, if you get my drift. And there's no pun intended there.
Around 4pm as the shadows lengthened across the open savannah country 250 k's dead east of Halls Creek, a black 4WD beast christened Sea Wolf, in honour of the dictatorial nature of its commander, was trucking west towards the coast. It's cattle country: ghostly white brahman's with antediluvian humps stagger drunkenly through the afternoon heatwaves, like Irishmen after closing hour. It's country where you drive for a day without seeing another human being. Derek Hynd took a low line onto the dirt to avoid an exposed rock bed. The Sea Wolf lurched forwards into the soft sand and the occupants felt the sickening slow motion somersault of the vehicle as the front wheel struck a crescent shaped anvil of bedrock, sending the rest of the vehicle into a double roll into the red dirt. The occupants were unhurt save for the Sea Wolf commanders girlfriend, Ms Taylor Miller, who sustained a badly mangled arm from the impact.
The fateful occupants barely had time for the, "Oh, fuck" moment of being stranded in the middle of nowhere with a badly bleeding girl and night approaching when the sound of an engine was heard. A random grader driver close by was able to right the vehicle and radio the nearest cattle station. A flotilla of boards on the roof of the vehicle were not checked. A miracle was hoped for but not expected. Total carnage and board bags of mangled fibreglass was the best odds option.
On day one at the desert camp Hynd drove the Sea Wolf with the small red cattle/dingo cross he rescued from a Halls Creek junkyard out to the line-up. The first board came off the roof as the sun crested the dunes. First rays of sunlight revealed an intact board. The Litmus fish. The built up resin edge that forms the basis of the finless hold and cut had crushed rails but boards were intact. In short: a miracle.
I have witnessed a classical music long hair who rejoices under the nick-name 'The Prisoner' taking heavy beatings before getting the ride of his life on heavy Indian Ocean groundswell. Tognetti, the principal violinist and composer, found high line trim after poundings on set waves. This wave hits hard and takes commitment to the take-off. There's no soft option on a board without a rudder, edge control from the forward rail must be found before disaster.
Ryan Burch has been threading barrels and drifting at maximum speed on groomed walls. The choice between a floater-fest in the city and his expressive stylings on the fringes is an easy one to make.
Finless surfing seems to sublimate the testosterone of a culture seemingly enthralled by thuggery and ritualised violence. It's an antidote to the slash and burn modus operandi which has been dominant since the Bronzed Aussies invented Pro Surfing. A return to Hawaiian kids on paipos drawing unrestricted lines under the visage of Diamond Head.
The swell has dropped a bit, I woke in the night, guided by the passage of a late rising gold crescent of moon. Darkness has turned to the faint orange glow in the east. Time to give this finless surfing caper a jersey. There's still gorgeous lefts on the reefs reeling into a hard desert offshore.
These days won't last, but there'll be a symphony to remember them by. It might drop like a rock, it might soar like a condor in the Andean canyon, but you have to pay the attempt, surely.//STEVE SHEARER
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