The Reef Stranger in a Strange Land

In: The Reef by Steve Shearer Wed 30th May '12

Tags:

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

"Victorious campaigns are unrepeatable. They take form in response to the infinite varieties of circumstance." - Sun Tzu.

Indeed. The "infinite varieties of circumstance" apply equally to the desert and the strange tides of the north-west; the inconsistent pulses which come to life suddenly after long periods of hibernation on different parts of the reef, the rarely ridden outside bombies which tempt and taunt the imagination. When the observation is made the action must be decisive. When the drop is made finless the beginning must be flawless, the edge control perfect from the opening weighting. This is the art of finless surfing.

There was time to reflect on this during the long expanses of desert driving yesterday. Sometime in the previous days my eyes had become infected and flyblown. Maybe it was a scat of billy goat dung, powdered into dust by the parchment dry easterly wind, maybe a desiccated molecule of pre-cambrian cyanobacteria disturbed from an ancient resting place to colonise a living organism. I picked clots of dried pus from the corners and flicked it into in the mouths of waiting crows.

Allow me to hallucinate.

The first maggot wiggled out of the tear duct by a burnt out wreck near the edge of a red aeolian dune field...I immediately recognised it as a sign of great fortune and placed a disused coffee cup between my legs to collect the bounty. This is harsh country and I was travelling alone. It pays to have a portable food source in case of shipwreck or other natural disaster. History is rife with lessons on this important matter.

In 1875 the barque Stefano was run aground and sunk in heavy seas on reef north of Gnaraloo station. Ten men survived the wreck and began to walk south to the Gascoyne, hoping to find water in the permanent Tibbigoona pool. With no food, water or knowledge of the country the men began to die of dehydration, exhaustion and exposure. Madness set in and the remaining survivors lost faith in the plan to find water, turning north again somewhere near Red Bluff. The two remaining men, teenage boys from Croatia, resorted to cannibalism to survive and were found near death by blackfellas, who nursed them back to health before guiding them north to Exmouth, a foot slog of several hundred desert miles, where they were able to find salvation in a pearling vessel.

Shipwreck. Death and desolation for European man. Madness and cannibalism.

I stopped the car near a small dead bush where a wedgetail eagle was gnawing on the gizzards of some fresh roadkill and threw him a couple of maggots by way of introduction.
"Thanks," he said, standing up to full height and fixing an imperious eye on me.
"Know anything about this finless surfing malarkey?" I asked.
"Bits and pieces," he replied.
"Tell me then, has it got a future? Or is it doomed to become one more evolutionary blind alleyway?"
"Well, two things must be considered. Firstly, Hynd isn't getting any younger and it's possible that as a visual artform it may have already reached it's zenith and be on the downwards arc. The general public has become accustomed to stronger and stronger stimulants in it's surf porn and the sight of men investigating free friction surf trim may not quite be potent enough for the vinegar stroke of a three minute clip. Second, someone young or some new cadre of kids needs to pick it up and get loose and take it further."
"Well there is this kid from San Diego and some of his mates."
"Yes," he replied, "there is Ryan Burch and friends, and they could light a spark but it needs to attract the opposite sex. Life and Art are at their core copulatory; designed to form union to pass on the magic. It's the mastery of flight that attracts. Any old Eagle knows that."

The sun was starting to set over a distant set of limestone ramparts which stood aloft on the vast arid steppe. A road train carrying a monstrous piece of earth moving machinery destined for the iron mountains of the Pilbara thundered past and the eagle set flight with a terrifying prehistoric shrieking into the orange sky. It seemed time to resume the journey back to civilisation. Maybe the Eagle was right. It's not like he had any reason to lie to me.

And Hynd had been bought here, nominally at least, to expand the artform in the service of inspiring the music. Tognetti told me so himself around the campfire one night. A conservative surf culture addicted to the vicarious thrills of ultra-violent tapouts and uber-youth performance could hardly be expected to understand a 55-year old man being placed at the vanguard of a new avant-garde. One in which classical and indigenous music were married to something minimalist and deeply counter-intuitive to an industry-driven narrative requiring fresh meat to sell togs to urban youth. No, that is what my mate in the used car game would call a "hard sell".

We should have a quiet word about Richard Tognetti, it's time we did so. Some say this lad from Coledale is nothing but a weak chinned elitist, a dilettante of the surf culture, a bowerbird shamelessly appropriating the shiny, pretty things of musical genres of yore and an unthinking disciple of Hynd whom he refers to as Kurtz. I refute these criticisms in the strongest possible terms. In the flesh, Tognetti has the crinkle-eyed grin of the larrikin and despite the fact he hadn't surfed for weeks before the trip I didn't see him take a backwards step when sets reared on the reef and he was in the slot. Thats no easy game to play on a finless sled. He's no shoulder hopper, he contests the deep take-off in whatever endeavour he undertakes. When he picked up that violin in the shearing shed concert and began to play he made women ecstatic and grown men of the north-west, as hard and dry as mulga fenceposts, quietly weep like grieving mothers. He's a man of the people and a living treasure of this country. That may be an exaggeration but if we can lionise an obese mining buffoon then Tognetti deserves a wrap.

If this tin-eared philistine could make a criticism it is that one late night 'round the campfire as a shooting star smeared softly across the heavens like a teardrop rolling down the cheek of eternity, he referred to Shostakovich as a "Soviet" composer. For Christ's sake, the man was denounced by Stalin, his friends and family imprisoned and summarily executed. No-one had to employ more subterfuge and artistry in executing the great themes of liberation from oppression and the madness of totalitarianism. His music was universal, his genius untainted by anything as limiting as nationalism or ideology. Richard Tognetti recant the use of the term Soviet Composer for Shostakovich.

The final session, in solid double-overhead hard offshore lefthand reef surf was perhaps Hynd's weakest. For the first time this trip the usual mastery seemed absent, the edge was lost on several occasions and there seemed a lassitude in his surfing. The perfect positioning, edge control and high line trim mastery had seemed to desert him. He'd wrestled with demons all trip; who knows what tortures the mans' soul. Maybe it was intimations of mortality and the decline of powers, maybe the threat of the loss of love was weighing on him. He'd given it everything, left nothing in the tank and maybe now the terrible realisation, common to all who create, that it wasn't enough had smote him with inescapable reality. He rode his final wave perfectly and stepped off onto the sand to be greeted by his faithful dog Buntine.

The next morning, the Sea Wolf packed to the brim with finless surfboards custom tuned for left hand reefs, was piloted out of camp by Hynd in a cloud of dust. Love had deserted him and he was solo, save for the wordless devotion of his junkyard dog.

I think of him now and then, driving east across the ancient land mass, inviolate save for the roar and crunch of heavy machinery gouging minerals from the red earth, with only his junkyard dog for company. Maybe in his broken-hearted agony composing a prose poem across the Penong plain, maybe leaning out the window and screaming at a passing flock of pink galahs: "Fuck you, fuck you!"

(Photos: Sloane)

Loading Comments