Wayne Deane, yeah Noa’s pops, ain’t one to mess
around…
If you came of age, like I did, on Queensland’s
Gold Coast, when the surname Deane comes up, you don’t
automatically think of boy wonder Noa.
You think of Wayne. The shaper. The minimalist surfer owning the
sets on any swell of note that swings around Point Danger. One of
the tough, old-school men.
Respect? Yeah, he got.
When Ballina, an hour south, started turning into some kinda bad
remake of Jaws, with Great White attacks and sightings of
20-footers common, Wayne said what was on a lot of surfers’
minds.
A shark hits someone? Shoot ‘em.
After surfer Craig Ison was hit by a White at Evans Head
last week, Wayne told the Gold Coast Bulletin (who thought
I’d ever quote the Bulletin!), “They should’ve killed that shark.
That’s what happens when a dog bites a kid, they euthanise the
dog… I wouldn’t go surfing down there (Northern NSW) unless
there was a drone hovering over my head keeping watch.”
According to the GCB, “Mr Deane said sharks were coming close
the beaches in such large numbers and it was only a matter of time
before another attack. ‘I just think something needs to be done,”
he said. ‘It doesn’t matter whether they are being protected, human
life is being lost and life is being maimed.’”
The Gold Coast, as the story points out has had drum-lines in
place in 1962, and you want to know how many fatal
attacks that’ve happened in 53 years? This little stretch of
coast with the most dense surf population in the world and one
that’ll surf, quite literally, at night? Take a guess. Twenty? A
dozen?
Zero.
Read the full story here.
