And do bribes still work in Mex?

Ohhhh sweet Mexico, I see you there off the port side glimmering in the early morning darkness. Like a dusting of flippy sequins flipped to silver and are your children involved in the flippy sequin craze?

The crew of the good ship Sunset certainly are.

Of all mankind’s greatest accomplishments, I believe that continually inventing fads is the most honorable.

Flojos, Hypercolor, Garbage Pail Kids… I thought we had chewed through every last fad possible by 1992 but these days we have squishies, DIY slime and flippy sequins.

The first wetsuit company to employ in kiddie sizes will make a mint but I digress.

Morale is currently high.

Many blue whales frolic in the still chilly water and mini dolphins jump to greet us. Yesterday the crew decided it was a good idea to feed the snacks to a greedy seagull and then tried to make DIY slime with some other snacks.

We will see how it all goes trying to clear customs in Ensenada without paperwork from the mothers.

Do bribes still work in Mexico?

The crew wants to surf Tacos in at Scorpion Bay and I smell a mutiny if it is rendered impossible due bureaucratic shenanigans.

Tacos, again, are what my daughter calls barrels and, speaking of fads I’m shocked that various names for the barrel stopped evolving in 1992.

Green room? Tube? Sugar Shack?

Ugh.

What do millennials call them? What about The Pepsi Generation?

More later.

The day after a mass bull shark appearance down the road, Steve "Longtom" Shearer comes face to face with a Great White at Lennox Head…

Odd to see the joint I chose to live at transformed into one of the shark attack capitals of the World.

I say attack but behind every attack are untold encounters/circlings/bumpings/drive bys blah blah blah.

I never pretend to be a local here. I’m a blow-in, a Bribie redneck through and through. No amount of Dostoevsky, no Borsalino flat cap will ever change that dog.

When we was little scumbags running riot on Bribie our mentor and God Peter B told us about this place. Epic pointbreak, rocks that would shred you, locals who got punchy at the drop of a hat. First look at the place and I knew it was for me.

Peter smoked too much weed, started hearing voices and ended up swinging from the end of a rope. He was only 16. None of us ever recovered from that, not really, but when I got a chance I moved down.

Now we got Whites, we’ve got Bulls. Mostly polite compared to the Reunion ones. They get nasty in the dirty water when the mullet are running but in clear water? That’s surf on and keep your eyes open.

Big tigers, too. Twelve-footer caught on the South Ballina drum line today, a red buoy just out the back at South Wall. Again, compared to the Hawaiian tiger ours seem strangely relaxed. Majestically indifferent.

We get days, like today, of such vibrancy, such purity that you get a go out regardless. Hypeless swells swinging under the surf forecast radar, no one around.

Well one guy. On a mat. I won’t say his name. Before the courts and all that.

We go back in time a long way. Just me and him sharing perfect rock runners. Warm water clear and as full of life as an aquarium, set waves standing up turquoise on the bank before spiralling down the rocks. A sub-tropical dream without a soccer Mum in sight.

My compadre is pissed, as the American saying goes. Spitting chips in the Australian vernacular.

Things ain’t so black and white as the media have made out and the day in court, when it comes, might surprise people. Let’s just say, after seeing and hearing all the evidence I am not totally unsympathetic to his position. We trade waves.

There’s shit to be done. I start thinking I should get home. It’s hard not to play one more wave. Just one more. It’s so pretty in the mid-morning sunlight. Sparkling like diamonds. Fairy wrens still in their summer plumage twittering in the coastal rosemary. Companion rides the first wave of a beautiful set and I bomb the second wave. Just a lazy cutback into the white water and the back foot slipped off. He’s way down the line.

Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it. It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop.

I paddle back out for one more. Definitely taking the next one in now.

I only got used to surfing solo again this year. Mostly at this spot. Close to the rocks, an easy escape route. But I’m not thinking that, now. I’m wracking my brain trying to think if I’ve written things about my surf buddy, things that might come back and bite me on the arse.

Flick. Some little imperceptible rapid movement in my peripheral vision sparks an unconscious reaction. I turn quickly to the movement. It takes a micro-second to see clearly what it is. A White shark. Coming in very hot straight at me. I don’t feel a thing even remotely allied with fear. It’s a “whoa!” I face it.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks. We eyeball each other.

There is no fear, no frozen feelings, no panic. Just a profound moment of inter-species communication across the gulf of millions of years of evolution. In that black eye I can already see it has decided I am not prey.

It turns quickly and comes almost to a dead stop. I can feel the pressure wave on my legs. White shark does a slow circle around me. I can see it the whole time in the crystal clear water. Comes in nice and slow right underneath me and rolls over. The big pectoral fins look like a plane, the white belly almost gleams in the sun against the dark rocks.

It rolls under me, rights itself and continues on down the line. I paddle in to the rocks, stop about a metre out and begin hooting to old mate. The White shark is heading straight towards him now. Making the sign of the fin is clearly understood around here. Seconds later we are both on the rocks.

“Get a good look at it?” he said.

“Yeah, really good. Juvie White, seven-or-eight-foot long, frisky.”

“Oh well, it’s probably gone now, surf still looks really good.”

“All yours, I’m out for the day.”

It never came to me in my dreams which makes me think I ain’t bullshitting myself when I said there was no fear.

You never know how you’re going to react.

Ain’t it the queerest thing?

Call in the drones, the joint is crawling with sharks…

The NSW town of Ballina confirmed its position as the shark capital of Australia yesterday with a stunning display of fireworks at North Wall, activity that shut the stretch of beach from North Wall to Lighthouse down.

The clarity of the water, a dazzling turquoise relatively common in winter, meant the happy pod of sixty six-foot long bull sharks was spotted by drones as well as spectators watching from the rock groyne that gives North Wall its name.

Between 2011 and 2016, Ballina hosted eleven shark attacks, including 2015’s Great White hit that killed Tadashi Nakhara, and serious hits on bodyboarder Matt Lee and Sam Morgan. At the time, the town accounted for almost ten percent of the world’s shark encounters.

In 2016, Dan Webber, who is the brother of Greg Webber, watched as the surfer Cooper Allan got what is described in these part as a “Ballina hickey” from a Great White.

“I was standing in waist deep water, about five metres away, when I saw a shark in the face of a wave between me and three guys sitting further out,” said Dane. “A few seconds later, I heard a shout, followed by the nose of a board sailing through the air.”

The joint finally got shark nets in 2017, but were removed a year later, over concerns they might catch a migrating whale.

Fifty surfers stayed in the lineup yesterday which prompted the town’s mayor David Wright to call ’em “selfish”.

If I wore the mayoral robe I would’ve said, how the fuck did Ballina ever get this crowded?

Out of purely academic curiosity, have you ever wondered what it takes to kill a Great White? Click here. 

If you just want to scare hell out of ’em, click here.