How do you stand? Drill baby drill? Back to the garden? Techno-capitalism will save us? We're all gunna burn?

Massive paddle out in Byron Bay to protest the Equinor proposal to deepwater drill for oil in the Great Australian Bight just ensued.

How massive? Not sure, there could’ve been a thousand.

Some red-headed Irish bloke I spoke to with a Merrick twin fin reckoned two thousand. Neal “Freddo” Cameron, president of Byron Bay boardriders said somewhere between five hundred and a thousand.

Heaps and heaps anyway you slice it.

The protest objective: to fill the frame with masses of bobbing, shouting splashing humanity was easily achieved. Enough to scare the oil company Equinor, nee Statoil, who in fairness have helped raised the Norwegian standard of living to the highest in the world?

Heart says yes, head says no.

Still, Byron Bay is a nirvana for Norwegians and if the Scandinavians get a sniff that they ain’t welcome here, who knows what might happen.

The mise-en scene was nutty.

Representatives of every little sub-tribe out in the hot sunshine and howling onshore wind. Gurfers, murfers with their stock-broker and hedge fund husbands, rockstars, movie stars, slightly anorexic goddesses with logs, hipsters with finless foamies, sinewy old sea dogs, spanish-speaking Euro babes, sultry tattooed Peruvian, Argentinian and Brazilian studs, ageing local shredders on nineties thrusters and their progeny, kiddies, cops, magistrates, bankers, dentists, doctors, ex-pros, “soul” pros, scumbags and every other flavour of surfer. Surf witches were there, no doubt, but likely the blue bands were left behind.

The point of it, as local Bundjalung fella explained, was to put aside our differences to make a unified statement of love for Mother Earth.

If we concede that the Byron Bay hipster, being at the centre of cosmopolitan surf culture is now the arbiter of global taste, then the surfboard of choice for the conscious paddle-out is a single fin.

The beef, for those not living in Australia and unfamiliar with the issue, is two-fold.

One, if there is an accident like the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, oil would smother huge sections of the pristine Southern Australian coastline.

Even the staunchest fossil fuel advocate would acknowledge that as an eco-catastrophe.

Two, burning more fossil fuels cooks the kids via Climate Change.

Sirens wailed by my place yesterday afternoon. I took the kids for a paddle in the lake; a Taiwanese kiddy who could not swim had waded in and drowned. We arrived to paramedics pumping the kid furiously* and, feeling the sting of death close-by, stopped by the bottle-shop on the way home to anaesthetise the feeling of mortality.

Unique to Australia, this run-up to Christmas is known as the Silly Season, when random drinking sessions are a daily reality. This Silly Season, with heat, bushfires and lack of surf has been particularly intense.

Sirens wailed by my place yesterday afternoon. I took the kids for a paddle in the lake; a Taiwanese kiddy who could not swim had waded in and drowned. We arrived to paramedics pumping the kid furiously* and, feeling the sting of death close-by, stopped by the bottle-shop on the way home to anaesthetise the feeling of mortality.

I’m no natural activist, not a joiner like Jen See. My tendency is to observe with an ironic eye, cognisant of the counter-arguments. The reactionary case will rest on the charge of hypocrisy. Hundreds and thousands of boards, all made of petro-chems. I drove a car, solo, from Lennox Head.

“Look at these dumb cunts,” so the argument will go, “don’t they see their utter dependence on fossil fuels. Don’t they see the utter economic devastation wrought if we stopped drilling for oil. We are part of nature, what we do is natural, go live in a cave or fuck off etc etc”.

To which I would add my own moral quandary. I got kith and kin out bush in high-vis and on the rigs working FIFO in the mining/drilling game. If I’m honest I care more about their fate then the trust fund murfer and her stock-broker husband living in the insta-perfect mansion in Bangalow.

Presenting the unified argument in favour of Mother Earth I have to report that the mood for change is strong. At least in this part of the world.

Paddle-out co-ordinator Damo Cole, son of rabble-rousing shaper-designer Maurice Cole called the Torquay paddle-out “incredible” with “maybe three thousand people, I dunno!”.

How do you stand?

Drill baby drill?

Back to the garden?

Techno-capitalism will save us?

We’re all gunna burn?

Have to admit, in my heart of anarcho-primitivist hearts the rapidly de-gentrified dystopian vision of a post-capitalist world without fossil fuels does have some appeal.

The stock-broker might struggle when the shops shut and the bunker runs out of tinned food but I’ll be fine. Trading fish for nuts and berries. Probably got enough boards to see out the End Times too.

Sixty-two paddle-outs around the island continent, tens of thousands all speaking the same message: Fuck off Equinor. A legitimate display of surfer-consciousness, surely.

*Kid ended up living, condition unknown.

"Those who have watched him surf say that he has an unusual number of instructors and guides who surround him in the water."

The love of money is the root of all evil or so the Christians say.

Do you think?

I would do so many good things if I had money. I’d be the towel-boy for Malia Manuel, I’d buy a Kelly Slater pool and lock it up so no one could ride it, I’d pay Jamie O’Brien to duct-tape me to his back so I can see what a Pipeline tube looks like, I’d hire Erik Logan and pay him ten million dollars a year to make snuff films, I’d breed White Pointer sharks in captivity and start a fast-food chain called Surfer’s Revenge, I’d cuckold Joe Turpel and make him commentate live from the wardrobe and I’d buy the North Shore and start a surf school for uppity VALs, utopian Byron Bay Murfers and Surf Witches.

The world’s richest surfer Adam Nuemann, an Israeli-American who was raised on the collective farming miracle called kibbutz, and who made his billions via an office-sharing company called WeWork, allocates his cash better than most.

His company owns, or owned, a thirteen-million dollar hunk of Wavegarden as well as a piece of Laird’s Superfoods, which promises ordinary people terrific benefits if you swallow the various potions, including performance mushrooms and Peruvian coffees.

And, on a recent holiday to the Maldives, Neumann used his wealth to avoid having to paddle into the lineup.

Gather around, let’s read from the book of Fast Company. 

One glorious day in April, Neumann was floating on a surfboard in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It was the week of his 40th birthday, and he’d come to the Maldives to enjoy it with his family and closest friends. It was a lavish trip. As part of his celebration, he hosted his guests at a resort on an atoll that has exclusive access to a world-famous surf break called Pasta Point.

Neumann has often talked about the role that surfing plays in his life, and he’s claimed to have ridden waves as high as 18 feet, perhaps higher. Those who have watched him surf say that he has an unusual number of instructors and guides who surround him in the water. He often doesn’t paddle into the surf himself. Instead, he hires jet-ski professionals to tow him out. Some large offshore surf breaks require this, but for smaller ones, getting towed out is seen by surfers as bizarre and unnecessary. It’s the equivalent of, say, helicopter skiing on a bunny hill.

Beautiful, yes?

The wonderful things you can do with money?

A North Shore almost blood bath!

Five days ago, Pipe habitué and singer Landon McNamara, born and raised at Rocky Point by a daddy who invented the chop-hop and whose own Pipe appearances were electrifying, came within inches of losing his face after an ill-timed drop in.

Landon, who is twenty-three years old and who likes to snatch the Second Reef chip-shots on his eight-o Gerry Lopez, just like Liam did in the nineties, says he saw the board coming for him in exquisite, vivid detail.

“Everything was going slow-mo,” says Landon, as he readies himself for an afternoon surf at pumping twelve-foot Pipe. “It was the most slow-motion I’ve ever experienced surfing. I could see, exactly, where the guy fell, where the board went, and where I could go, what line I could take to escape it.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/B49GAXpBqd0/

Now, it ain’t an exaggeration to say that Landon wasn’t overly impressed by the event.

“There’s so many situations out there and when they occur and nothing bad happens, you might be, like, well it wasn’t that bad, it’s all good. But it’s not like that at all. If it happens it can be deadly.”

Still, what he’d like to happen is for surfers to do a little self-examination before they paddle out at Second Reef Pipe and join the boys in that prized take-off area.

“It’s the guys who’ve earned their spots that sit there,” says Landon.

His daddy, Liam, picks up the phone, tells me they don’t want not hassles with anyone. But.

But.

“There has to be an international understanding of the dangers and the pecking order and about earning your stripes there,” he says. “I spent three decades out there to earn my stripes. It took those decades of broken femurs, hips, hands and knees to win it. And, now, I’ve handed my stripes, my war jacket, my medals, to my kids – I’ve taught ’em where to sit, what boards to ride, what waves to look for. But, while Landon has my spot in the lineup, he had to earn it. He had to have the balls to take off. You don’t go out to Second Reef unless you’ve got your stripes. It’s like a war out there. It’s a battle zone and if you haven’t earned the right, and you’re not at the right level, you shouldn’t be there.”

How do you get them pretty stripes?

“There are guys from every different country that come out, humbly earn a wave, ride it well and get that respect. It doesn’t matter what country you’re from. Pipe is the most dangerous wave in the world and it takes years of surfing the wave to earn respect and to understand the lineup. Respect the locals and you will get respect.”

Says Landon, “We want to spread the message of tread lightly, wait your turn and stay out of people’s way.”