A "nightmare scenario"… 

You want to know what it’s like to wear a fifteen-foot set on the head out at Margaret River’s main break, five thousand nautical miles from any sorta land mass that might temper the big south-west swells? 

The pro surfer turned real estate agent Mitch Thorson, ranked #16 in the mid-eighties and noted for his jams in big waves, knows.

Last Thursday, he and a few pals were surfing late-arvo Margs, eight-to-twelve feet. Ain’t no soft-tops or fishes out here. Raw deep-water swell.

Mitch had scratched over a twelve-footer and when the spray cleared he saw it, a top-to-bottom fifteen, maybe eighteen-footer. 

His first thought? I’m fifty-six years old, I’ve surfed twenty-five footers at Waimea and the outer reefs, sure, but back then I was twenty eight and healthy. 

“It’s a bit different when you’re a chubby real estate agent wallowing around at Margarets,” he says. 

But he’d been doing a bit of underwater rock running in the lagoon at the Box, he knew it was a fifteen-second period swell and figured he had ten seconds “to get my shit together.”

He took his three deep breaths and got “absolutely smashed, absolutely rag-dolled by this thing that looked like Waimea but the other way around”. His old twelve-foot Creatures leash held, as it would for the following four fifteen-to-eighteen footers. 

“Pretty stoked it happened, it was an awesome experience,” says Mitch. “I haven’t been clobbered like that for fifteen years.” 

Mitch says the surf report was for six-to-eight feet. 

Therefore, he says, he won’t be real surprised if the predicted eight-to-ten-foot swell for the opening day of the Margaret River Pro on Sunday, May 3, turns into something that will infuse even the boldest tour professional’s stomach with piles of sick. 

He says it ain’t unusual for swells to piggyback each other, turning a supposed three feet into ten as it did a couple of weeks back.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CMYF70Sn_Hg/

“That’s what’s happening around here,” he says. “There’s the forecast and then there’s what you’re looking at.”

Couple the report, which you can read here, with one of the most active salmon runs in years, reports of a tagged fifteen-foot White hitting one receiver at Meelup on the other side of Cape Naturaliste fifty times, as well as untagged animals “poking there heads up here and there” and, well, who ain’t licking their stank fingers in anticipation. 

Accountant alleged to've invested $1.2 in gambling projects while "wasting" the remaining three-hundred gees.

The accountant charged with 749 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception totalling more than $1.5 million from Tyler Wright and brothers Owen and Mikey has faced court for the first time.

Shane Maree Hatton, fifty-three, a family friend of the Wrights, although one must now presume that friendship has become somewhat strained, was a bookkeeper for the Wright’s plumbing biz.

When the kids started to rake in the sponsor cash, Hatton took on their finances, too.

Hatton’s layer did not enter pleas to the 749 charges and she’ll return to court on June 21.

World champ Tyler was celebrating her twenty-seventh birthday when she learned Strike Force Strathwallen, which was formed to investigate the case at the behest of Tyler’s manager Nick Fordham, had raided the svelte fashion-forward blonde.

In one of the greatest press releases ever issued, and which still delights a month or so later, police alleged Hatton spent $1.2 mill on gambling and poker machines “while the rest of it was wasted.”

One must presume the cop had tongue planted in cheek, of course, for it echoes perfectly the Irish soccer superhero George Best’s wonderful quote “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.”

Bookkeepers, accountants, whatever you want to call ‘em, are notorious for sticking their fingers in the honey pot, although their lifespans can be shortened considerably depending on the victims.

One man who ripped off Andy and Bruce Irons for a mill, as well as another thirty or so people for a total of fifty-mill, ended up at the bottom of a canyon after a mysterious car accident.

“Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy,” Andy told me at the time.

Paddle boarder hit by tiger shark, follows death of swimmer in February and government cull of protected sharks only four weeks ago… 

Sharks are gettin’ real feisty again in New Caledonia, a pretty-ish archipelago in Melanesia seized by the French in 1843 and which has been maintained as a French-administered territory ever since. 

Yesterday, a fifty-three-year-old man was found dead on his SUP by a passing yachtsman, the man’s leg wound consistent with a shark attack. 

Swimming and all water sports in the area have been banned for a week. 

The attack follows a government cull of protected sharks only four weeks ago which had been made in response to the death of a fifty-seven-year-old swimmer killed in February by a thirteen-foot tiger shark fifty metres off a popular beach.

Authorities nailed twenty-four sharks in the cull, which included nineteen tigers. 

Two years ago, after a ten-year-old kid lost his leg to a bull shark followed shortly after by the death of a fisherman a few days later, also by a bull shark, authorities got out the bait and hooks and iced twenty sharks. The decision raised a few hackles at the time, a petition against the cull was circulated etc, but this time no one seemed real concerned by the cull. 

In 2016, four kitesurfer were hit by sharks, two of ‘em fatal. 

Theories for all the attacks include rising water temperatures caused by climate change making sharks change their habits, the El Nino weather pattern and so on. 

French island and their sharks, eh?

(Read: Is this the end of surfing on Reunion Island?)