An old fight classic from Duranbah, many years ago.

Out-of-control violence at iconic beaches forces authorities to consider draconian measures, including segregated surf zones, to quell barbarity: “It’s Australia. There’s a lot of angry people!”

“It’s often swift, savage, brutal. Surf rage (is) an ugly plague on our city’s beaches!”

A few weeks back, we thrilled to a wild melee at Snapper Rocks when a surfer rained hellfire on a kid bodyboarder who dropped in on him only to get a beatdown from a former pro booger who dispensed a righteous right hook, a difficult manoeuvre while prone.

Now, following the incident, and a few thousand others like it, the Gold Coast City Council, which runs the beaches from Coolangatta through to the Spit, is considering implementing draconian measures, including segregated surf zones, as a circuit breaker ‘tween kook and experienced surfer.

“If you don’t know how to surf, you’re just learning, here’s an area for learners,” Gold Coast Mayor Tom Tate told 7News. “Different zones for different surfers.”

Many challenges for council, howevs.

Who assesses the surfer’s skill before he paddles out at Snapper? And is the expert given free reign behind the rock while the beginner sits near a buoy at Little Marley? And, most waves on the GC are pretty dang easy to surf. Hawaii or Tahiti, it ain’t.

Crucially, is the Australian temperament unsuited to such a measure? 

“I don’t know if there’s a way to stop it,” says one wise teen surfer. “It’s Australia. There’s a lot of angry people.”

Surf police are unlikely, reports 7, although signs may be affixed along the coast advising learners which beaches to avoid or enjoy etc.

Watch report here. 

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British mothers lose minds, grow hysterical after surfer/father outed for making child walk home from beach alone: “I’m livid because he’s six and there are any number of strangers and hazards between here and there!”

Grom abuse.

The internet has exploded into righteous indignation as it has just been revealed a British surfer/father, out at the beach with his six-year-old son, made the boy walk to the family vacation rental all by himself. The story was first posted on parenting form mumsnet under the thread “Am I Being Unreasonable.”

After the young man showed up at the door declaring, “Daddy told me to come back on my own!” beaming pride. The mother, who uses the handle Throwauay wrote, “Could you get worked up about this or am I being precious? (Our family is staying at the top of an apartment block) and when you get outside the block, the beach is down three steep sets of stairs, through a narrow, very uneven and twisty alley, across a road and down some wooden steps. I’m livid because he’s six and there are any number of strangers and hazards between there and here.”

Furthermore, the deadbeat did not call to make sure the progeny had made it back safely.

Opinion was universally against the dad.

DelphiniumBlue declared, “Yes, the fact that he hasn’t even checked that he’s made it back, or warned you to look out for him…in a strange country, by the sea…That is so worrying.”

Mountainsunsets wrote, “YANBU [you are not being unreasonable]. Totally unacceptable.”

Crunchymum added, “I’d be utterly livid too. It’s unforgivable.”

Will you get on mumsnet and defend your water brother?

Truth be told, the original piece never said if the father was a surfer or not but I can’t imagine what other sort of person would be otherwise too occupied to walk a child a few blocks home.

Classic grom abuse.

More importantly, though, do you believe helicopter parenting grows healthy children or are you more of a Grizzly Adams man?

More as the story develops.

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Surfer/lifesaver.
Surfer/lifesaver.

Two San Francisco surfers prove supernaturally heroic as they rescue dead man floating in water, bring him back to life on the sand!

Miracle workers.

Surfers, around the globe, had a terrible scare this week as World Surf League CEO Erik Logan suffered a life-threatening reef injury in Tahiti, underwent an emergency stabilizing procedure at the hands of deputy commissioner Renato Hickel and head judge Pritamo Ahrendt then disappeared.

In a moment of weakness, I lightly questioned whether Hickel was qualified to rub lemon or lime into Logan’s wounds and whether Ahrendt was certified to provide commentary and now deep shame rests upon my bowed head as Logan resurfaced with a bandaged foot and, though it appeared as if he had been crying, had a smile on his face.

But of course he was alive and well-ish because of course Hickel and Ahrendt knew what they were doing because of course they are surfers.

The best.

And as if to punctuate surfer heroism and my own shame, two brave San Francisco surfers just yesterday pulled a dead man from Ocean Beach’s frigid waters and brought him back to life on the sand.

Whoa.

The scene unfolded at 9:30 in the morning when the two aforementioned surfers saw an elderly man floating face down in the surf. They paddled him in while bystanders on shore called 911. When medics arrived, they discovered he had no pulse but they bashed on his chest, or whatever is recommended these days, enough to snap a light heartbeat.

He was loaded into the ambulance in critical condition, unloaded at the hospital in serious condition.

A proper improvement.

Surfers.

Sometimes angry enough to drown a fellow man. Sometimes beneficent enough to bring one back from the dead.

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Kelly Slater destroys all-comers, including one-time arch-rival, on opening day of invitation-only, over-fifties surf event at wildly exclusive Four Seasons Hotel in the Maldives, “The waves are beautiful…it’s really high level and high-performance surf!”

"The first heat Kelly and I ever surfed against each other was 38 years ago, when were 12 years old!"

To the surprise of no-one, Kelly Slater has dominated the opening stanza of the invitation-only Four Seasons Maldives Surfing Champions Trophy 2022, stomping former tour buddies Taylor Knox, Rob Machado, Ross Willims and local wildcard Hussain “Iboo” Areef in the single fin division.

The contest runs over three days. Single fins. Twins. Thrusters. Twenty-five gees to the winner.

Fifty-year-old Slater, who finished third at the Outerknown Tahiti Pro in ten-foot waves last week and who is the current world number fifteen, made short work of the Momentum Gen, including one-time arch-rival Rob Machado.

“I feel like I learned a lot about how to place my turns better and more subtly, and not try to force things,” Slater said. “Whereas on a high-performance board you’re always trying to force the most radical change of direction you can. I think a single-fin is great for your style and your flow.”

Shane Dorian, also fifty, said, “This year is extra special because we all have been best friends for three decades, almost four decades. The first heat Kelly and I ever surfed against each other was 38 years ago, when were 12 years old! It’s cool to have grown up together and surfed a bunch of heats together and travelled the world with each other. It’s just so cool to be here with our little group of friends, and to be here with Iboo as well, surfing with and against each other.”

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Greatest surfer of all time Kelly Slater advocates return of “guys getting kicked out of the water, fins broken out, slaps in the head” as world’s most high-profile wave descends into chaos!

"I kinda wish…the Phil Perrys of the world, the Perry Danes, the Johnny Boys would come back and sort that lineup out, man." 

One of the better stories of modern surfing is the relationship of Kelly Slater, a preternaturally talented kid from the little waves of Florida, with Oahu’s North Shore, the fabled seven-mile miracle.

Faced with the choice of becoming a world champion who shied away from big waves, Slater bit down on every fear he ever had to become the greatest surfer ever, a three-time Triple Crown winner, Eddie winner, a seven-time Pipe Master, if you include last December’s Pipeline Pro.

In the final episode of Slater’s 11-part Lost Tapes series, filmed over the course of the 2019 tour, we’re in Hawaii, where Slater has been spending every December since he was fourteen, and where he now keeps two houses, one of which you can rent for $US46,000 per month.

He doesn’t win Pipe in this instance, that goes to the world champ Italo Ferreira, but he does scoop up the Triple Crown.

The episode warms up when Slater talks about the crumbling of Pipeline’s infamous hierarchy.

“My biggest goal was to have a prominent spot in the lineup at Pipeline,” he says. “I never felt like I deserved a wave. There was a hierarchy out there you didn’t just break into. Nowadays you go out there and it’s four foot and there’s sixty guys. When I was a kid out there, you really had to put your time in there. Guys were getting kicked out of the water, fins broken, guys were getting slapped in the head. I kinda wish that hierarchy, the Phil Perrys of the world, the Perry Danes, the Johnny Boys would come back and sort that lineup out, man.”

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