"It's pumping! Go!"

In one of the more candid moments in the heavily curated lives of John John and Nathan Florence, we find the brothers amid a moment of great tension over Nathan’s tardiness as John John waits to surf very good Jeffrey’s Bay.

I’m in camp John John.

Is there a greater frustration than standing there, suited to the hilt, board under your arm as pals wander aimlessly, fiddling with toys, cameras, wondering about what wetsuit to wear, board to ride, as the waves pump, the crowds fill in etc?

“Let’s go, it’s absolutely pumping,” says John John.

Nathan, working the controls of his little helicopter says, “I just got the sickest clip.”

John John, thirty now can you believe and with two world titles strapped around his waist, has always been the brother who would  jump out of bed first, his heart beating fast and his mouth wet with the desire to do good.

Nathan, who is twenty eight, may be mad but he is serious about it. And he may be without a soul. But he is not without a heart.

Eventually, Nathan gets rubbered and waxed and the brothers prowl the lineup like tigers.

Essential.

"If you want to go swimming in a dead ocean, go to wave pool. If you want to be part of something that’s alive, you’ve gotta be prepared."

A surfer in his twenties is in a stable condition at Bunbury Hozzy after being attacked by a suspected Great White at Boat Ramps this morning. 

The man was surfing with two others and hit around 8:45am. He swam to shore and went to a nearby cafe for help. An off-duty nurse stemmed the bleeding of what our source describes as a “great big gash” and he was driven to Margs hospital before being transferred to the bigger Bunbury hospital one hundred clicks north. A Great White was seen in the area shortly afterwards and all beaches between Gas Bay and Margaret River Mouth are now closed. 

It’s since been revealed that SharkSmart’s tagged shark notifications have been offline since Wednesday ‘cause of a tech fault, which is the achilles heel of the whole there’s-gotta-be-better-ways-to-keep-shark-attacks-down-than-culling-the-beasts. All it takes is one outage, no one knows what the hell is out there and boom. 

Boat Ramps, if y’didn’t know, is one of the best waves in the area. On an eight-to-fifteen-foot south swell, it’s a fair enough facsimile of Second Reef Pipe says one former tour surfer with “massive barrels on the inside bowl.”

DPIRD officers are currently investigating a reported shark bite incident at Gnarabup, near Margaret River. See more: https://t.co/1kDzCJqb5c

— Surf Life Saving WA (@SLSWA) July 24, 2023

The Margaret River region is notorious for its booming Great White population although when world champion Brazilian surfers Italo Ferreira and Gabriel Medina refused to surf a CT even there in 2018 after two nearby attacks in one day, they were described as “weak and conniving” by the celebrated Western Australia author Tim Winton. 

“As someone who’s surfed all over the world and with the machismo and bravado of Brazilians in particular, I thought it was amazing how cowardly those guys were,” he said. “Look, not everybody wants to be in the water the day after two guys have failed the taste test around the corner, but I thought it was a really low act on behalf of those two guys…I just think  if you want to go swimming in a dead ocean, go to a pool, go to a wave pool. If you want to be part of something that’s alive, and that’s what surfing is to most of us, then you’ve gotta be prepared, you’re doing that in a living ecosystem. If you want to kill all the sharks you’re just going to kill the oceans. It’s one of the few places in the world where there are actually real waves.”

More on the attack as it comes.

Whatever you think of the Ranch, capitalism or maybe feudalism at its worst, the rich eat the cake, the poor sweep up the crumbs, sure would be nice to have a place there.

Have you ever wanted to get your own key to the fabled Hollister Ranch but don’t have the thirty-three mill to toss at James Cameron’s compound or five mill for a one-third share in Conner Coffin’s parents’ joint?

A little background for those who’re unaware of this unspoiled slice of California heaven. Hollister Ranch is fifty-eight square clicks, or 14.400 acres, of gated beachfront land on the Gaviota Coast in Santa Barbara County, California. Therefore, y’aint surfing round these parts unless you can boat in.

But as Jen See wrote a lil while back, “The idea of Hollister Ranch as some kind of Eden persists, but is by now, largely imagined. The best-known spots on good swells buzz with jetskis, zodiacs, and floating machines of all shapes and sizes. Anyone with a boat or a friend with a boat can go there. And we all know by now what happened to Eden.”

Matt Warshaw’s take on the Ranch hits a similar vein. Read about the “hard ugliness” of the joint and its “sales pitch wearing a Gestapo jacket pretending to be a conservation statement” here.

Then there’s this take

“The idea of opening up such sacred land is totally asinine. Hollister Ranch is the only remaining example of what California used to be. This heritage of Old California is what I live and breathe. It is what drives my studies as an Ag. Engineering student, my aspirations in agriculture, and my recreation as a surfer.”

Whatever you think of the Ranch, capitalism or maybe feudalism at its worst, the rich eat the cake, the poor sweep up the crumbs, sure would be nice to have a place there.

But, $675,000? For the slightly more well-heeled among us, why, that’s almost doable yeah?

So what’s it buy?

A 1/12th interest in 5 Hollister Ranch Road or “access of one individual and their guests entrance into the historic Hollister Ranch.”

No sleepovers, no parties, get in, get out.

As one beloved BeachGrit commenter wrote: “One of the jokes about localism and crowds at the ranch is that many of the parcel holders have sold portions of their property as proxies for access and parking. Been told that many parcels on the Hollister side had dozens of side deals that include gate access. Building on each parcel is not easy, permits aren’t just issued. Then the Santa Barbara Surf Club has access to grandfathered in.  Think Gidget families.

“And Dez, there is only one A break on Hollister.  Sure, photogenic as fuck, but none surf as well as they photograph.  And the locals are not rippers.  It’s still living on the myth of Greenough and Aurness. The gems are on the Bixby side that has one ownership.  Bixby has a south swell window too which more than doubles it surfing days.  Maybe triples.”

Buy your key to Hollister here!

"I want a simpler more wholesome life where I can spend more time with family, friends and my dog."

The music world is a little poorer tonight after Toby Cregan, the wildly charismatic bass player and singer with Skegss, the Australian surf-centric act which was co-founded by Noa Deane, played his last-ever gig with the band. 

Toby Cregan, who is the son of Ocean and Earth founder Brian Cregan, said he was throwing the four-stringer in the garage to “live a simpler more wholesome life where I can spend more time with family, friends and my dog.” 

Skegss, if you didn’t know, was founded in Byron Bay in 2014 by Cregan, Deane, lead singer and legit shredder Ben Reed and Jonny Lani. Deane quit soon after ‘cause he wanted to concentrate on his lucrative surf career, back then he was on 650k a year and oowee he wasn’t gonna throw that whale back, but not before the band released their breakout single LSD, an ode to the simplicity of existence, Live, Sleep, Die.  

In 2018, the band poured their cash into self-recording their first long-player, My Own Mess, fifteen bangers that captured Byron living, the boozing, drugs, surf life and so on.

If the name Toby Cregan got a familiar ring to it that’s cause he co-founded Rage and is a surf filmmaker of considerable note, including the edit of your ol pal DR’s trip to Israel years back (Tel Aviv Jumps), his use of the Velvet Underground’s I Found a Reason over the credits still gettin’ eyes moist. 

Toby said goodbye to fans at Byron’s Splendour in the Grass, winding up his nine years on the road with, appropriately, his self-penned and performed classic Road Trip.