Are you for, against or indifferent to the Margaret River Pro on tour?
That pretty little winery town and Great White hotspot called Margaret River one hundred and seventy two miles south of the Western Australia capital ain’t so little any more.
It ain’t a surprise.
There’s a million reasons why you’d wanna bivouac to Australia’s south-west corner. Live down there amid the giant Karri and Jarrah trees, on a coastline dressed in white sand beaches and world-class reefs, with a sublime Mediterranean climate and where no natural barriers mean there’s empty land to build on for miles and for a tenth of the price of dirt in Sydney or Byron Bay.
Each year, the world’s surfers get a little taste of Margaret River when the tour comes to town, the Margaret River Pro where John John Florence proved his Ghost model Pyzel to the world in a fashion similar to Simon Anderson’s thruster domination at Pipe in 1981.
The event, which has run for thirty years, is in doubt, howevs, after local residents lodged sixty-nine objections to the Shire of Augusta Margaret River rubber-stamping the Margaret Pro for the next five years.
“Broadly, the objections raised concerns about the length of the contest, public access to the foreshore and recreational areas, impact from the use of North Point, the use of Surfers Point over Easter and the licensed area.”
Even though the Margaret River Pro is funded by the Western Australian government, the WSL still has to get shire approval to access public land and the surrounding infrastructure.
But while sixty-nine objections ain’t a trifling number, the shire did receive forty-eight supporting the event and twenty-four “indifferent” responses.
I guess I’d fall into the indifferent response group.
Do I like watching the Margaret River Pro? Yeah, it’s…ok…time zone is more helpful for my viewing needs than Brazil or South Africa but I am oftentimes puzzled watching a collection of the greatest surfers on this earth struggling with a wave that has, roughly, two sections before an awkward closeout on the limestone shelf.
You?
