Surfing super-daddy revealed as mystery buyer of $5.1 million Snapper Rocks “sky home”!

By Derek Rielly

8 months ago

Sledgehammer bid of $4.8 million knocks out opposition but doesn't hit reserve!

The Gold Coast’s already stunning property bubble inflated just a little further on Tuesday when surfing super-daddy and beer baron Josh Kerr spent $5.1 million on a middle-floor apartment overlooking D-Bah and Snapper Rocks.

Josh Kerr, who is forty and daddy to the incredible one-day-she’ll-be-world-champ Sierra Kerr, parlayed a fortune made on the back of beer start-ups St Archer and Balter into the whole-floor apartment or “sky home” as realtors call ‘em.

As it happened, the selling agent was Josh Kerr’s big-wave buddy Ryan Hipwood, who told the real estate press,

“It’s probably one of the most iconic sites on the southern Gold Coast, and that was the first resale in there,” said Hipwood. “You just can’t replace a site like that, where all the apartments are front-facing, and the views will never get built out.”

The auctioneer said Josh Kerr came in swinging with a $4.8 million bid, belting his competition out of the game and while it wasn’t quite at the reserve, it was enough to secure first bidding rights and the eventual sale.

“We had a really good crowd there who were curious to see what happened,” said the auctioneer, “but I think the opening bid put a lot of people in their place.”

The joint spans almost three thousand square feet, has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, views south to Byron and north to Straddle and the sorta German engineered appliances (Gaggenau, if you’re wondering) that bring a perverse joy every time you pull open their heavy stainless steel doors.

Josh Kerr, of course, came to prominence seventeen years ago when he unveiled what would come to be called The Club Sandwich (courtesy moi) in a heat with Mick Fanning at Snapper Rocks.

Kelly Slater got so high on it he called it the best move ever in a contest.

What’s rad is it still gets the spectators’ toes tapping and judges jabbing fingers in the eight range on their little scoring tablet.

Awaken apartments, 275 Boundary St, Coolangatta. — Josh Kerr’s new joint overlooking D-Bah and Snapper and with outrageous sunrise vistas.

Awaken apartments, Josh Kerr, Coolangatta. — Josh Kerr got a real pretty kitchen to work his magic in, brew new beer blends perhaps.

Awaken apartments overlooking D-Bah and Snapper Rocks. — Real pretty these joints, they call ’em Sky Homes.

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Photo courtesy Tony Roberts

Meet the world’s best sixty-year-old surfer!

By Derek Rielly

8 months ago

An old man in an obscure surfing backwater got wings, and it ain’t Kelly Slater…

Many, many years ago, in the summer of 2017 I wrote about the Dominican Republic-based American surfer Tony Roberts who was helping the aged, but still beautiful Brad Gerlach, with his airs.

In return, Gerr, then fifty and a former rock star of surfing turned Bruce Lee of surf technique, would do what he could to finesse Tony’s turns.

So, Gerr flew to meet Tony and the pair, remember neither man accepts the usual caveats of ageing, worked hard on improving their late-game surfing.

Tony told Gerr, “Don’t boost too early.”

Gerr told Tony. Get that ass real low. “Your butt needs to go down toward the Achilles tendon,” said Gerr. “Jordy surfs so good ‘cause his ass is on the ground!”

Tony grew up as a skater/surfer and was mentored between 12 and 16 by the early air pioneer Kevin Reed.

Tony says he nailed his first real air in 1978.

“Surfers said I surfed like a skater. Skaters say I skated like a surfer,” says Tony, who moved to Central America 20 years ago. He divides his time between Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

Tony had a little epiphany when he hit thirty. He didn’t want a part of the American Dream. Didn’t want to throw the physical world away in pursuit of the material He wanted to surf and he wanted to hit new heights of performance even as he aged.

So he went vegetarian. Got into yoga.

And surfing in warm water?

“It was like taking off the ankle weights,” he says.

In the edit, below, we find the still raven-haired surfer giving hell to relatively soft warm-water rights in the Dominican Republic.

“I make these videos to inspire myself and others about extending progressive surfing longevity,” says TR.

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Southern California surfers prepare for “Summer of Blood” as Long Beach State’s renowned shark lab loses funding

By Chas Smith

8 months ago

Very scary.

Southern California’s millions of surfers were put on notice, overnight, that this coming summer may be their last. Long Beach State University’s renowned Shark Lab announced that it was running out of funds and would be forced to shutter programs that monitor, and report upon, shark activity off the coast. It has been keeping eyes on the hundreds of juvenile Great Whites plotting limb feasts, alerting lifeguards when they malinger into the lineup.

Without cash money, though, the spying will cease.

Shark Lab director Chris Lowe told the local ABC affiliate, “It’s getting pretty serious. We have enough money to carry us through June but after that, if we don’t get more funding, we’re going to have to pull out all of the equipment out of the water. We won’t be able to monitor sharks along California anymore.”

The program has been running since 2018 and is considered one of the most advanced in the world. It utilizes a “high-tech system of receivers, buoys and underwater monitors that allow them to track and tag sharks in real time.”

An instant notification of juvenile Great Whites swimming around with bibs and hungry eyes can be sent directly to lifeguards to help keep surfers uneaten.

But, after June, no longer.

July and August soaked in blood.

September probably too.

The World Surf League’s Final’s Day a whole new shade of awful.

Ugh.

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Little Connor O'Leary in traditional Japanese kimono and, inset, 2005's Cronulla riot.

Japanese surf Olympian forced to hide Asian heritage from rioting Australian racists!

By Derek Rielly

8 months ago

"It sticks with you, I was only 12, but it was a crazy time. Everyone was very cautious and it was dangerous."

A little over nineteen summers ago, the pretty beachside suburb of Cronulla, home to more good surfers than anywhere in Australia except maybe Snapper Rocks, went to hell after middle eastern out-of-towners clashed with local lifeguards.

Text messages punched out on Nokia phones swirled calling for retaliation against any Lebanese who dared visit this hard-core surf town right there on Sydney’s southern rim

The subsequent riot was the culmination of several years of tension between the predominantly white, Anglo-Australian population of Cronulla and the Lebanese community out west.

December 11, 2005, was a wild ol day, anyone with a less than northern European hue was targeted, and the repercussions were felt for weeks.

Even Bondi Beach, a forty-five-minute-drive north had boom gates set up to stop mischief makers and a little bit south of Bondi in Maroubra, one Bra Boy attempted to take on half of Beirut in a melee that is still talked about in reverent tones.

Cronulla’s Connor O’Leary, who is surfing for Japan in this year’s Olympic Games at Teahupoo by virtue of his Japanese mum, says he was forced to hide his heritage on that fateful day lest racist wolves tear him apart.

“I went for a look at the riots that day, which wasn’t the smartest thing, and Mum was really worried about me,” O’Leary told The Sydney Morning Herald. “It sticks with you, I was only 12, but it was a crazy time down there. Everyone was very cautious and it was dangerous, no doubt.

“That was obviously a big moment, but for me, there’d be little things, like I’d be in history class and the Hiroshima bombings would come up. It’s not like it was targeted towards me, but there was that stigma around Asian culture. Not Japanese, but in Cronulla, if you were Asian, there was a stigma.

“I never got bullied but whenever it came up, I’d try and hide it just to fit in. I wasn’t a confident kid so I tried to be as Australian as I could because I didn’t want confrontation. It’s also great to see Cronulla come through that period too though, see it move on from that and become much more open and more multicultural.”

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“At the worst point we were about two feet from the cliffs and the power of the water was intense. If we got sucked in to the wall where there are openings we wouldn’t have made it out alive. I’ve been out in surf at Teahupoʻo , Tahiti and Jeffrey’s Bay in South Africa on some of its gnarliest days – but that day at Fingal was terrifying.”

Surfer-hero “Gordo the Great” awarded bravery medal for saving Ukrainian nurse in “wild battle of underwater jiujitsu”

By Derek Rielly

8 months ago

“I was paddling like a frog on acid and felt an unbelievable pain in my legs and groin.”

The larger-than-life surf cinematographer John “Gordo the Great” Gordon has been awarded a bravery medal in recognition of his extraordinary conduct when he saved the life of a Ukrainian nurse who’d been swept away to her apparent doom in a rip last April.

Gordo, sixty-two now but presenting with excellent T levels always with head erect and shoulders thrown back, filmed the world surfing tour for twenty years before being dumped by the World Surf League, inexplicably and without warning two years ago.

Gordo’s filmic career is marked by awards, acclaim etc.

He worked for the Seven News network in Queensland for two decades, in between gigs with Jack McCoy and his series of iconic Billabong films, before shifting into surf full-time.

So when a Gold Coast-based Ukrainian nurse jumped into the water at Fingal up there on the NSW side of the border with the Gold Coast and Gordo saw her being washed around the headland, he wasn’t going to stand by and wait for Superman.

A day to blow or get blown!

“She was in the most dangerous spot imaginable. I looked around and the only person who’s going to save her is me,” said Gordo, who described trying to rescue the gal as like “underwater jiujitsu.”

The nurse, Liv Titor said, “I couldn’t believe it. I stepped into nothing and it got me straight away. Johnny jumped in with his surfboard, told me to hang on and said we’ll get through it together. And that’s what we did.”

For his effort, Gordo will be awarded a Commendation for Brave Conduct (CBC) from Australian Governor-General David Hurley, a civilian award that ranks alongside Albania’s Honour of the Nation Decoration, Belarus’ Order of the Fatherland and the French Legion of Honour.

Retelling the event with dramatic expression to the Australian press Gordo said,

“Right before we made it to safety we were in the absolute thick of it. I’m talking the Ivan Milat of currents. Just nasty and ugly as hell… I was paddling like a frog on acid and felt an unbelievable pain in my legs and groin. Underneath the water the current was so strong. Layers of doom.

Harrowing!

Re-live again here.

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