Twenty-four hour surf-inspired TV channel, sexy-as-anything seventies-styled rooms, trinkets by Ozzie Wright.

While I’m loathe to describe surfing in this epoch as sexy, surf ponchos, surf hats, beach wagons and VALs earnestly describing two-stage pop-ups over espresso martinis in bars from Aragum Bay to Canggu would puncture any libido, there was a time, believe it or nay, when surfers were as bewitching as any movie or rock star. 

That was the nineteen-seventies, of course, when men like the baseball-bat swinging, send-the-king-of-the-Hui to jail hell-raiser Ian “Kanga” Cairns was showering anyone within a 12,000 nautical radius with his testosterone fountain and Bunker Spreckels, surfing’s divine prince of decadence as his Taschen book would be called, who employed Art Brewer to follow him around and record his surf and carnal adventures.

And it’s this epoch the the world’s sexiest hotelier and Ksubi denim founder, George Gorrow, along with model wife Cisco Tschurtschenthale, has channeled as they transfigure the old Crescent Head Resort & Conference Centre, five hours north of Sydney, into a 25-room hip hotel. 

 

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Ain’t nothing romantic about the old joint at 30-34 Pacific St, four hundred or so metres from the relatively fun, if undemanding, point that last shot into the news in July, 2021, when a longboarder was hit by a ten-foot Great White.

It’s taken a few years for Georgie and Cisco to get the joint open, it was supposed to open back in late 2022. But, this is Australia where tradesmen rule the labour market and if you ain’t dipping c-notes for every hour he’s on the tools, ain’t nothing gonna happen. 

But, here we are, four months away from opening of the  Sea Sea Hotel, inspired, says George, by a “70’s surf club hotel.”

There’s a lot of dark timber on the walls, unpainted bricks, concrete floors, photos from seventies photographer maestro Peter Crawford, who once, shortly after dying, visited your old pal DR in a dream while he was in Morocco. and art from Ozzie Wright, among others. 

“I love surfing and the wave is one of the best in Australia,” says George.

Georgie and Cisco’s attention to detail is apparent in the 24-hour music vid channel called Sea Sea TV (CCTV), described as a “surfer’s version of the old legendary MTV.

Bookings just opened for November and, oowee, ain’t it just the fit for a swinging little trip up or down the coast with a side-serving of logger point waves or, slightly further afield, the Hossegor-like trenches of the beachies.