Interview: Tom Carroll on the wipeout that shocked the world!

More importantly, how does it feel for this once golden haired cutie pie with brown nipples like hard currants to have reached the stately number of 63?

Two days back, the world was sent into a bit of spin with the news that Tom Carroll had, likely, busted his neck while surfing windy little two-footers at North Narrabeen. 

Instagram posts urging for thoughts and prayers were circulated and mainstream news outlets breathlessly reported the injury as grave and serious etc. 

I call Thomas and he is at the local shopping mall picking up a few things from the Black Friday sales, getting a spike of coffee.

“I got so malled,” he laughs. 

Thomas, who turned sixty-three the day before the wipeout, describes the attention as “weird” and says it came down to someone on the beach with a camera “getting a nice shot of me in a neck brace. It makes for good drama.” 

So how is he? 

“Well, I’m walking around! I had a few stitches and a shaken up neck. As anyone who’s had a spinal injury can attest, it’s a fucking bitch. I think I’m just lucky. I had a real shock.”

More importantly, how does it feel for lil Tommy Carroll, golden haired cutie pie with little brown nipples like hard currants to have reached the stately number of sixty-three? 

“I was feeling pretty good until I fricken head-butted my board and fucking got scorpioned over my neck. That told me how old I really was. Fucken hell my neck was really crunched. You’re so vulnerable in that position.”

Do you reflect on the passage of time? You’re well on the way to seventy; Occ turns sixty next year..

“Yeah, it’s a trip. We’re all travelling through life and doing our thing and a lot of stuff is going on and it gets quicker as you get older. Life doesn’t get any slower and you wake up one day and you’re sixty three! Oh shit! And Occy is sixty next year and that’s extraordinary! All my fondest memories of Occ are from when we were on tour and the early days together fucking singing karaoke, ripping the bag out of waves, just pure fun. It doesn’t make sense that we’re in our sixties. A big part of me is in that kid zone. In a childlike and hopefully not a childish manner. 

Thomas reflects on those times he meets people, thinks, Jesus, these guys are old and has to pull himself up, like, ‘This person is twenty years younger than me.’ 

“I’m blown away. I never thought at sixty-three I’d be riding a five-one. That wasn’t in the manual. I thought we had to have retire from our competitive career at thirty, have a family. I conditioned myself that way and that’s exactly what happened to me. I had to bust that conditioning out although I wouldn’t say it’s all gone. But I had to try and move on to fresher ideas and be open to new ideas.”

Nostalgia and bolted on beliefs, he says, are a killer. He recalls, back in the eighties, the revulsion in the lineup whenever someone appeared on anything but a light variation of the thruster. 

“That was it! If you  came into the lineup with a bodyboard or a longboard, the boys would kick you out. I saw people bleed over it! I always thought it was kinda crazy how people fought over waves but now you can see how open it is. You can ride anything. The collective mind has broadened. There’s more surfers on the planet than ever yet, for the most part, we can surf together on these different crafts in the most extraordinary ways without killing each other – which is what we would’ve done in the eighties. If some people want to go bak to that, go for it, run the experiment. My experience tells me it won’t work out well.”

Thomas says he got “kickback” for riding a standup back when it first turned on and that he loves longboards, bodysurfing, foiling, any kind of surfing. 

“Any way of surfing, fuck it, I’ll try it. Let’s do this shit. My pathology is, fuck, if I can’t do a kind of surfing I’ve fucking gotta do it. The challenge ins on! That’s helped me engage with a real enthusiasm again. Foiling brought a new enthusiasm that bled back into my surfing. It’s a way of elongating our froth which, in turn, gives us life. Always have a little chuckle, or outer when it’s appropriate, when people say to you, ‘What are you fucking doing that shit for?’”

He says he looks now at the busy lineups as he flies past on his foil and thinks, ‘Look at all these people fighting over this strip of vertical wave.’ 

“Foiling we’ve literally got the whole ocean compared to a bit of vertical water. You fly past ‘em on teh foil and they’re sitting there looking at ya, going ‘Faaaark!’ They’re hanging around waiting for that vertical wave, and nothing against it, I love it, but it’s a limited resource. And when you start foiling, it’s unlimited.” 

I ask if he’s counting the days left on this gorgeous spinning ball. Does he ever think, man, I got ten more summers left surfing? 

“I never do the math. I dunno what the fuck’s going to happen. It might be a shock for me to do the math but I do think it takes away from what I like to do in the present.” 

Recently, Thomas bought a red cattle dog called Rumi, a mad little cunt, primitive as can be, filled with the joy of running, fighting, dominating. It’s changed his life.

 

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“I had to surrender my preferences to a new life all of a sudden. I didn’t know it was going to be a beautiful experience but fuck, two months in, I was thinking, ‘What the fuck have I done? This guy is a fucking unit!’ Or am I the unit? God, I’ve only got so much surf time left and I’ve gotta it to a dog! This is fucked!” Fucking hell, it was like picking up a sabre toothed toddler!” 

I tell him I try to live by the maxim, be like the dog. Leave the phone at home, chase the ball, wrestle, live not just for the present but for the exact moment

“Your heart fills up and he feels when you connect. And you learn to connect with him, you learn to be a leader. There’s not much talking, more signs and sounds. He’s trying to understand English and I’m trying to understand dog. Too many commands and he fucking wigs out, yes, fuck you, I’ll do what I want to do. He’s a lot of dog but he’s fucking awesome. Such a good spirit. Man, he can see through people. He’s feeling the whole time.” 

We talk dogs, we talk cats and what killing machines they are. 

“I want to get a kitten to see if he can stand his ground. It’ll be the biggest lesson for this guy. He annihilated a bandit the other night. I went, you cunt, you just brought in a big, fat bandicoot, a beautiful thing. Fuck mate, you need a cat to claw your fucken nose.” 

Thomas reflects on the time he had two cats and the time one of his daughters brought his attention to one of ‘em eating a rabbit head caught. 

As the cat tore the rabbit apart, she explained the process to her dad. 

“He goes for the brain first and he’s flicking the skull out of his teeth, then he goes for the eyes. She really checked it,” says Thomas. “Then they disembowel em through the anus, chew the neck off, then pull everything out through the arse so the entrails are sitting outside, then they go into the carcass and around it. But they’ll eat the brains first. It’s what all big lions and all the cats do.” 

The primitive impulse!

“It’s an imprint,” says Thomas. “It’s fucking awesome. I love it!” 

Tom Carroll’s Journey Through Surfing and Life