Dion "Baby" Agius hospitalised with a collapsed lung.

“I couldn’t breathe!” Aussie surf star hospitalised in Switzerland after near-fatal crash

By Derek Rielly

1 month ago

"Had to get rushed to the ER and ended up in the hospital for 4 days hooked up to a machine to suck the air out of my chest."

The former boogieboarder turned hipster-freesurfing nomad god, Dion Agius, a staple in Kai Neville’s films of the 2010s if you’ll remember, has written of his recent near-death experience from a hospital bed in Switzerland.

Collapsed lung, emergency surgery, four days in hozzy.

Dion “Baby” Agius, who turns forty in one week can you believe, shocked fans with a photograph where the diminutive goofy footer is making an obscene hand gesture while strapped up and plugged into various medical devices.

Agius writes,

Got a bit too excited to be finally snowboarding again after four years and got smoked catching a rail first day in and somehow managed to land on the iciest patch on the mountain straight on my chest and ended up collapsing my lung and having to get rushed to the ER for an operation and ended up in the hospital for 4 days hooked up to a machine to suck the air out of my chest.

Is never a fun time being in a hospital in a foreign country but they all took the best care of me.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to make exactly what I had hoped for the show and missed most of the time on the mountain to make stuff but did manage to make a few things as well as some spray paint prints from the stencils I was going to use for some sculptures.

I ran up a pretty hefty 30k bill in the Swiss hospital (maybe try not to go to hospital in Switzerland if you can avoid it , even though the treatment was 5 star and some tasty meals) and Seems as though my travel insurance doesn’t want to cover it due to my top notch snowboard skills so I’m gonna sell some of the prints the to go towards the bill if anyone wants one going to be making a few more so drop me a DM.

Just wanted to say

Moral of the story is always double check your insurance and don’t be a kook and land on your chest on the ice.

Thoughts, prayers etc.

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Bruce Irons (pictured) in Coachella-adjacent.

Surf legend Bruce Irons back in competitive singlet for Coachella event!

By Chas Smith

1 month ago

Cool business in the desert.

It is Coachella week, in Southern California. The time of year when an assortment of celebrities and super music fans flock to the desert in wide-brimmed hats to celebrate themselves. This is weekend two and Lady Gaga, Missy Elliott, Three 6 Mafia, The Prodigy, Lola Young and many more will be performing on multiple stages.

As fate would have it, surf legend Bruce Irons will be performing too and very nearby. The entertainment giant Goldenvoice, you see, has turned the Palm Springs Surf Club into the Goldenvoice Surf Club wherein DJs spin records and professional surfers professionally surf. According to People Magazine, “‘Expression Sessions’ were held in the wave pool, which saw pro surfers including Bruce Irons, Skip McCollugh, Jacob “Zeke” Szekely, Ryan Huckabee and Chance Gaul competing in categories such as best air, best wave and most creative for $4,000 in cash prizes.”

Very cool and who do you think won? but back to Coachella, have you ever been? I have, thrice. Two times when it was first getting started some many years ago then once more recently. My favorite act of those early festivals was Teddybears.

Enjoy here.

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"Mick Fanning's house is sophistication, rebellion, and indulgence. It balances elegance with excess, often hinting at the underlying tragedy of unattainable dreams."

Mick Fanning’s Great Gatsby-themed beachfront compound smashes price records in pre-auction frenzy!

By Derek Rielly

1 month ago

"Mick Fanning's house balances elegance with excess, often hinting at the underlying tragedy of unattainable dreams."

If you ever lived on the southern end of the Gold Coast before the big developers moved in and prices went through the sky, two mill and up for a box at Rainbow Bay, you’d realise the absurdity of a buyer throwing almost twenty mill at a house across the road from noisy ol’ Coolangatta airport.

But here we are, Australia, the lucky country.

A joint so rich in natural resources but so dumb politically, we ship our ore, our gas, overseas for peanuts while keeping the economy superficially bouncing along with the mass importation of people.

A house used to be the Australian dream, then a little apartment, now it’s earning enough in the gig economy to keep up with rents that soar twenty percent every year.

Still, there’s big money out there.

And, Mick Fanning, the forty-four-year-old three-time champ, has just sold his sprawling beachfront estate called Rolling Seas at Bilinga pre-auction for $16.5 mill. It’s a record price for a joint between Coolangatta and Currumbin.

Fanning bought the land in 2011 for $3.25 and built the Great Gatsby-inspired house, which he lived in briefly. It’s where Fanning’s mysterious strawberry blonde stalker busted into a few years back.

“I occasionally want to kill you … to end our occasional miserable bullshit,” the woman told Fanning in a letter prior to her unannounced visit.

Celebrity stylists Three Birds Renovation did a number on the joint a couple of years back that turned the place into the sorta Palm Springs themed place André Balazs had in mind when he redeveloped the old Golden Crest Hotel Retirement Home on 8300 Sunset, West Hollywood.

(RIP The Standard West Hollywood)

As one outlet reported,

“Mick Fanning’s house is sophistication, rebellion, and indulgence. It balances elegance with excess, often hinting at the underlying tragedy of unattainable dreams.”

The stretch of sand along Bilinga is as ordinary as they come, rarely, like, never, delivering a day worth even a pinch of shit, as they say.

So you got your big ol beachfront joint and you still have to jump in the truck to go surfing, either at nearby D-Bah, Kirra, Snapper in the south or the better beachies just north in Currumbin and Palm Beach.

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Utah residents grow restive as world’s largest PerfectSwell wave tank announced for drought-stricken state

By Chas Smith

1 month ago

"It is exceptionally tone deaf to approve an enormous surf park in Washington City."

Trouble is brewing, again between surfers and everyday folk who like to drink water. But who could forget the last major conflict betwixt the two when it reared its head in greater Palm Springs after residents became enraged at a planned wave tank in the desert town. Coral Mountain was supposed to be a nice community with a hotel, wellness spa and million dollar homes all around a Kelly Slater tank. It would have used less water than a golf course but the optics were not great and the aforementioned angry townspeople shut it right down in a series of hot n heavy city council meetings.

Today, the same battle lines are being drawn except not in the glorious Coachella Valley but Southern Utah instead. For it is there that the world’s largest PerfectSwell tub is currently being dug. Alaia, Hawaiian for “joy,” will feature an 18-acre lake, homes and good vibes.

Except the region is in the midst of a devastating drought. There is enough water to get through this year, according to the Washington County Water Conservancy, but not next if winter ’25/’26 is dry.

Cue bitter burghers.

Council member Troy Bellison, who voted against the project, voiced concerns by declaring, “In light of the ask of the developers, and the need of our future growth, it is exceptionally tone deaf to approve an enormous surf park in Washington City.”

Council member Kurt Ivie, who voted for the project, countered that the cauldron is being built on a farm that has its own brackish wells, saying, “Stucki Farm was a beautiful area where they grew fruit. The owners then sold that to a development group back in 2006, and they got a planned unit development that was approved by the city council at the time. These people have a right to develop, but again, I think the point is, the city, they will never get one drop of city water, period, for this pool. It’s their own water.”

Do you think that argument will win the day or do you think settlers will descend with pitchforks and ire?

Also, why isn’t there a Kelly Slater plow in the Great Salt Lake?

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Little Robbie Machado ruling Tombies at the 1995 Billabong Challenge.

World-famous surf spot Gnaraloo Station lists for $17 million

By Derek Rielly

1 month ago

Want to own the best wave in Western Australia, maybe lock it up for your own pleasures?

If you surf, you know Gnaraloo. If you’re a little older you’ll remember Jack McCoy’s Billabong Challenges, held there in 95 and 96, the world’s best surfers at one of the world’s best waves, Kelly Slater, Machado, Sunny, Occ.

And, if you grew up in the relatively waveless city of Perth, 1100 clicks south, it was the wave you dreamed about as the cold winds of winter came. As all the best surfers loaded up their Landcruisers and headed north on the North West Coastal Highway, following in the footsteps of pioneers Craig Howe and Charlie Konstantinidis who first surfed the joint in 1975 after being tipped off by a Land Rover salesman.

Now, the primary wave at Gnaraloo is Tombstones, long wildly barrelling left, as you know, but the whole joint spans over over 84,000 hectares and has 65 kilometers of prime coastline along the southern entrance of the Ningaloo Marine Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

It used to be a pastoral station for sheep but over time transitioned to tourism as a a revenue source, particularly under the leasehold of Paul Richardson, starting in 2005.

The sale, which is a combined pastoral and tourism lease, includes 1500 goats as livestock. The realtor, Jarrad O’Rourke, emphasises the desire to keep accommodation affordable, reflecting its rustic roots.

“People are very protective of it,” O’Rourke told ABC. “[The lease holder] doesn’t want to sell it to the highest bidder … it is still currently affordable for most, and it’s the most amazing place on Earth.”

Right now, you got 3 Mile Camp, near Tombstones with its bore water toilets and hot showers and a little shop that sells basic food and cold beer, Gnaraloo Homestead with its self-contained cabins, one-twenty a night, or the big ol Fishing Lodge, ten bedrooms and room for 22 swingers.

The ginger-topped photographer Scotty Bauer told ABC he wanted the goats removed, they pests etc, and “I hope it’s a fresh start for that coastline; it would be great to get someone in there that has some knowledge about running a camp of that nature mindfully. The coast is dying. It’s dead in some places – that is a real concern.”

Click here to buy.

Want to see how good it gets?

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Eat beach grit spam!