Ross Clarke-Jones interview: The Continuing Adventures of Slick Willie 

“I was going mad. If I’d had a gun I would’ve shot myself,” says the big-wave surf god.

You can’t keep a good man down, or so the saying goes, and for almost half-a-century Ross Clarke-Jones has successfully eluded all methods available in the drama of nature to eliminate him from this earthly realm. 

It was the ankle, his achilles heel, if you want irony, that almost permanently beached the man who holds a perennial invite to The Eddie, who has never finished worst than tenth and who won the whole show in 2001. 

In 2019, Ross appeared in a reality television series called Survivor where a group of celebs are dumped on an island and compete in various elimination challenges. In one, Ross was on a rope swing that broke, sending him crashing into a wooden deck and snapping his ankle. 

Ross subsequently sued hell out of the producers, taking his case to Australia’s Supreme Court. He claimed he was “totally incapacitated, depressed, broke and anxious” and sought damages for past and future lost earnings.  

For two years, Ross couldn’t step on a surfboard, was riven by a horrible, hot pain and a feeling that he was carting around a prosthetic ankle at the end of leg. His mental battery was so agitated he was scared of even entering the water lest he fall and do more damage. 

“If I’d had a gun I would’ve shot myself,” he says. 

Ross, famously born on 6/6/66, lives eighty-miles south-east of Victoria’s capital city in a brooding, windswept corner of Phillip Island’s southern-most protrusion called Cape Woolamai. 

He moved there six years ago from Torquay on the Victorian mainland after he hit six red traffic lights in a row. 

“I did a u-turn and drove straight to the real estate agent and sold my house,” he says.

Lately, he’s bought into a clothing brand called, funnily enough, Born Maniac.

“I just got back from the warehouse helping the factory dude sort shit out,” he says. “I’m the face of the brand and the factory worker!” 

In a photo from last year’s Eddie you look like you’ve morphed from rugged Australian hellraiser into wild, long-haired Peruvian witch. What happened? 

I haven’t cut my hair since fucking Survivor and I just kept growing it. I’ve always looked a bit South American, Turkish, Greek, Italian, Mexican…everything except Swedish, I guess. My grandmother was a full Borneo headhunter, a Dayak native. My grandfather brought Christianity to Borneo from England. Everyone can’t pick what I am. Eddie Rothman called me a Mexican. In Brazil, they thought I was a local until I opened my mouth. 

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A post shared by Kanan Clarke-Jones (@kanancj)

Let’s talk about the passage of time. Does it feel like yesterday you were that kid with the bowl cut and moonstruck eyes in Mad Wax almost forty years ago?

Exactly! I was just in Phillip Island looking at a store and a guy came and brought Max Wax up, saying “Mate, no way mate!” It keeps resonating with a lot of people. For forty years! I put the Mad Wax board (a 5’11” Nirvana by Stuart Campbell and Bill Cilia) in a Cape Woolamai restaurant called Bang Bang. Everyone’s seeing it…Where did the time go…forty years? I dunno, it does feel like yesterday. I was the youngest in the Eddie, now I’m the oldest.

The last time I saw you was in a dirty lil bar in Carnarvon up there near Gnaraloo in the late nineties. I remember you talking about your son Kanan, then a little boy. Now, he’s a jiujitsu superstar. 

He’s a fucking weapon now. I went to visit him one month ago in New York, to see the life he’s living over there. He’s living in Brooklyn while training and competing and teaching jiujitsu in Manhattan under Marcello Garcia. 

Tell me about your recent attempt to wrestle your black belt kid.

I said, ‘Look, tie your hands behind your back and put on this blindfold.’ And he still got me! He was like an octopus! We were in a backyard octagon-shaped trampoline and he was chasing me around. It was hideous. He strangled me with his legs. 

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Kanan was a product of the final year of your marriage to the first of your two Brazilian wives, Cassia, and with whom you lived with in Sao Paulo from 1989 to 1996. 

I said to Cassia, Kanan’s going to be the best mistake we’ve ever made. When I first went over to live in Brazil it was lawless. You could  build a house for fifty-grand. I was twenty-two years old when I got married and I was living this awesome ragbag life. 

How about that banged up ankle of yours? 

I can’t really talk about it, I settled out of court, gag order. I got gagged! But I can say, the rope fucking snapped and my ankle collected the platform. It was heavy. I lost all my confidence. I felt rudderless. Like my steering wheel fell off. I was out of the water for a good two years. I tried to surf and it felt like I had a prosthetic limb. It was all stiff and weird. But, then, I saw Mark Mathews on a plane last year and his ankle is mutant. I looked down at his foot and, dude, he’s the fucking elephant man! And he’s seriously getting back into surfing and talking about going to Nazaré for the first time. I did physio and strength training for years it felt like, non-stop. And then, I slipped in the shower and fractured the ankle again. Felt flat on my face. I was a nightmare. 

How close to madness did you venture in these lost years? 

Seriously, I was going mad. I was fucking… if I had a gun I’d shoot myself. It was the time when our good friend John Shimooka died, when he took his life. It was too heavy. All at the same time. I got professional help, which I needed. I’d never been depressed in my life! Why would you! I had a dream run since school! There’s nothing to be depressed about! But when you can’t do what you love to do, fuck, I couldn’t even drive, I couldn’t surf, I couldn’t do shit. You try and do training around it but it feels useless. My psychologist spoke of the importance of taking baby steps and not to get straight back into fucking tow surfing in big waves. I went to the beach and I was too scared to get into the water because my ankle was so insecure, so unstable. I went to Queensland ‘cause it’s nice and warm up there and even walking down the sand with a rubber thing on my leg, that was terrifying. You get into a weird funk. Especially through Covid. I didn’t know what was happening. It was a very isolating feeling. 

I thought I’d never come back. I remember talking to Jamie Mitchell and saying, ‘This is it for me. I don’t think I can ever come back.’  He told me you can always come back, unless you don’t want to.

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When did you start to come good? 

I  started to surf again in 2022. Maurice Cole’s son Damo made me go out for my first surf. He gave me a longboard and said, ‘Come on Uncle Froth, let’s get out there!’ I kept riding that board for ages until it snapped. I was getting familiar with the ocean again, back to what the psychologist told me. Baby steps. Take it one step at a time. Walk down the beach. Walk down the beach with your board. Don’t paddle out unless you want to. Paddle out and don’t catch a wave. Paddle out and catch a wave. It accelerated from there. I mean, I’ve never been able to do baby steps. I want to go hard and fast all the time.

What drove you out of Torquay?

It started getting crowded and the localism got weird. All the locals were fighting with other locals. Very strange. I was never a local, I was always a blow in. All these guys, jacked up, the young tradie (tradesmen) guys, thought they were locals. Everyone was just fighting, and I got so over it. Down here in Cape Woolamai the people are so cool, down to earth, no pretentious bullshit. Most are hard-working tradies. It’s hard to get a place to surf yourself these days. Down the end of the street is a perfect righthander and maybe a couple of guys on it.

Who are your closest friends? 

Tom Carroll  and Maurice Cole check in every couple of days. (Shaper) Bill Cilia and I were talking about Sanga (former pro Mark Sainsbury) the other day. He’s been dead thirty years already. Down here, my closest friends are George, my dog, he’s a monster, a big fucking teddy bear, and a local bathroom tiler called Stu Lyle. I went tiling with him and went, fuck, this is awesome fun. He’s teaching me shit and I’m helping him learn to surf. 

If you could relive one day of your life, which day would it be?

Maybe the three Eddies: the one that I won, when I got second in 2016 and last year, 2023. I want to relive those. In 2023, I felt confident, felt physically fit but I was still unsure if I could take off. There was no hesitation. It was the best I’ve ever felt in competition, if you can call it a competition. Usually there’s weird energy around a competition. But the Eddie is like a big barbecue, a big luau. They’re the best days you could imagine. Even being a part of the event, even a spectator, everyone’s buzzing. Everyone’s got the same really high attitude, everyone’s high on the event. Whether you win or you get last, it doesn’t matter. 

Are you satisfied? 

Never! Never satisfied!  I want to win another Eddie! I want to be a part of another one! I want go back to Nazaré. I don’t care about the biggest wave in the world, but if I get on it that would be cool! Yeah!  ‘Seventy-year-old rides a two thousand foot wave!’ I’m not done yet. I’m not complacent but I’m not crying like I used to when I was never satisfied, when I was insatiable, thinking I was never in the right place. I wanted to be everywhere at once. I’m satisfied and grateful to be where I am. Fuck it, I’m not going anywhere. 

(This story first appeared in The Surfer’s Journal, 34:1.)