A thrilling adventure to surf empty cold-water reef ledges, and filmed before the country was burned to a cinder.

Russell Bierke is one of those breathtakingly rare surfers who aren’t quite WCT level and yet in some way are far more magical.

Russell is twenty-two years old, diminutive and old world. A bantamweight, small, muscular and wiry. He was born in Hawaii and is the son of the Californian-born shaper Kirk Bierke whose boards are sold under the label KB Surf and made in Ulladulla, three hours south of Sydney. Russell’s earliest memories are of watching his dad run out the door whenever the surf was big, going to the beach and seeing him ride these big, blue-water reef waves, and wanting to be part of the game.

He has nearly been ushered into heaven several times (read about the time he was “blue as a Smurf and all fours spewing” after a wipeout in Victoria) and Russell was the protagonist in the highly cited film Flow State, which was released in October.

This film, in which he co-stars with his Ulladulla neighbour and pal Darcy Piper, features these two little bees drawing their nectar and existing in a state of perpetual euphoria from a series of empty ledges along the coastline of…oh we really don’t need that detail do we?

All of this was filmed before the inferno that engulfed Australia and had, at one point, flames licking at the border gates of Bondi Beach.

RIGHT AS RAIN – RUSS AND DARCY from O’Neill Australia on Vimeo.

Believe in the magic of sand…

In this film from the prolific Rory Pringle, which features his master Mason Ho and a network of fellow North Shorians, we are gifted the miracle of a one-day sandbar.

“Few days ago a big swell hit the Hawaiian Islands and pushed sand all over the place,” writes Mr Pringle. “When this happens it makes special waves in places that usually don’t have waves. Surf spots like this only last a little while. This specific sandbar lasted only about 12 hours till it was gone and the boys were on it!”

Oh yes they were.

Like a bomb whose slow fuse has finally reached the dynamite, the sandbar explodes into life.

This little film, short enough to keep your attention but long enough to gift a complete examination of the surfing, is a whirlwind, a dazzling frenzied whirlwind that will tear you up by the roots and carry you high into the heavens, to places you did not know existed.

Pick a teepee and just…poke it, says Mason of the Pipeline takeoff that stopped the world.

Every evening, one imagines Mason Ho rubbing lineament on his aching knees before he puts on his favourite lounge ensemble of lavender pyjamas, robe and bedroom slippers.

He puts a chair near the front window so he can look out for pretty girls with the dusky sloe-eyed loveliness so common in Hawaii.

Mason is thirty-one years old, is the son of Mike, sixty-two, nephew of Derek, fifty-five, and brother to Coco, twenty-eight.

Like Daddy, like Unc, Mason sits enshrined at the top of the Pipeline pecking order.

Mason says his Pipe and Backdoor strategy is simple.

Pick a teepee and just…poke it.

“When it gets really steep, I just poke it down, poke the nose down, just like you’re going to poke…something else. You just aim it, and get as deep as you can.”

Here, from three day ago, an animated portrait of laid-back élan.