The Outsider - Day One
Steve Shearer March 30, 2009
This is how it begins...
Standing outside a ramshackle airport at midnight surrounded by a post-apocalytic industrial wasteland. Broken-down fences and a dog barking in the far-off distance. Talking to an overweight cabbie, shivering in the cold night air. The industrial hum resonates in the back of the ears like a cold wind. A Korean couple walk past, the last remaining passengers. A bus driver asks me in a thick Russian accent, "You look lost. You come with me?" "Nah....I know where I'm going thanks"
Victoria.
Places in the Mind Kidman coined it. I don't think he had this kind of place in mind though.
The contest begins this morning, and there is business to attend to. The paperwork must be put in order, the press pass made legit.
For those new to this story, I had recently published a feature article highly critical of the Rip Curl proposal to hold a Search event at my home break of Lennox Head. It takes a certain amount of brazen shamelessness to show on their home turf expecting the privileges of the press to be made available. But I'd just seen Tom Curren. By bizarre co-incidence I'd been walking side-by-side with him into the maw of the contest structure. His face looked taciturn and his brow deeply furrowed, an expression of deep existential distress which seems to have grown on him with middle age. That sighting offered solace and strength, so I walked into the media room to get legit.
The doors swung open and a moment of pregnant silence ensued. I felt like a target was tattooed on my forehead that said: HATER OF PRO SURFING. EXTERMINATE. WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE.
A charming lady with a dignified bearing ratified my requests. My companion whispered that was Maurice Cole's daughter. I told the lady I'd had a couple of magic surfboards off her Dad. She smiled graciously. I said I admired his political convictions and his courage in standing up to the racism and xenophobia of Pauline Hanson.
She said her Dad stood up for what he believed in. That is rare. Most men are playthings of forces beyond their control, unable to muster the will or courage to fly a flag of dissent in the face of the buffeting winds of history.
This couldn't have been a more positive opening exchange. I was expecting frostiness, open hostility and got, by association, what felt like an endorsement.
Steph and Tyler Wright were in the water. The surf was dribbly and sectiony but a surfable 2-3 feet through Rincon. The bleachers were empty. The hills were clothed in browning grass and drab, low shrubs with a distinctive smell. After the luxuriant and almost dazzlingly bright late summer vegetation and iridescent blue water flooding in from the tropical Pacific of Lennox the muted colours seemed depressing.
I chatted to Steph and Tyler post heat. Steph had pipped Tyler in the closing minutes with a confident and committed ride. I become more curious of women's surfing by the day. There's a perma-smile and glossiness to Steph Gilmore. But every so often the smile relaxes and a different and countervailing expression flashes on that open visage for a split second. It's an expression of pure and unabashed strength of will: a steeliness that acts as ballast and way finder to the goofy and carefree public face.
Adrian De Souza is walking up the carpark as I walk out. There are questions I want to ask him about anti-Brazilian bias, but I don't. The sun has warmed up slightly and the wind is still janglingly cold. It puts me on edge. Like the Hawaiian Mokes in Big Wednesday I say to myself:"nah, we get 'im later."
One day contests like these; with their massive sprawling infrastructure, will be extinct like the dinosaurs. The mid-year pruning of the WCT from 45 to 32 will begin that process. But for now the prestige of history holds the line in the sand against an advancing tide.
I walk onto the presentation stage and ring an imaginary Bell. My audience: a couple of Brazilian girls, laugh at the absurdity.
Later, wandering around Jan Juc, lost in a maze of suburban streets I asked a dark-haired girl for directions. It was Silvana Lima, who was scintillating earlier at Rincon. She said she wasn't a local and couldn't help. As I wandered off into the golden hued Victorian afternoon she yelled out in a South-American lilt "Hey man. Hope you find what you're looking for!"
Yeah, me too.