Excerpt: 'When The Ocean Awakens' by Marti Paradisis

No-one would call the line surfers take through the Shippies steps easy, but everyone now knows it's possible.

This wasn't the case 25 years ago when the wave first received national exposure. At the turn of the century, slab surfing was in its infancy, surfers didn't even know what kind of board to ride - amazingly, Kieren Perrow rode a 7'6" during his spectacular Shippies debut - leave alone how to negotiate the Bluff's moving mogul field.

In time, board sizes came down and a path of least resistance was plotted. We know this because the rise of Shipsterns was well documented in the surf media.

Less well known are the challenges those photographers and videographers faced to bring us those images. Make no mistake, in shooting as in surfing, there are limits, and it takes a special kind of photographer to seek them out. After all, there's far less acclaim being a daring photographer, so why not stay high and dry on the boat or rocks?

That wasn't Stu Gibson's response when he first started shooting Shipsterns. Much as the surfers were testing the ridable limits of the wave, Gibbo, armed with flippers and a fish-eye lens, was testing the survivable limits - all to capture the now ubiquitous 'surfer and bluff' angle of Shippies.

The following excerpt is taken from Marti Paradisis' forthcoming book 'When The Ocean Awakens'. Marti has collected stories from his friends and peers, the generation of surfers who discovered some of Tasmania's wildest waves and charged as hard as any visiting pro surfer.

Or in Gibbo's case, as hard as any visiting pro photographer.

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I was going over some footage after shooting video from the water on a small day down at Shippies when I came across this one wave of Tyler where he hit a pretty hectic step, sending him airborne. I kept pausing and rewinding it, and with Tyler in mid-flight, I took a screen shot of the image. All I could think was, “God, I wish that was a photo.” The footage was pretty lame - he ended up wiping out - but the still shot I could have got in that position, on that wave, with the right camera, was amazing.

I was devastated, but at the same time it gave me all the motivation I needed to push me in a new direction. My path and goal from that moment twenty years ago was to become the first person to shoot fish-eye photos at Shipstern Bluff.

Don't pull in from take-off, get to the steps early, bend your knees and cross your fingers - A step by step instruction guide for Shippies (Gibbo)

I was just out of school when Shippies came on the scene, and at the time I was making my first surfing film, 'I Do You Do'. I linked up with Cambo and Mark Matthews and shot a pretty amazing paddle session that featured in the film. It was something else, swimming out there amongst the energy and capturing it all up close. A short time later, I shot that aforementioned wave of Tyler and the next day I went to the local newspaper where I worked and asked if they had any old media cameras I could have, which they did. But I still needed a water housing to be able to achieve my next goal. 

Chiza is one of my good mates and at the time he was the still shots guy and I was the video guy. I didn’t want to step on any toes, so to keep the peace I bought him a water housing, secretly in the hope he wouldn’t use it. It was my dream to shoot fish-eye out there and I knew I could get shots worthy of the surfing magazines. I gave Chiz some opportunities to take the housing for a swim, but I don’t think he was quite ready for it. So, with great excitement, I started using it and the results paid off straight away.

My first published shot was probably the worst shot I’ve taken out there, a double-page spread in Australia’s Surfing Life magazine. It was of Richie Vasculik on a really small day, but it was the first shot that showed what you can get out there when positioned inside the tube with the bluff in the background. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have sent it in, because I think it probably would have been better to get a really good shot run first. But as soon as that photo made it into the magazine, I knew I was onto something, and the next swell that I shot I got a cover spread of Dustin Hollick standing tall in a backlit afternoon tube. 

That cover of Dusto is still the most significant photo I’ve ever taken. That was the dream I had: to get the shot of the surfer standing tall, in amazing lighting, with the cliffs in the background. It encompassed everything I wanted to achieve with a fish-eye and I love that it was shot on an old film camera too. I’ve technically shot much better photos over the years, but that one means the most to me. 

"The most significant photo I’ve ever taken" - Gibbo

On the lead up to that session, I had pulled an all-nighter on the town partying. I passed out in my car as the sun was rising and woke up at lunchtime in a carpark to a phone call from Dusto. He told me they were taking the boat to Shippies and to get to the boat ramp asap. I was so hungover I could easily have not gone down or not answered the call. We weren’t even sure it was going to be on. But what was predicted to be an afternoon sightseeing boat trip turned into the most memorable session I’ve had down there. The torture of the boat ride, spewing up on my housing in the water and the splitting headache was all worth it once I got that shot. Because we were shooting film, you had to wait a week or so to actually see the images you had taken. As soon as I saw the shot of Dusto on the slide, I knew I’d done it.

The transition for us as a crew from being these surf rats just out of school to potentially making a career out of doing what we loved had been steep and fast. The turning point was this massive swell in the early years when Cambo had put together a homemade tow board he wanted to try out. None of us really knew what we were doing and we definitely couldn’t have imagined what would transpire. Once we were there, the swell was so much bigger than we had anticipated. Cambo ended up riding the craziest tow wave that sent shockwaves around the surfing world. 

Before that day, less than a handful of days had ever been towed down at Shippies and none had come close in comparison with the monster Cambo got then. I filmed it from water and Chiza shot it from the boat. Cambo was riding for Billabong at the time and they bought the clip outright. I was just tripping on how much they were willing to pay, but little did I know it was the normal fee at the time. One minute I was selling a few of my home videos to local surf stores for $15 a pop, the next minute I was selling a 20 second clip to a major surfing company for thousands of dollars.

It was a real weird time for all of us. I’d just left school, going, “Faaark, what are we doing with our lives?” I spent a while wondering if this surf photography was even a thing and would it be worth pursuing? While other people my age were going to university and getting apprenticeships, we were chasing a dream that many people thought we had no hope of achieving. I remember back in the day trying to work out how many double pages I’d need to sell in a year to make enough money to get by. As crazy as it sounds, it was doable, being young enough to get by on not much money. 

Those early years we were all just on a wild ride and just going with the flow. All the crew worked jobs that were flexible and allowed us to chase swells when they happened. We were always on standby, ready to go anywhere at any time. Dave Wyatt was such a big influence on us and we spent a lot of time hanging out and searching the deep south, trying to be respectful and steering clear of the spots we knew crew already chased. In our eyes we were pioneering much of the Tassie coastline. Whether we actually were or not doesn’t matter - it’s the feeling we had when we were doing it that was special.

Wild colonial boys

Many of the waves we were surfing weren’t really even waves. They were more just shallow closeout slabs that the majority of surfers wouldn’t even look at. Not out of fear; more because the waves were just stupid and mostly dangerous. For us every adventure was one of discovery and also one that we could capture the memories of through film and story. We always used the term “polishing turds”, because most of the time that’s what we were doing. Surfing shitty waves, but capturing critical moments that made breathtaking images.

I love Tassie and it has pretty much everything I can ask for. It sells itself to the avid photographer with its wild, untamed scenery and clean, pristine waters. In the winter months the low-lying sun creates the most photogenic lighting that can be utilised the whole day, rather than just at sunrise and sunset. Every mission can be new and fresh, with so many isolated areas to explore and an endless array of moods that the weather creates. But the environment can also be extreme and hazardous, and Pedra is such a place.

Pedra Branca

Our first trip to Pedra was our crew’s biggest accomplishment as a team. Pedra was our discovery, the wave my friends can lay claim to. Through Dave Wyatt and the hard work we all put into that mission we were able to experience an incredible day that was the pinnacle for our crew. Pretty much any trip we do out there seems like an achievement these days. It’s a place where I get scared even being the photographer sitting on the boat. There’s been injuries every time we have been out there - it’s like you already know something will happen before the boat even leaves port. The wave is beautiful in a very eerie way, but it’s pretty much a closeout and that’s why it’s so dangerous.

For me, these adventures with my mates over the years have created so many memories and even though our lives have changed in different ways, we still appreciate the same things that we did when we first started the journey.

// STU GIBSON as spoken to MARTI PARADISIS