"I feel like Australian surfing's cultural continuum had been severed in '56, when the surfers left the surf clubs. Surfers just disowned their elders and their previous culture and I don't think thats healthy for any culture. I think a lot of the drug casualties we've seen since have been as a result of that. Modern surf culture suffered from not having a continuous lineage."
"We were at Wategos, it was perfect, small, hip high, shoulder high. I had all these unbelievably stunning girls come down the beach to tandem surf, and not one guy. Not one guy put up his hand."
"The shark is five metres long, he's stuffed and his name is Frankie. My father caught him in a 3.5 metre dinghy when I was about four years old."
He rode into town on a proud, white stallion, but he was no stranger to these parts. Hell no, Gra Murdoch has worked in the surf media for over a quarter of a century. He's a grizzled veteran on the cemetery side of forty, and he's also the man at the helm of publishing nonpareil, White Horses.
After seven years of tenacious competition, South Australia's Dion Atkinson is oh-so-close to realising his ambition. Atkinson sits in 30th position and technically inside the cut-off for next year's WCT. However, there's one more contest on the 'CT calendar - the Pipe Masters - and a reshuffle of lower ranked surfers could see Dion on the wrong side of the ribbon.
From a Cronulla grommet to a Top 16 professional, an acclaimed designer and shaper, and the ultimate explorer of the Indonesian Archipelago, there is not much in surfing that he has not experienced.
"I wouldn’t say that I’m cynical. I say things how I see them. There has been a lot of conjecture about me, a lot of half myths, so one of the reasons I agreed to do the film was to break down those perceptions."
"Film is a powerful medium for expression, challenging status quo and having a voice. This film is important for the one-tenth of the community that is gay and for those that are struggling with finding their place in the world, when surfing is also a part of that world."
"We don't see ourselves as competing with the surf magazines. The audience who we're trying to talk to are the people who feel a strong connection to the ocean. Some of them obviously are going to be surfers, but more widely they could be people who fall under all sorts of groupings."
I like shooting with my Polaroid land camera, then taking a photo of the Polaroid with my Rolleiflex. I then develop that film, enlarge it in the darkroom and shoot the print with my 7D, email the file directly to my iPhone 5 via bluetooth, create negative space using Whitagram and upload to my Instagram.
"What would you do? You've got a brother, are you gonna fuck him over for your own journalistic ambitions? What would you do..?"
When your older brother is acclaimed as one of the most talented surfers of his generation and the pundits proclaim you to have equal ability, a pro surfing career seems inevitable. Brett Herring walked away from that to follow a different path. It has been a long and varied journey and it is very far from finished.
