One day we were sitting on the rocks off First Point, watching the women’s pro longboarding heats, checking out our friend’s competition for the quarter final. I can’t remember all the surfers in that heat, but what I do remember is at one point one of the women getting a nice wave and the announcer calling that wave and referencing the woman surfing as “the surfer in blue”. As in,

And that was a great wave for the surfer in blue!

My very astute and observant friend (let’s call him Mark) leaned across to me and explained,

So that ‘surfer in blue’ is the current women’s world longboarding champion, Jen Smith. There is no way Harley would ever get called ‘the surfer in blue’ in any heat, semi or final. That’s shit.

He was right. That surfer in blue was the then world champion, Jen Smith*. And he’s also right that it was shit that the commentator had no idea who she was. We listened to hear what happened next. What happened next was a fair bit of silence over the mic and then a return to commentating with the name ‘Jen Smith’ flying from his lips. I have a feeling Mark wasn’t the only one who was shocked by his lack of knowledge.

You know the kind of surf I’m talking about, right?

Well, I had forgotten just how wonderful that get-home-and-stand-in-the-kitchen-in-my-swimmers-gushing-to-mum-and-then-collapsing-into-the-shower-after-a-perfect-surf feeling is!! It’s heaven.

And there was dinner waiting for my tired, happy body after that shower too, by the way.

Per-fec-tion.

The other week I was driving into town from the highway when I looked up and saw this cloud that looked disarmingly like a dolphin jumping out of the ocean. Now, I’m notoriously suspicious of dolphins (I find all that “smiling” is slightly creepy and I can’t forgive how much they can look like sharks) but I was compelled to stop and record it.

Ok, so I was a moment too late to get it in all its jumping perfection, but you can see what I mean. And that afternoon when I went surfing, the water was slightly murky after all the rain. Not gross, just not clear. I was paddling back out after a wave, when two dolphins jumped out of the water, side by side. They leapt out of the face of the wave and crashed into the water in front of me, speeding under my board and away. It was a very dolphin day that one.

In Noosa there was a dolphin under my board as well. It popped up next to me and then swam away. I didn’t see it again.

I know these experiences are cool, and I do honestly feel lucky that I get to be in the water so close to them. Sometimes I feel guilty though, because I know other folk would get more out of it than me. I just don’t go much for the anthropomorphism nor the spirituality that people attribute to them, so that stuff is wasted on me.

Your ideas, thoughts, excitement, heart, mind and body all spill out through your fingers, hands and feet. They move out through the things you create and easily become lines, sounds and shapes on a page or a canvas or in the water.

It all makes sense.

And then, some days, it’s not like that at all. You stall, and the lines and shapes are stilted and awkward. Ideas come to nothing, there is no motivation and everything feels heavy and cumbersome and badly drawn. Trying harder and pushing more makes little difference and the only thing you can do is… stop.

Stop fighting and give yourself time to cool or warm, or time or change direction or whatever it is that moves you out of the creative doldrums.

You can stop looking for inspiration and instead allow yourself to just enjoy and feel, and have it sit with you in that moment only – stop trying to find any meaning in it, stop trying to translate it, stop trying to make it say anything.

But it’s good to find meaning and to translate ideas and experiences. And after all, the longer you stop, the more momentum you lose. The creativity begins to curdle inside as it mixes too completely with sadness and boredom so you need to search out points of connection again. Points where things matter and mean something – even if only to you – so you can start yourself up again.

My life in Brisbane and the commitments I have here mean that I lack the resources to surf – namely time and money. The hours and costs involved in driving to and from the coast limit my opportunities, and the work I moved here to do has also taken up much more of the time and energy I have available for other things.

Sometimes, I get really bummed about it. Especially when, like this past weekend, there is decent swell. At these times I get texts and calls and invitations from home,

Come home! There’s swell! Why aren’t you coming down?

Or much worse (and meaner) is,

Haha! Did you see how much swell there is? And you’re missing it! Haha!

One friend put it like this,

You are writing about surfers and this is what surfers do. You go when the waves tell you, not when your schedule allows. Nowthat’s a blog topic for you, haha.

My friend is right, and I know that and feel terrible about it, but I still find it hard to explain to friends, crew and loved ones why I’m not there, and why I can’t find the resources to get there, let alone reconciling all of that for myself!

But it has made me think about the ways that surfing is available and accessible to different people, and the ways they negotiate and get through that. If I had the resources, I would love to explore the area around here more and learn what it’s like to surf from Brisbane. But to do that involves a combination of a car, petrol, ferries, food, accommodation etc etc. The bottom line is that I don’t live next to the beach anymore, so I can’t afford the time and money to go for a surf whenever I would like. Even when there is swell.

I think it’s a good lesson for me though – about the realities of access, costs and time – and in a funny way, it makes it even more precious. When I get to the coast I always enjoy myself – whether the waves are lovely or small or massive or blown out or busy or cold or few and far between. None of that bothers me anymore. I go surfing when and how I can, and I am always stoked for that.

It was a good day to not make mistakes. The sets were coming through pretty close in, but every so often a big, fat, wide wave or two would smash through and clean out the crew sitting wide. Funny to watch from the beach though… Anyway, as I stood waiting, a guy walked down and was standing next to me. He was holding a longboard under his arm, and as I checked him out, I realised he had no legrope.

That’s not unusual in these parts, but when it’s as big and busy as this, even the die-hard-non-legrope-wearing locals bow to that length of plastic to connect them to their board. I had to comment, No legrope, huh. You’re game. He looked at me with a delightful mixture of smugness and confidence, Legropes are cheating. I laughed. Well, I guess that makes me a cheater. He smiled, shrugged and went on his way. Around here, there’s loads of crew who don’t wear leggies. Most of them are good surfers and they know the breaks and how they work. But when they lose their board, it can get messy. One local grump lost his board near me once, and then had a go at me for not grabbing it for him. I was on a wave by the way!

I’ll admit that I often go bare-legged when I surf, but not when it’s busy. When it’s small and peeling and fun, it’s fun to paddle out and take responsibility for your board and your surfing. I was talking to a friend about it the other day. She reckons more people should surf without them, It would make them more careful and they’d have to learn to hold onto their boards. True. But I’m pretty happy that (almost) everyone’s been sporting them the past few weeks. I would’ve been clocked a few times without them.

Today, I was out in the water, when the cute guy from the few days before paddled past me. Hey! and a smile. He was riding something short and fat and round and, hang on, HE WAS WEARING A LEGROPE! It was my turn to be smug, Soooo, I thought legropes were cheating? Oh? Oh yeah. Ha ha. Only on that board. This board’s different… Really, so it’s a board-based thing? There’s conditions on the cheating rules? Yeah, would you like a copy of them? Oh how we laughed. But honestly, if you’re going to go around making ‘legropes are cheating’ claims to complete strangers, then you better be consistent.

Or cute.

…

I went with some friends – Noe, Nat and Rich. We turned up at the only viable spot, where it was breaking one to two foot. It was small, but the waves were lovely and clean and they were breaking all along the beach. Luckily, there was no real sweep and the tide had taken a lot of water out, so the paddling was easy for my poor, exercise-deprived body.

The sky was clouded, dull and grey but the water was clear and warm (especially considering it’s winter!) and we all went out with a fair bit of enthusiasm for it all. And we got a lot of little waves. A lot. And it was lots of fun.

At one point, I was lying on my board, smiling and waving at Noe as she paddled into a pretty little wave and she was smiling back and then, all of a sudden, the sun burst out through the grey sky! The water glowed green and everything turned to glass. As I watched Noe paddle, the wave she was on lit up from within, light sparkling out through the water beneath and around her. It was truly beautiful. She jumped up and caught that wave, trimming and turning for a good 50 metres until it spilled and disappeared into the shallows.

Sometimes, I have moments in the water where I remember why I love surfing so, so much. Often these moments aren’t about me as much as they are about the ocean, the sky, the sun, my friends, and sharing all of these things at once. It’s like a real feeling of being in the world.

This was one of those moments, and it will sustain me until I get in the water next. Whenever that might be…

I haven’t been getting home so much recently, so when I do, I go surfing with my friends. We catch up, we hang out, we laugh, we catch waves. To be honest, I don’t really want to be on my own much when I do get home, and I like surfing with my friends, so it works out best for me.

But on Saturday morning no one was up yet and the bay beaches were flat, so I went and checked over behind my place. I live on a long, open beach, and usually it’s not so suited to a longboard, but it was small and looked ok and the water looked nice, so I thought, why not?

I paddled out with no legrope, which was a bit of an oversight because losing my board there, on my own, would have sucked. Usually, that would make me over-cautious, but, well, I didn’t really care. (And I didn’t lose my board.) The waves were fine – they were small and kind of closing out, but they were pretty and fast and the water was clear and the sun was shining and there was no competition. I was happy.

Between small sets, I sat and thought about the guy who drowned there the week before. Everyone has been talking about it. I don’t know a lot, but he went surfing with his mates and was over it so went in on his own, but something happened in that short amount of time and he washed up on the beach two days later. He was a traveller, from somewhere else, some other country, and had been living here for a year, apparently. His family was far away and may not see the place where he visited and drowned. I don’t know much else – I don’t know if he was experienced in the ocean or not, or if he was a reckless person or a strong swimmer or whatever. I don’t know. But it’s sad. We have a lot of these stories in my town of travellers and visitors. And they’re always sad, and are often recalled and mourned in local conversations about the beach; these nameless people become a part of the place in a way they could never have imagined. Many of the local surf crew have dragged in bodies, or found them, or helped people out, or tried to resuscitate someone. They’re not usually well equipped for these situations, but they always help. I’m proud of them for that.

**********

Earlier in the morning, when I walked to the shops to get a coffee and a croissant, Bernie had warned me about going out at that beach.

Be careful, Bec. That beach is dangerous. You dunno what’s gonna happen. Don’t go out on your own. Go into town.

I was confused though, because it’s my beach. Yeah, it’s dangerous and sketchy and unpredictable and isolated and people drown there every year, and sometimes I get scared. But it’s the beach I grew up on and it’s where I learned about the ocean and its moods. I’m not trying to sound over confident, because I’m not, but that’s why I always feel safe there.

I have a more than healthy respect for salt water, currents, rips, tides, storms, waves, gutters, schools of fish (flocks of birds), and scary conditions. I learned my limits and I learned that you are never quite in control. I learned that there are risks. But that’s my beach, that’s my ocean, that’s my home.

And I sat out in the water, content with that, feeling safe.

When I go to the beach with friends, it can be the case that I have the longest, heaviest board. Definitely not always but sometimes. And sometimes it’s kind of funny; I think of the way I can be carrying this big heavy board down to the water, while my much stronger guy friends can skip along with their little, thin, light boards tucked under their arms, barely noticeable as far as weight goes. But it’s ok and it wouldn’t even cross my mind to ask them to swap with me. I wouldn’t think to ask them to carry my big board for me, because it’s not really an issue. It’s the board I ride and I carry it all the time, so I’m used to it’s cumbersome weight. It’s a part of going surfing, it’s a part of my choice to surf longboards.

And it’s rare that anyone has ever even thought to ask me if I’d like to swap boards with them. In fact, only twice ever, that I can think of, now that I’m thinking about it. For the same reasons I don’t ask them I guess – it isn’t really an issue.

One time, ages ago, an old friend carried my board up the beach for me. I don’t know why. He was already carrying his own mal and mine was on the sand because I’d been waiting for him and he just came up and picked it up and carried on with a board under each arm. I objected, but he said it was ok. It was certainly impressive, but we don’t have the kind of friendship where we need to impress each other (we’re more like feuding brother and sister than friends), and he knows that I can do things for myself, but it’s just something he did. Thanks though!

And the other week another friend was visiting me in Byron, borrowing my shorter 7’4″ to ride while I stayed on a mal. We walked a way around a headland to surf and as we walked he offered to swap boards with me, then instantly stopped and wondered if he’d said the wrong thing? It was very sweet. I declined, but not to prove a point, just because, well, I can carry my board. I carry it all the time, I’m used to it and it was probably easier for me to handle its breadth and length it than him, who usually rides boards that are much, much smaller. It was lovely and thoughtful of him to ask, and if I did need help I would have accepted, but I was fine. And also, carrying my own board is a part of surfing that means something to me.

In an overly considered way, it’s part of how I feel connected and capable and strong in ways that I didn’t used to. I can negotiate my long, heavy board long distances along paths and up and down clif tracks and through trees and across hot sand and carparks. I get it down to the water’s edge and then I manage to get all 9-plus feet of it through and beyond the breaking waves and out the back. I weave it over and under and through the wash, sometimes struggling to hold onto it as the power of the wave throws me and my board back and as the rip pulls me in exactly the opposite direction from where I want to be. But I do it, and it’s something that I am proud of.

Because I am not, historically, a very strong person. So until I knew I could do things like carry my longboard I would always ask for help if I came across something heavy that needed to be lifted. But now, I do it myself.

For example, I recently went and bought some bookshelves from a major-multinational-furniture-company-that-shall-remain-alluded-to, and when I was there I realised that the packaged furniture I wanted really needs two people to carry it. But I, in my fitted, pink dress and heels, wrangled two tall, un-assembled boxed bookcases off the shelves and onto a trolley and through the register. I somehow managed to (just) control the trolley and I wove my way through the labyrinthine carpark to my silver car and I re-organised the space inside and I somehow pushed and pulled the long, heavy packages in there. I struggled like hell and it sucked, but I did it.

But I couldn’t have done that a few years ago. I would have had to go and find a (male) assistant to help me do all those things. I would have had to stand back and watch and marvel at his masculine strength as he did this job that I would never have attempted. It wouldn’t have mattered that I wouldn’t have done it, but it’s just that I wouldn’t have even thought that I could. And sure, I had to get my much stronger flatmate to carry the boxes up the stairs when I got home, but even I can recognise my limits. That’s not the point though because when it counted, when I was alone and had few options, I was ok. I could do it.

And what would it mean if I couldn’t carry my own board? It would limit me in a potential number of ways. Either I would have to only surf boards that I could carry or I would have to rely on someone stronger to transport my board for me when I wanted to surf. That’s fine, but it would mean that surfing was a lot more negotiated. I imagine that the weight of those old wooden boards Back In The Day meant that surfing was negotiated for many women and men. The change in materials, the change in weight, opened surfing up to a host of new surfers. I love fibreglass for that, for giving me access to surfing.

So it’s funny how these little things – like carrying a surfboard and being able to go surfing whenever I want – can come to mean something more. And it probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone else, but to me, it means the world!