Wild New Surf Dance Craze

I know these guys aren't necessarily oldfartsurfers, however, this is crazy looking stuff filmed by a GoPro Camera fixed to the nose of a board looking backward. Some cool moves to cut on the disco floor in flairs a-la John Travolta. Footage from Sean Davey at www.seandavey.com

Sean Davey

The Oldfartsurfer has a vague recollection of meeting Sean in the early 70's when he was a bearded kneeboarder. Someone correct him if he is wrong. He had a tale of surfing Boneyard by himself and having the end of his flipper bitten off. Could be the wrong bloke but its a great story. The Oldfart was just an impressionalble grom at the time and history changes with age. In any event it is great to see a Tassie guy do so well with his art. Sean is now based in Hawaii and his photos are widely published. check out Sean's web site at http://seandavey.com/ or via the link on the side bar of this blog. Sean's latest book is of King Island and you can check it out through his site.

Modern Longboard

Check out this video on Global Surfindustries Modern Longboard. It gives a great account of the design of the board and why it works.

Alison Aprhys Writer & Photojournalist

According to her web site "Alison Aprhys is a well-known journalist, whose articles and images have appeared in the Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian as well as many print and online magazines and journals". The Oldfartsurfer had a chance meeting with her at a seminar full of professional marketing types at the top of an office tower in Melbourne's CBD mid way through last year. She was doing some work for an accounting or law firm and neither of us knew anyone else in the room. I soon discovered that she and her husband lived down Torquay way, were stoked on surfing and that she had this surf journalism business going. Check out her web site at http://www.shewrites.com.au/profile.html (there is a link on the side bar of this blog), there is a great article she has done for Slide Longboarding magazine on "Mal and the Longboarders" , a band of surfers based in Byron Bay (where else). These dudes sound a bit like The Old Farts Surf Co., right down to the team waves and making noise in an old club house.

Frogs invade State and Lucky Break at Carlton River

The Dude and the Mexican headed off at sparrows fart this morning to catch a 1.5m SW and NE wind at Roaring. On arrival there were eight NSW plated cars and vans and one Vic in the car park. No one could be seen and we feared another Jonestown massacre. We climbed to the top of the dune to check the surf. It looked solid but no shape and the wind was SE. We walked to the beach to see if there was a chance of a wave at the southern corner and found a dozen sleeping bags filled with bodies, cacoon like, lying on the beach with a few goon bags lying around. Must have been a big night under the stars. We crept past so as not to disturb, one bag stirred a little but the others were deadly still. At the beach we found there was no chance of a decent wave so we returned to the car park and guy with a north American accent and his girl emerged from one of the vans. Apparently the convoy of cars turned up on dark and a lot of what he thought were french speaking dudes unloaded all their gear and disappeared down to the beach. On the trip home we called into Carlton River on the off chance the swell was big enough to make it happen. It wasn't perfect and a bit fast and crumbly to make it too far down the line but we grabbed the mals that we had taken on the off chance and had a ball. It started out about waist high and by about 10 am some solid head high sets were coming through. When we started there were only a couple of goat boats out but the crowed reached about half a dozen by the time we got out. Chances were it could have improved later, particularly if the wind swung a bit to hold the waves up.