Showing posts with label surfing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label surfing. Show all posts

Belonging

Photo taken by Joy Georgeson at Flynnes Beach, Port Macquarie, June 2013
 
Along the beach
I walk alone
The waves my family
Each grain of sand
My home

Point Danger

A visit to the far North coast and the co-joined twin towns of Tweed Heads and Coolangatta could not be deemed complete without visiting the iconic surfing breaks of D'bar and Snapper Rocks. Breeding grounds for many Aussie surfing legends and host to some of the biggest competitions in the world these two places flank Point Danger, named by Captain James Cook in 1770 after his ship the 'Endeavour' was forced further out to sea by shallow reefs. 

 

Grommets head to the breaks while the Mt Warning National Park can just be seen in the distance behind the high-rise holiday apartments in Cooly...


D'bar to the south on a beautiful autumn Saturday morning. A fairly small swell but that didn't deter 50 or 60 to go out. All of them seemed under 20 years old and all of them hot riders, with most probably starting surfing when they were 6 or 7. Crowded but still a little room to move, unlike...

 

Snapper Rocks where there was an insanely large crowd all vying for position along the formation known as the 'superbank'. Not only dangerous, but downright unpleasant. Late take-offs frighteningly close to the rocks were the order of the day, and if you were lucky enough to find yourself in the groove then threading your way through the crowd was nightmarish. Personally I thought something had gone terribly wrong here. The idea of surfing as being at one with nature and having a spiritual element had been lost. This was more akin to dodgem cars at sideshow alley. The less said about my local break on the far South coast, where 8 out is starting to seem like a crowd, the better.

Winter swells

At Camel Rock...

Big Day at Camel Rock

Bob Georgeson, Big Day at Camel Rock, 2010, Photomontage, Private Collection

Sometimes you have to remember your roots, and this work was inspired by my love of, and obsession with surfing (when I was young enough to get out there!). It is also an acknowledgement of honesty when it comes to big swells, new technologies and the 'philosophy' of surfing, a point maybe lost on today's young guns who sometimes forget in their desire to get aerial that there is a serenity and balance in functional surfing that has at its heart being 'at one' with the forces of nature.

However on this day who needs Pipe when the Rock is pumping perfect lefts at 4 metres?


The crowd watched as a lone knee boarder entered the water...