Old Crust

 

I went westwards. And I drove past canyons and fields of termite mounds taller than I stand. Past snaking rivers full of muddy water full of large leathery reptiles and dozens of dirt tracks that, in a 4wd, could take you to some of the most pristine land in the world.

It’s a long way to anywhere here.

I set up camp on the banks of a dammed river. At sunset I watched the freshwater crocs swim past. That night I went looking for them on the banks with a torch.

You can see their eyes by torchlight.

I took to a piece of bank not far from my camp. It was dark and my torch was far too weak to see more than a few feet in front of me. I realized light had fallen on a crocodile when I saw my foot was about to land on it. Quick as I blinked the crocodile had returned to the river sending a shower of water over my dumbfounded self.

I got the inkling I’d best get to bed.

Coober

It’s a place so ugly the residents live underground.

It’s Coober Pedy. Where they mine shiny rocks for crust.

It’s a toilet.

Threading the Needle.

 

Tasmania was good to me but the brief Tasmanian times were over. I spent my last day drinking in a small town with a retired maths teacher who told me in his darkest times he would stroll the paddocks and talk to sheep at night.

Next evening the boat lumbered out to sea and rocked all night as it was battered by a fierce storm and an 8 meter swell.

I slept on a bench on the top deck where empty tinnies rolled around the floor and the rain leaked from the ceiling. Empty. The chairs swiveled with the rocking boat. I’d step outside for a smoke occasionally. The waves cracking into the hull would make the whole vessel shudder and soon after a rain of spray from the impact would fall on me. I didn’t get much sleep.

I had a lot to think about.

Like, where to next?

 

 

Hyrdra

 

She’s got many necks but only one mouth. They’re all over the country. Steel throats running down the hills guzzling the liquid that sets her teeth spinning. With lips of concrete pushing back the flow. Making the flood.

She’s shits power for the people. 

 

 

Bowling

 

I’m like a dog chasing a car. When I catch one I don’t know what to do with it.

That’s how it rolls when I’m looking for waves. Its sketch looking at a raw 3 meter swell wrap around a slab of basalt with bullkelp ripping up the face. It’s a tough call to suit up and paddle across that deep channel to throw yourself into what is really, when you think about it, a pretty stupid situation.

More often than not on this trip I made the call not to go. Straight up. I ain’t brave.

I love the search though. Finding breaks.

From rumors, faded shots in an old surf mag you found in a servo toilet, from looking at a map and just going ‘I reckon that’s got potential’.

 

I met some of the people who were the first to find and surf these waves while I was looking around this coast. The ones who named them.

The ones who drink concrete.

 

Moss Beds

“Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.”
― Matthew Gregory Lewis, The Monk

‘Shoot the Mountain’

Akira Kurosawa shot his last film when he was nearly blind. It was an adaptation of Hamlet set in feudal Japan. It was an epic.

I watched a documentary on the making of the film. So the day is set up, 100’s of extras are ready, foot-soldiers, Samurai on horseback, a giant castle set.

This massive sequence, it’s been rehearsed dozens of times. Now they only need to shoot it.

As they roll on the first take a heavy fog falls upon the set.

The crew panic and turn to their leader, the ancient Mr. Kurosawa, perched in his directors chair above the whole scene.

‘Sir what will we do?’

Without pause he lifts a hand and points behind them all, past the hundreds of actors, the lighting rigs, the crew and the 360 degree replica feudal-era styled castle set.

The frail, near blind, auteur points to a back-lit mountain peaks with drifts of cloud pouring down over its shoulders.

“Shoot the mountain…”