The Ed.

If you had a different point of view at your place of work from that of your private life I’m guessing you wouldn’t want your employers knowing that. If your views were consistent, wouldn’t you hope your employer at least shared similar views? Would you be worried about your employers reading your views?

I would like to think that an employer would encourage employees to have views and express them. At least that way they would quickly find out who held potentially morally objectionable opinions and could either educate them or get rid of them.

What if you were the editor of a magazine read by hundreds and you wanted your views kept separate from any association with that mag? Is that possible? Secretly perhaps, under a pseudonym maybe? What if everyone knew who you were anyway, why would try to distance yourself from that magazine while at the same time spruiking it? 

Presumably as an editor you’d be responsible for the content of that magazine; your name is in the liner notes along with your e-mail address. Your mag also promotes itself on social networks. Social networks don’t conform to hours of work, they’re open nonstop for business, and users know you are that editor. Is it unreasonable to assume they will associate you with the content of that mag and also assume that your views are represented by the content of that mag?

I know not the first thing about editing a magazine but I’m pretty sure I’d be proud of the fact that I had achieved that position. I’d like to think I’d be proud of the content of my mag and that my personality and points of view were reflected in that magazine and that hopefully people liked those and bought it; and surely if people bought it your employer would be happy? I’d put my name to it and encourage everyone to buy it, and those that didn’t like it I would listen to, I’d try to be polite and I’d try not to belittle anyone (ever). I’m sure I’d get frustrated but I’d like to think I’d take a deep breath and let my mag speak for me.

Unless of course my hands were tied behind my back by advertisers.

Old woman Island (Mudjimba)

Assad's army

Just realised this has never appeared on the blog. Published in two magazines and and The Inertia online but never on here. So here ya go..

It wasn't a surf trip. I knew this before we set off, but it was going to be about 25,000km and nearly a year before I was going to catch up with my boards that I'd left at a mates in Singapore, so I snuck one in. Of course I did, it might not have been a surf trip but we were going through eighteen countries to get from England to Australia and there was room in the car. I wasn't expecting my first fix of saltwater to be such a drama though.

Ten countries ticked off and I was already hanging for a surf. We'd just got to Syria after being kicked back by Iran and having to resort to plan B, actually, having to invent plan B. We were fraught and a bit fed up. A fix of sea air and all the associated positive ions was needed. They do have beaches in Syria; they have a massive 60km of coastline that sits on the Med. So we set off from Aleppo for what we thought would be an afternoon’s drive to the beach. The motorway and its associated Deathrace2000 style driving got us to the foot of the Mountains that parallel the coast with unexpected haste, but by the time we traversed the winding roads we realised we were pushing it to get there before dark. We should've stopped. It's always our rule not to drive at night in a foreign country. It was pitch black when we got there.

Trying to find a free-camp to pop up a roof tent is a challenge in the daytime but at night it makes it all that much harder. All we needed was access onto a beach, we had four wheel drive. After much fruitless searching we at last spotted a track heading down between the trees in the direction of the beach. It was looking like a winner. But after 500m we come across a chain across it. It's really not worth risking it so I slid the shift into reverse. This is where it all went tits up.

Occasionally there are things that you see with your eyes that sometimes your brain needs a moment to process. Some of them take your breath away for all the right reasons, like seeing the Taj Mahal or Carroll's snap at Pipe in '91, but a teenager in combats with cammo paint on his face and the biggest machine gun he could possibly carry running at the car with the barrel pointing straight at us shouting in Arabic at the top of his voice, was not one I want to happen again. His teeth were the brightest thing about him being massively illuminated by our two huge spotlights. His aim was firmly at my wife sat in the passengers seat. Of course it was, we were in a Right hand drive Landcruiser  in a  Left hand drive country. He thought she was behind the wheel. He didn't even know she was a she. He couldn't see fuck all 'cos I was blinding him.

My brain was catching up now and I killed the lights and grabbed a torch which I frantically played between my wife and I, the boy soldier hadn't stopped screaming, more of them started appearing from the bushes all running, all carrying guns, and all apparently in their teens. One of them was obviously slightly more in charge than the rest and came to the passenger window. I tried to point out that I was driving but they seemed happy hanging out near the blonde blue eyed side. The original mini militia had calmed down a bit and I tried at this point to say sorry and put the car in reverse. Bad move. Twelve people screaming and pointing guns at us. I turned the engine off.

Whether or not Red Bull or the Bolivian government sponsor the Syrian army is hard to call but that they had been partaking in one or the other in huge quantities was a given. They were fucking wired, off their collective tit's, not only on whatever they took to stay awake but also the adrenalin coursing through them, delivered courtesy of two potential spies in their LandCruiser trying to backdoor their army barracks. An hour later and their officer turns up. He's twenty max and he's sweating, has palpitations and eyes bigger than the supermoon. He agrees to look at our photos and seems to understand that we're something he's probably never encountered before.. tourists. Another hour of idle banter is a challenge with neither of us speaking each other’s language but it doesn't deter him.

Eventually at about one o'clock in the morning we waved good bye to the underage commandos and followed a rough sketch that the space Captain had drawn us. It took us to a rocky beach that we could drive onto and park up with the sound of a contented sea slapping at the rocks to lull us to sleep. But hang on what's this, who are these two blokes that have come out of the dark and are heading towards us. I'm not even friggin kidding. Plain clothed police. I asked them for I.D., they showed me their guns. I believed them. It was obvious sleep was still some way off. A protracted conversation and many mobile phone calls later and they eventually conceded we were not providing laser targeting or photographing anything. As dawn arrived they left and we slept, on the beach with permission from the police. My wife cried uncontrollably with shock and relief. I can't even think of the horrors she'd imagined might happen.

The sunrise soon convinced us it was time to move on and we packed up and drove down the coast. Almost every kilometre along the whole 60km's was a military installation of some kind. Rocket launchers permanently manned were about every 3km. Not the nicest stretch of coast I've ever driven down if I'm honest, but.. There was without a doubt a bit of wind swell. Around the next bend a small bay opened out, a few families BBQ-ing in their chadors and burkhars and me dusting off my board and jumping in to hit a little wedge in the middle of the bay. It was tiny, it was gutless, it was onshore but by fucking Christ it was surfing. Strange looks aside I had a blast and hoped I'd surfed away enough of the last 24hrs for both of us.

Peer pressure....?

Urgh.. Such a human trait. Sure, there are some that are so naturally self assured that you can't help but admire them.There are also those that are so unjustifiably naturally self assured that they can't help but grit your shit. But confronting the fact that something you strive to be good at receives accolades is.. well.. confronting! I thought that it was just because they were family or close friends, to be taken with a healthy dose of  "that's really nice of you to say so.." regardless of how 'well read' they are, or how much you value their opinion on matters not directly concerned with yourself. But when peers and magazine editors start recommending your work to each other and their readers.... Fuck, that's a whole new level of confrontation.

This guy wrote a short story (Okay, my blog, my discretionary prerogative. The story was short, maybe 800 words, but it doesn't deserve that categorisation. It didn't end at the last full stop. How great is it when that happens?) It was an attractive English 'backpackerette', it was love lost, but was it? It was in White Horses and it inspired me to write 'Julian'. 'Julian' was published in the next issue of the magazine and along side it was another contribution by the above author. I love it's rhythm, I love it's colloquialisms, I love it's cursing and I hate/love that I can directly identify with it.

Anyway... he wrote to me and told me how much he enjoyed my latest submission and could he publish it on his blog. He posted a link on his facebook page and in the comments box the magazine editor sang praise and gave directions to my other writing... I'm uncomfortably basking (It's taken 3 Coopers and the best part of a bottle of Shiraz for me to get here).

He is Matt Webber, this is his website and the following, by permission, is awesome.

For my non Antipodean readers

'Pokies' = one arm bandits/fruit machine/slot machine.
'Chook' = chicken
'Clubbie' = surf lifesaver
'cunjie' = type of seaweed

The Rock

Sea breathes in. Sea breathes out.

Prick’s perched up there like a billygoat on The Rock and making like the director of a show, one of the grandest magnitude, one where the ocean’s the fuckin’ stage and we’re but players fighting it out for a cash-in-hand extra’s slot. He barks his charges in with a machine gun staccato.

Yup. Yup. Nup. Nup. Yup.

Like black or red on the fuckin’ pokies.

The bloke out front levers himself to the spot. He’s a most unsurferly wisp, this fella. Sunken smoker’s chest. Cheap smudgy tatt on his pale left shoulder. He get’s a yup. Doesn’t fuck about. Plunges boardlong into the keyhole’s boiling mush.

Sea breathes in.

Sea breathes out.

And Wispy’s exhaled out the rear, back arched, chook arms chuggin’.

Bird’s up next, the languid one who you see down here. Turns heads with her Diaz legs and that blue and white striped mal. Can surf, this one. Nimble. Graceful. Lean. Her old man’s here a bit, too. Clingin’ to that saggin’ ex-clubbie frame, the old fella. Cranky lookin’ point-hog, all sunspots and seen-it-all machismo. That snarl’s foolin’ no one. He knows what they’re thinkin’, these blokes who ogle his baby. He was one of ‘em back in the day. It’s killin’ him.

She leaps, his girl.

Sea breathes in.

Sea breathes out.

Feet skyward, she hardly seems to stroke before she’s sucked around the corner and gone, hair still dry as bone.

My turn now. Billygoat’s all earnest instructiveness.

Hold on. Wait. Hold on.

Then he baulks, sits bolt upright.

YUP. GO. GO. GO.

I dive into the brine.

Sea breathes in.

Sea holds it fuckin’ breath.

World pauses.

I battle for the corner, but I’m retarded by a numbskull current that can’t get its shit together.

By the time I’m around, it’s a steamin’ gurglin’ wall of fuckin’ white.

*

I bail.

What else?

I’m clamberin’ downwards but there’s no grip in this kind airy green stew. Bubbles of nothin’. Just like the chocolate. Board gets caught and tugs at me like a shopping centre mum would her wayward toddler. No fuckin’ idea where I’m goin’. Hug my arms to my head. Save the noggin. Guessed it wrong. Shoulda thought of my ribs. How the ages shaped that rock. How they moulded it and cajoled it. How the tides sharpened it just so. And how the water carries the thud as I introduce myself to its evolution. I clutch for the pain and as I do drag my elbow on stone. Skin rips. Salt bites at a new wound.

Sea breathes out.

Dumps me on barnacles and whatever other godforsaken fuckin’ gremlins grow on that stone. Board’s in two bits, both bobbing, the smaller piece still attached to my ankle, stringers, all three of ‘em, frayed.

There’s a fuckin’ rockhopper standin’ there. Frozen solid, he is. Bucket and rod and just gawkin’ like American Gothic oceanside. Useless, he is. I know the feeling. There’s red seeping from a hole in my side like the one the fuckin’ Romans gave to bloody Jesus. The one that didn’t even bleed. The one that told ‘em the time was nigh. The death prod. They teach you that at school. They don’t teach you to jump The Rock. Note to fuckin’ educators everywhere – get your shit in order.

Sea breathes in.

I rise with it and cling to the cunjie too fucked to go further, too scared to let go.

I shimmy my way around and cop the cut feet and the grazed gut just to get free. Safe, I reel in my board’s lower half. Some kid hands me its torso. Blood’s in rivulets down my shins, dripping off my fingertips. Elbow’s aflame. Rashy’s been got at by Freddie Krueger.

“Fuck,” the kid says. That’s all he can manage.

And up against a clear sky sits The Rock, a fuckin’ great proud slab of conqueror.

Billygoat’s bailed now, too. Well he fuckin’ might.

Car park can’t come soon enough.

I ignore the stares and trudgin’.

 

Journey

 Below is the first piece of writing I got paid for. It was published in White Horses magazine. If you like this I can guarantee you won't be dissapointed with the mag, it's a blinder.

I’m struggling a bit with the word ‘journey’. It’s one of those words that seems to have been slightly hijacked. You know, like ‘surfing’ the internet. It would seem to have turned into more of a spiritual thing; ‘One man’s journey from rags to riches’ or ‘a child’s journey of discovery’, you see what I mean? Its original definition is ‘The act of traveling from one place to another’ but it has another now ‘A process or course likened to traveling’.  I reckon if you looked hard enough you could probably find a Buddhist or Hindu word that matches the new definition or why not even make one up? 

I’m ruminating (see what I did there) over this because my wife and I have recently completed a journey. It was an act of traveling from one place to another; we left the South West of England and arrived 2 years later on the Sunshine Coast in Australia. We did it, as much as possible, by car. The thing is that we also experienced a process or course that could be likened to travelling. A bloody journey. 

It began late summer in a Thai restaurant in Taunton, England shortly after we had been granted permanent resident visas for Australia. Our house was sold and we were winding up our businesses, we had had nothing concrete planned for our arrival in Australia but knew from previous visits that we fancied the Sunny coast. I’d heard on the news that day a story about a company in London selling tickets for a bus to Sydney. It was to take three months and would carry nineteen passengers. I told Kym about it and the discussion that followed resulted in two definites: We couldn’t travel with the same nineteen people for three months and why don’t we just do it ourselves. 

We journeyed through eighteen countries; we drove on the lowest road on Earth and the highest. We drove through deserts, crossed plateaus, breached mountain ranges and sweated in jungles while howler monkeys laughed at us. We crossed the equator, climbed volcanoes, followed in the footsteps of Richard the Lion Heart and his Knights of the Crusade.  We explored Nabatean temples in Syria and whistled the theme to Raiders of the lost Ark as we walked into Petra.  We sat on Lawrence of Arabia’s bar stool while drinking a cold beer in his favourite hotel. Agatha Christie wrote ‘murder on the Orient express’ in the same hotel (she was a surfer, true story).

We fought bureaucracy in India for days on end; we raised our hands above our head after driving into a military exercise in Syria... at night. A wheel fell off in Java; a lorry hit us in India. We had flat batteries in Mumbai and got a jump off a Tuk Tuk. We only had two punctures. We helped repair the outboard on the only ferry that could get our car across a river in Aceh. We span out from altitude sickness at five thousand metres in the Himalayas. We trashed some banana trees getting stuck in the mud trying to find a wave. We never once paid bribes to further our cause, seriously, not once. We got robbed by the mechanics in a Toyota garage in Hyderabad though. Really robbed, not just normal mechanic robbed. Jeans, sunglasses an umbrella and a hatchet. 

We called in to see a friend in the Alps and went snowboarding. We visited my Mum on her small Greek island. We spent three weeks travelling with a French family through the Middle East. Mum, Dad and three kids in a Landrover with two roof tents on top. We popped in to Singapore to pick up a couple of boards from a friend where I’d left them on the way back from Indo sometime. Shared beers in a Muslim enclave with two Dutch cyclists who were following the old Silk Road. Rescued a lovesick French boy from the frustration and tedium of the Iranian consulate in Turkey and took him on a two day holiday. 

We stayed at Lena’s house in Southern Sumatra and she took us to see the elephant rescue centre. We rented a house on Bali and all our European friends came and visited. Adi and Linda refused to let us pay for food at their sarong shop on Lombok after we’d promised that we’d be back two years before. The diminutive security guard at the abandoned resort on Sumbawa let us stay there and use the showers and toilet. An Italian girl, newly arrived on Bali was having an issue with a taxi driver, we helped her out. She worked for the UN and was currently based in Timor Leste, of course we could stay!  

I surfed. I surfed in Syria. Syria has sixty four point eight kilometres of coastline. India has a lot more and I surfed there as well. I surfed from Banda Aceh to Dili mostly alone, occasionally throwing sticks in to see how strong the sweep was or paddling from the middle of the bay out to the point to give myself a better feel for the setup. I got scared often, usually paddling across deep blue water but also by water so clear the bottom looked inches away.  Sometimes just the isolation scared me.  I surfed rivermouths, beaches, points and reefs. I can’t tell you all their names, not because I don’t want to, well there is that too, but because I have no idea if most of them had a name. They are all little crosses on a map.

Occasionally waves led to altercations. One time it was because Kym doesn’t surf. That’s not what the argument was about, that was the cause. Through the binoculars I’d spotted a long left point. The closest I could get the car was about a kilometre away; I pulled up grabbed my board and went to lock the doors. But hang on; a bag had to be prepared… water, sunscreen, something to sit on, a towel, a book, maybe a snack. I lost it. But there was little to be gained from arguing so in general we didn’t. For the most part we only had each other, and when you’re spending large chunks of time in areas where no one else speaks your language it helps if the only person that does is still speaking to you.

 It wasn’t a chore. We have always been strong, we have shared joy, which is great, and we have shared tragedy, which while certainly not great is definitely a more powerful lesson. We came through it. We’d also had practice, a year backpacking on a round-the-world ticket five years earlier highlighted how much we relied on each other. Neither one of us could have done this alone, we have become a team, a loving, living team each completely mindful of the other.  

You learn so many things. Important things like: mechanics, languages, map reading, trust (instincts), rationing, names of medicines and what they do. And also not so essential but equally as rewarding things, like: geography, history, architecture, beauty, tolerance, frugality and sustainability, recycling and repairing! We had culture shocks along the way, no more so than in India but probably the most thought provoking happened on our first day in Australia. We’d separated in a supermarket to shop quicker and when Kym still hadn’t arrived at the checkout ten minutes later I went looking for her. I found her stood in front of a six metre long display of nothing but milk sobbing her heart out.  She had no idea which one to choose.  

The journey came to an end at our little slice of paradise here on the Sunny Coast. A small Queenslander in a beautiful paddock surrounded by rainforest.  The journey continues unabated. 

Here's a whole buch of photos from along the way in no particular order. You can supersize them if you click on 'em. 

2008 Country life UK style with mates dog Ruby.

The inside of the citadel in Aleppo, Syria. So glad we got to see it before the current situation there.

NE Turkey in the Georgian valleys

Crac De Chevalier probably the most famous of the Crusader castles and largely rebuilt by Richard The Lionhart. Syria

Kurdish kids SE Turkey

Palmyra, established 2000 years before the Romans arrived! Syria

Lawrence of Arabia country. Wadi Rhum, Jordan

Helping a brother out (wd40)

He didn't have enough camels for Kym or the car so I sent him packing.

Jordanians are nice

Indians are inquisitive

Taj Mahal

Cobbler

Jaipur

Add caption

Venezia, beautiful.

Main roads Himalayan style.

Look at this and try not to smile. Ladahk, Himalyas

Add caption

NE Sumatra Infrastructure still being replaced post tsunami so entrepaneurs make their own ferrys

Himal Pradesh, Northern India

School uniform Sumatra

Batak houses, Lake Toba, Sumatra

Java

Goreme, Kappadoccia, Turkey

Istanbul

Turkish attitude

WA

Balinese holy man

No idea why they call this place Red Bluff WA

Mitchell falls. Alot more massive than this photo suggests. Kimberly WA

Gibb River road car wash. NT-WA

Dubrovnik

Petra, Jordan

See Ya

Public transport Sumbawa

Stick fighting Lombok

WA

Bena, Stone age village on Flores still inhabited (protected)

Nusa Tengarra Indonesia

Yessss

SA

Lake Bled Slovenia

NSW North coast Christmas roadtrip 2012