My Australia

"you've got mental problems", I said to my Dad, "because there is absolutely no system of measurement in the surfing world that calls that three foot". My dad has a tendency to do that, over judge the surf, and call it wrongly too. If it's smooth he'll say it's pumping. It might be one foot, but in his mind it's pumping, he's all about the conditions, and not the actual waves. And no matter how well I know this, I still get suckered in, like yesterday, it was "three foot and pumping", and I sprinted to the beach, stopped, and, sucking in air, saw that it was one foot, one foot but smooth, the conditions were good.

I know today. Its one foot, but it's coming in in beautiful little lines. There isn't a cloud in the sky and the wind is a cold South Wester. I know this day, I know these conditions. These conditions say to me that the swell is growing, that the wind will pick up, and by this afternoon there will be some waves. It's a typically Autumn day. Some days in winter, when the sou' wester blows and there are high cumilo nimbus clouds moving fast in the sky, it means that it is snowing eight hours away in the Australian Alps. We know the wind.

I guess this is what it means to me to be Australian. I've been thinking about this. I don't really buy into all of that Gallipoli shit, Australian values, mateship and all the rest. At the end of the day, every society, every peoples on earth value their friends, mateship, and as for a special 'Australian' way to fight military battles, well you show me a fighting force that doesn't give it their all. That's not a national trait, thats fight or die, that's a simple primordial instinct borne out of years of hunting, being food and fighting battles.

No, to me, to be Australian is my connection to the land. And that is also what it means to me to be from Copacabana. I know this place, I know the trees and the flowers and the grass. I know if its going to be hot or cold just by looking out of my bedroom window. And I know the winds. I ride them backwards, I see where they come from, I see what they are going to bring us. I travel the gusts and today I head south west, back along past sydney, out to the Blue Mountains, across the western plains, then i skim back across the Murray Darling basin, and swing seawards, my arc having reached its western most limit. Then I swing back towards the sea and i spin and spin and spin and i shoot back, over the sea, heading north west. And I push down on the waters surface, and my effort makes little bumps, and these little bumps join together and make bigger bumps, and now I go faster and faster and see that the bumps have formed swell and I rush forward and land back in Copacabana and im looking out to see. And I know that there will be swell coming, at some time today.

My Australia is an affintiy with the land. It's not a set of values. It's not borne out of violence. It's not noble men sacrificing their lives in the furtherance of an evil empire. Its the trees, its the birds, its the wind. We are slaves to the wind.