The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

Sometimes history can repeat itself, in a bizarre case of convergent evolution. On Friday night my partner Kiana had something to celebrate, so we went and had a few quiet drinks. A few quiet ones led to a few more that were far from quiet, and the next day I paddled out with a vicious hangover. No surprise there.    As it so happened the cyclone swell had come in, finally, and the entire beach was wrapped in walls of water standing up to double-overhead high. A powerful sweep was running north to south, and huge amounts of sand had been skulldragged away into The Big Void, never to be seen again. Everywhere the earth was showing its bare bones poking up from underneath the left-over sand: rocks, ridges, ledges, stones, pebbles, shale everywhere where once the golden sand invited people to lay down and chill out.    I paddled out into the surf and got smashed comprehensively around the brains. Mountains of water stood up in front of me and crashed down on my head. I took a solid pu

Long centuries ago, when no one knew where Australia was except the people who lived in it, hapless European would-be colonising world powers would stumble across it by accident. Tall ships would get blown off course, of course, mostly Portuguese and Dutch trading ships trying to find Indonesia and their arses in the bath tub, and they’d end up here.    The big winds would blow them hell west and crooked, till they landed on the coast, if they were lucky, or on rocks and reefs offshore if they weren’t. Those who managed to land in one piece took one look around, found nothing but sand, rocks and flies up their nose, pushed their boats back into the water as fast as they could, if they didn’t have holes in them, and bailed out again while they were still able to. No gold, no spices, nothing here worth killing and enslaving anyone over. Those who didn’t manage to land in one piece lived to bitterly regret it, but usually not for very long. They left a long trail of abandoned coins, rus

  I turn off the tarmac into the dirt road and push as hard as I can on my mountain bike. The wheels whizz and spin, slid and slide, skip and bounce, until, inevitably, they get stuck in an expanse of lush, thick red sand, with the consistency of talcum powder.    Bulldust.    I swear at length and with feeling, get off and push. I battle through the patch, get on the bike again on the other side, and carry on through the trees, into the bushland. I hide my bike behind a big old fat boab, and start running. It is early morning, the land lies steaming under a tropical sun, and wallabies scatter before me as I run, barefoot through the sand. Black hawks circle overhead, following me from a distance and keeping a moody eye on me, in case I should show the great good grace of rolling over and carking it on the track, and providing them with a nice, juicey, fresh breakfast.    It feels a bit like I might, today. I've left it later than I would have wanted to, and the sun is beatin

The rain was executing a horizontal full frontal assault. I waded through the high tide back to the shore line, where the Space Shuttle and the Reefshark stood huddled together in abject misery. The Reefshark, tall and lofty, towering a full head out above us, was copping the brunt of the rain, lashing us in the face. Ahead of us, the black ocean boiled and heaved, shrouded by a thick curtain of rain. We shivered violently.    ‘Whadda yous reckon?’ I said, peering out from the narrow crack between the top of my hood and the edge of my rain coat. Rain stung my eyes like needles.    ‘Hmmpf,’ the Reefshark grunted. ‘I guess there’s a bit of a wave out there.’    ‘Yous are insane,’ declared the Space Shuttle with feeling. ‘You’ve got to be joking!’    ‘Yeah nah ... I reckon we’ll be able to get a wave,’ I said. ‘Look, it’s breaking just there, it’s clean.’    We stared into the dark. We saw the square root of bugger all. Two pairs of eyes swivelled accusingly towards me and glare

Our town and region pride themselves on their recognition of and patronage of the arts, and as part of that spirit of appreciation of all things cultural the town lays on a film festival every year. In deference to the ground-breaking and revolutionising potential of avant-garde artwork and endeavour, the festival organisers make it a point of honour to give opportunities to new, young, up-and-coming and un-established film makers to showcase their work and reach a wider audience. And good on them, too.    Since our area here is immersed in surf culture up to its ears it’s only natural that surf movies should be featured in the festival, at times prominently. And since surfing is the thing that we, denizens of The Bay At The End Of The Rainbow, eat, drink, breathe and live for, surf movies is what we look out for and seek out when the festival is on.    There’s a loose mob of us who are possessed of such single-minded obsession, fanaticism and insanity that we rise several hours be