The Barefoot And Baffled Blog

Three of us met in the dark.    ‘What’s it look like?’ said one, who had just gotten out of his car.    ‘It’s pumping,’ said another one, who had gotten there five minutes earlier.    ‘What, really?’ said a third one, incredulously.    ‘No mate. It’s dead flat,’ replied the first one, with the smug wisdom of someone who got their first, spent five minutes peering into the darkness and had seen the square root of bugger-all.    ‘All right boys, that’s it. We’re on!’ proclaimed the third one, rubbing his hands, presumably with glee. It had been dead flat for two weeks. We had never seen such still, crystal clear water before. Beaches that were normally pounded into submission with back-breaking bone-crushing surf had turned into pleasant lilly-covered billabongs, with ducks bobbing up and down looking for things to eat. Small children and grandmothers lolled around on lilos, reading papers, eating icecream, and scoffing at...

Every kook has its day. Or so they say. The word, and concept, of “kook”, a beginner or inept surfer, is something that is unique to the occupation of surfing. It is derived from the word “kukae”, which, in the Hawaiian language, means “shit”. It is one of a handful words originating from Polynesian languages that have made their way into common usage in the English language. Others are kava, booze made from the roots of a plant, popular and widespread in remote areas of the Northern Territory, and taboo, stuff you’re not allowed to do or talk about, like marrying your cousin, unless of course you’re a member of a European royal family, where incest is the preferred way of having sex and where inbreeding,   mental retardedness and having two heads are considered valuable and worthwhile contributions to humanity’s gene pool. Ubiquitous around the world now, tattoo is the world Polynesians used to describe the designs they had etched under their skins with ink, a practice that h...

- BOOM – - SPLASH – - swweeesh -    ‘Oo oo?’ The Baboon stuck his head over the edge of the rocks and looked down. There, a good seven metres below, the mighty ocean heaved, boiled and bubbled, rising up periodically to slam into the small cliff he was standing on. Spray rose up as the wave hit the face, reached its highest point, and slowly collapsed into a descending curtain of water droplets. From the right angle rainbow colours flashed through it. From the wrong angle potential death lay waiting invitingly on the rocks underneath the water below them, reclining on a bed of seaweed, smiling winningly and showing a bit of leg.    ‘Oo oo’, the Chief concurred. It had been a big one. In spite of the onslaught of waves crashing into the rocks they were standing on, there were no waves in the bay. Whatever swell there might have been on the ocean wasn’t making it onto the beaches, and there was no surfing to be done. Erstwhile roaring shorebreaks w...

I got out of the car and froze to death instantaneously. My bare feet landed on the cold hard concrete, which immediately sucked all life blood and warmth out of me and straight into the stony uncaring world. To add insult to injury, a gale was blowing so hard the casuarina trees were laying over near-horizontally. Even though it was pitch-black dark, I could tell from the white caps on the water, the sea horses of the mythology of old, that the surf was going to be shithouse, blown hell west and crooked into nothing resembling any surfable shape. I shivered violently. The Chief arrived and bounced out of his van, dressed in a woollen beany pulled over a thermal hat, an overcoat, an under coat, a middle coat, three jumpers, his mum’s woolly vest, long shorts (a contradiction in terms, much like, e.g., military intelligence or political integrity), and, the prize piece of his collection, double-grade Explorer socks in his sandals. Dressed to impress, for sure. Dressed to s...