The Medewi Four-by-Two

Medewi, west Bali. Far from the insane crowds of Kuta and Uluwatu. The village of Medewi is all of 450 m across, as the crow flies, between two coastal rivers, dividing it from the village before and the village after.

   The vibe is low-key. Off the congested road that connects Denpasar and east Bali to the west and, eventually, the ferry across to Java, there is just one little narrow street that slopes down to the beach. Along that, two board-hire places, a surf school, and a cafe, ominously called “The Bombora Cafe”. No prizes for guessing where the mob that set it up came from. “Bombora” is an Australian Aboriginal word that refers to a partially submerged rocky reef in the surf, not far from shore. Usually affectionately known as “the bombie”, they are found in their dozens between Eden in the south and Fingal Head in the north of NSW. It’s a home away from home, straightaway.

   The beach is a shelf of dark grey-blackish sand that slopes down steeply to a veritable rock garden: Medewi has a world class left-hander pointbreak for a reason. Peeling away from a rocky point, it runs off into a wide open bay that is wall to wall rocks. The sand stops at the shoreline.

   I sit down on the seawall that lines much of the beach for a sticky-beak, to suss it out a bit before I head out. Some bloke is trying to paddle out right in front of me. He wades carefully through the water, staggers, stumbles, clutches his board and falls face down in the water, re-surfacing with a painful grimace on his face. Ah yeah. I get it. Little bit rocky, little bit no water there at all. So I pick up my board and wander off further to the inside of the bay, examining the shoreline, until eventually, following the contour line of the beach, I find a channel. It runs right next to where the beach-launched fishing boats pull out. I walk out through sand and pebbles, quickly waist-deep, and strike out. Easy. Looking over my shoulder I see the other bloke fall over again. Poor bugger.

   It’s a long paddle up to the point. Medewi has three main sections, running into the bay from the point. Depending on the swell and the tide they may or may not link up, and you can get lucky and get a wave all the way through from the point just about to my channel deep inside the bay.

   Being a foreigner and a blow-in I observe basic surf-etiquette courtesy and I go to the outside of the first section, on the inside of the bay, where I sit up on my board to look and wait. I’m not even going to try for a wave for a good little while, until I’ve worked out the running order, the right-of-way of the line-up, and how the wave works.

   And just as well.

   Because, disappointingly, it’s just as crowded here as any midway decent break back home. And, alarmingly, no one seems to take any notice of anyone else. Every wave that breaks there’s at least four people taking off on it at the same time, regardless and heedless of who’s got right-of-way, who’s first on, who’s on the inside and who’s not. It seems that, here too, the holiday-maker’s mantra is ruling strongly: “I’m here for a good time, not a long time; I want as many waves as I can get; and everyone else can go and get fucked”. A home away from home indeed, again, and not in a good way this time. The accents of the chit-chat in the line up underwrite this: American, British, German, French, Indian, Chinese, and, of course, Australian. All fighting each other for an Indonesian wave.

   I sit around bobbing up and down aimlessly when a wave turns up in front, so I paddle forwards and over it to get out of the way of a Chinese bloke on the inside, who, I notice, is wearing booties. Not a bad move in this rockscape, and I notice several other people with the same.

   The wave stands up promisingly, the Chinese bloke starts paddling like mad without getting much of anywhere, and, just when he’s about to lose it, an Indonesian bloke who had been sitting close to him paddles forwards strongly next to him, grabs the tail of his board, and gives him a powerful shove that sends him off and away into the belly of the wave. My mouth drops open in amazement. In all the cut-throat environments of line-ups I’ve ever been I’ve never seen that before: people helping someone else get a wave. I’m just about to say something along the lines of “you deserve a medal and a Nobel prize for doing that”, when off to the other side another Indonesian bloke is doing the same thing with a woman with a strong German accent. When I clock a third Indo bloke with a GoPro between his teeth coasting alongside of them, my penny drops and I finally get it: they’re surf guides, getting paid to get punters waves, and, with a bit of luck, take photos or footage to go with it. And I must say I haven’t seen that before either. I’ve taught surfing for five years back home, but once the punters got the gist of the basics they were out on their own. Clearly the industry is booming here, and innovating.

   A wave announces its intention to be epic a ways out in front, and, true to form, four people leap up at the same time, hell-bent on snaking and outdoing each other, dropping in on and pushing out everyone else. It’s pandemonium. The first bloke glides in beautifully, gets about three feet into it and gets cut off by a chick dropping in on him on a longboard. At the same time another bloke snakes around the chick in between them, and a fourth one drops in in front of her. The first fella puts on the brakes and gets overtaken by the whitewash, the chick pulls off with a pissed-off look on her face, and, before my eyes, the third bloke cuts in underneath the fourth one, narrowly missing getting his head sliced off by the point of the board, and screams away on the wave. Ironically it dies in the arse twenty metres down the road. Clearly well worth the hassle.

   They both stick their heads out of the water and start shouting at each other, both in American accents.

   ‘Hey man, don’t do that, I was on!’

   ‘No way man, I was on first, you back off!’

   ‘Fuck you motherfucker!’

   ‘Oh yeah? Come and say that over here, arsehole!’

   They square off and paddle off at the same time, a remarkably challenging thing to achieve. Especially considering that they both snaked and dropped in on no less than two other people.

   As they fade into the background some Indonesian bloke on a longboard pulls up next to me and sits on his board. He’s sporting a razor-sharp haircut at the height of fashion with at least three different colours of dye in it.

   ‘How are you,’ he nods.

   ‘Not bad, thanks mate,’ I nod back.

   He blinks, looks at me sideways a bit. ‘Whereabouts you from?’

   ‘Australia,’ I say.

   ‘Ah yeah,’ he says, ‘Aussie, ey? Where in Aussie?’

   ‘The Kimberleys.’

   He gives me a blank stare of polite incomprehension. This is only to be expected. So I help him out of his misery.

   ‘It’s in WA, in the north.’

   His eyes light up. ‘Ah yeah,’ he says again, comprehension dawning, ‘WA. Perth, yeah?’

   I hate to let him down. ‘Nah,’ I shake my head, ‘long way from there. About 2,500 km north of there.’

   ‘Really?’ He stares a bit more, potentially trying to work out if I’m having him on.

   ‘Yeah, long way, ey.’ I decide to try and explain a bit more better, so I wave my arm around expansively. ‘See the ocean past the point over there?’ I indicate the open ocean beyond the break.

   ‘Yeah?’

   ‘Well, if you went there and started paddling, and kept going until you hit Australia, the first bit of land you’d see, that’s it there. Right up north. We’ve got crocs.’

   He laughs at that.

   ‘Are you from here?’ I ask in return.

   ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I’ve been surfing here for 45 years.’

   ‘You’re kidding me.’

   ‘Nah. Back then it was only Aussies, no one else here. Aussies is good.’ He sniffs disdainfully. ‘Now it’s everything else: Americans, English, whatever.’ He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand, indicating his disapproval. Then he sticks out his hand. ‘I’m Gerry.’

   Gerry. Not an entirely Indonesian-sounding name, like e.g. Ngurah, Bayu, Bagu or Ketut. I remember that Gerry Lopez was one of the early surfing pioneers that were featured in the classic surf movie Morning Of The Earth from 1972, which put Bali on the world map as a surfing spot, and virtually singlehandedly kickstarted the entire tourism industry of the island. Clearly this bloke lives and breathes surfing.

   ‘Steve.’ We shake hands.

   ‘Come on.’ He inclines his head towards the line up. ‘Come with me. I’ll help you get some waves, it’s a shit fight here.’

   So I paddle off after him. We circumnavigate a crowd of punters and pull up nearer to the point. I sit back and drift off a bit, and next thing I know here’s Gerry taking off on a corker, overhead and a half, styling it properly. Unluckily though, and potentially unbeknown to him, some other bloke decides to take off at the exact same time, comes in from who knows where, set on an unavoidable trajectory of collision, and somewhere in mid-air, the two crash into each other. In a spray of whitewash and collapsing wave the two boards smash together with a crunch of fibreglass clearly audible to me, sitting just metres away. Ouch.

   Predictably they surface at the same time and start shouting at each other, eyes seeing red and baying for blood. Turns out the other bloke is the same American fella that double-crossed everyone else on that other wave before. Who would have thought.

   It seems to me that Gerry is currently otherwise engaged, and so I paddle off. Eventually I make it around to the very point, and there I finally get waves. A beautiful wall of water rises from the deep in front of me, I spin around, paddle like a bastard and drop deep down into the hole. It’s overhead and a half, it’s running like a freight train out of control on a downhill track, and I fly off into the blue distance. But I can’t see bugger-all: it’s a lefthander, and I’ve got my back to this thing. I’m on my backhand, and it feels awkward; I’m flying blind, and whatever moves I’m trying to pull off feel counter-intuitive. I’ve spent most of my life surfing a righthander, leaning into it and losing myself lovingly in the gaze of the blue-green water in front of me. This back-facing caper is a different story, and it’s fair to say I’m not making the most it.

   Others follow, and I get used to it, after a fashion.

 

Eventually I head back in, spent but very happy. On my way back to my channel close to the fishing boats I pass Gerry, who’s sitting on his board shooting the breeze. The board doesn’t look too damaged. The crunching fibreglass must have been the other bloke’s board, and maybe that’s good karma.

   I pull up next to him and hold my hand out. We shake.

   ‘See you Gerry. Thanks for sharing your waves with me mate. This place is awesome.’

   ‘Yeah, no worries, anytime.’ Then his face darkens. He nods over my shoulder and scowls. ‘See that over there?’

   I look. There’s a crowd of around 25 people on a variety of boards including a good number of foamies, bobbing around haphazardly.

   ‘They’re donkeys, mate. Just donkeys,’ he says. He shakes his head at the perfidy of it all. ‘Where do they all bloody come from?’

   I nod in commiseration. I know exactly what he means. I’ve spent the last ten years surfing in the dark to avoid the crowds, drop-ins and snakes. ‘Everywhere, mate,’ I shrug, ‘it’s the same everywhere.’

   I paddle off with a wave of my arm.

   On my way back to the channel I pass by a bloke who I had seen sitting astride a blue foamie on my way out. I hadn’t taken too much notice then, but now I scrutinise him a bit better. There’s a bulky white thing in front of him. My curiosity piqued, I paddle a bit closer, till I can see what he’s doing. It’s a white bag, made of hessian or similar. And, hauling it in hand over hand, he is stuffing into it a fishing net, a gill net. Small fish catch the sun and glitter before they disappear into the bag.

   This bloke is fishing from an old surfboard. With a net. He’s going to paddle in lying on top of it, and sell his fish somewhere. He’ll be lucky to get the 10 dollars that constitute an average day’s wages here.

   In the distance behind him the blue mountains of Java fill the sky. The old and the new live side by side here, in an uneasy alliance.