[ THE HUMAN BONFIRE ]

THE HUMAN BONFIRE

Cultural collisions on the south coast of NSW

By Tim Baker

I didn’t discover the south coast the way you’re supposed to - on a quiet mission with a mate or two, discretely exploring the secret nooks and crannies of this hallowed coast. No, I came down with a couple of dozen members of the Queenscliff Boardriders Club on a rowdy, drunken rampage that saw me set fire to my pubic fair, fall asleep face first into a plate of fried race and surf decent Green Island with a drunken pro surfer whose exploits that weekend nearly cost him his marriage. Allow me to explain.

Back in the mid-80s, I’d been plucked from a respectable newspaper gig in Melbourne, reporting on district cricket and Aussie rules football to the rather less respectable world of surf reporting for Tracks magazine. This required ditching a suit and tie, leaving behind family, friends and long time girlfriend, and relocating 1000 km north to Sydney. I’d imagined a ramshackle cottage overlooking Whale Beach. Instead, I discovered a teeming publishing house in downtown Darlinghurst, where we shared neighbouring cubicles with magazines like Playboy, Australian Slimming and Australian Cricket, like so many battery hens stuffed in cages. It was all a bit of a shock, to be honest, for a boy from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, reared on Captain Goodvibes and Aunty Gwendalyn’s cooking tips, and dreamy photo spreads of topless beauties and handsome chunks of driftwood, in the fuzzy newsprint pages of Tracks.

My co-workers, outgoing editor Nick Carroll, and incoming editor Reggae Elliss, urged me to brave the big city commute across town and base myself on the northside, for its superior beaches, prettier girls, and the superior fashion sense of its surfers, and, not knowing any better, I duly obeyed. Sure, Manly Beach had its moments, and I eventually discovered Narrabeen, then Avalon and Whaley to the north. But something was missing. As a landlocked Melbourne boy, my surfing life to that point had all been undertaken on the east coast of Victoria - from early school excursions to Point Leo, to summer holidays at Flinders, to the train/bus/ferry marathon to Phillip Island, and then the sweet freedom of drivers licences and car ownership. I was used to surfing in front of paddocks and farms, the only spectators a few bored cows. City surfing in Sydney was a whole different trip, the shitfight and hassling beginning even with the search for a parking spot.

So, when Reggae suggested a boys’ weekend down the south coast I jumped. His mates at Queenscliff Boardriders, or Queenie, as they’re known, are not generally held in the highest regard by other boardriding clubs. Perhaps they bring it on themselves - I suspect they actually like it that way. They’re mascot is Gumby, the green, rubber-limbed kids’ cartoon character. They’re slogan is “QBC loves you,” invariably daubed in a pink love heart on rocks and headlands. Accusations of homosexuality abounded. Among their members was a hairdresser, the proprietor of an upmarket mens’ clothing store, several lawyers and accountants and a variety of successful entrepreneurs, which only heightened the northside silvertails stigma. The Queenie boys were forerunners of the now popularised “metrosexuals,” before they had a name. It’s probably fair to say they did not represent a group of surfers most likely to be warmly embraced and hugged to the bosom of south coast surf culture. South Coast surfers, I’d only come to appreciate later, were a hardy lot, wary of outsiders - hard worn farmers and fishermen and big city escapees holed up in lonely caravans hidden in dense bush, driving dusty utes and rusted four-wheel drives, wearing week-old facial growths and flanno shirts, smoking rollies and swilling bourbon ... and that was just the women. The blokes wore the suspicious scowls and sly grins of surfers who knew the whereabouts of an unfeasibly vast range of heaving reef waves within a 100 km or so stretch. If I’d known all this back then, I might have sensed the profound cultural collision course we were on, as we loaded up Audis and SAABs and Range Rovers for the weekend’s high-spirited adventure, like a bunch of English toffs off on a spot of fox hunting.

To be fair, the cultural differences between surfing subcultures are largely superficial and the things large, all-male groups of surfers get up to when they head off on a surf adventure are probably fairly universal. We swill copious amounts of piss. Someone has a stash of buds, which neatly divides the cast into the stoners and the straights. Everyone makes a mess of trying to erect the tents in the dark. And then the bawdy humour involving bodily emissions and the male genitals starts up. I was keen to ingratiate myself to my new friends and sensing I was indeed among kindred spirits I asked Reggae, “Is pube burning socially acceptable in New South Wales?” My question was greeted with a thunderous roar that seemed to suggest approval, and so I busted out an old high school trick first pioneered by my old mate Danny Carroll, who really deserves the credit for it, even though I have selfishly taken the accolades for the stunt in several different parts of the world - including, but not limited to, Hossegor, France; Kuta, Bali; and Ulladula Caravan Park.

Thus, I seized the nearest cigarette lighter, dropped my strides and put the naked flame to my pubes. The effect, I have to say, is always spectacular, and never fails to dazzle onlookers. The flames leap high up your abdomen before they even begin to singe your skin, at which point you calmly pat out the flames with your hands, as your audience shriek and roar in disbelief. Then you repeat the trick until it has lost its potency on the audience, or you have run out of hair. I do not recommend you try this at home, but for the experienced pube-burner the risks are minimal and the social cache thus earned is considerable. I was swiftly and emphatically embraced as one of the boys, given my own affectionate nickname, “Bonny” (short for human bonfire) and urged to swill more piss and smoke more buds, to see what other kind of lunacy I might be capable of. When hunger eventually took hold, and the meagre and invariably sugary provisions were exhausted, we all filed off the to the local Chinese restaurant to drink and feast and contemplate the next days’ waves. Can you imagine the horror of Chinese restaurant proprietors all over the country, when they witness such an uncouth assembly filing into their restaurant, cases of Tooheys’ New under their arms? I recall little of the meal itself, apart from a tangy lemon chicken and the threat of an imminent food fight posed by some largely inedible dim sims. Then ... nothing. My next recollection is being roused from my place at the table, where I had fallen face first into my plate of fried rice and enjoyed a short nap. I snorted peas and miniature prawns out of my nostrils as we paid the bill and made our leave, to the undoubted relief of management and our fellow diners.

The next day we woke early, crammed in a smelly, sweaty crush in the club tent, and emerged blinking into the daylight, desperate for the healing tonic of the ocean. We descended enmasse upon Mollymook, and some reasonable head high waves. Though I don’t even recall the reaction of the locals, I imagine we must have turned an otherwise leisurely Saturday morning session into a Godless free-for-all, so apologies all round for that.

Later that day, we ran into an errant QBC member who had managed to evade the order to join the team trip down the coast. Up and coming pro surfer Rob Bain, and his lovely wife Kath, were enjoying a romantic weekend at a quaint bed and breakfast establishment when we chanced upon them at a local beach and put paid to their plans of a cosy lovers’ retreat. Bainy is as down to earth and working class a character as you could ever hope to meet - how he had ever wound up joining QBC remains a mystery. But the club and its members seemed to exercise a strange and powerful hold over him, and they soon convinced him, after much haranguing and intimidation, that his entire surfing future hinged on him ditching his couples weekend, and joining the boys for the remainder of their excursion. Why he succumbed I still don’t know, but the lovely Kath had to make her own way back to Sydney, as her man was forcibly kidnapped and stuffed into one of our convoy of vehicles and whisked away to the nearest pub. I console myself with the knowledge that they have remained happily married and produced three fine young boys, despite this cruel relationship sabotage.

After several afternoon beers, it was decided to check Green Island, and a few of us enjoyed a high-spirited session in head-high lefts, ruffled by a light onshore. Bainy was the first pro surfer I had ever met at close quarters and the revelation that a professional surfer in the mid-80s was capable of surfing drunk, nose-diving on a gentle four foot wave and cart-wheeling down the face like a ragdoll was oddly reassuring. In an age when pro surfing’s powers that be were trying to convince us that all pro surfers were squeaky clean, mild-mannered model citizens, it was a comfort to realise at least one of them could be a drunken fool like the rest of us - make mistakes and miscalculations, in life, love and surfing. And that these self-assured Queenie boys were capable of behaving like as big bunch of clueless monkeys as my nutty bunch of surfing characters back in Victoria.

Most of the weekend remains a blur - there was a hairy session at Bawley Point, more hi-jinks at the Dolphin Hotel, a quiet and subdued trip home. I’m sure it’s the kind of incursion from uncouth city surfers that the laid-back folk of the south coast despise, and who can blame them? But I’ve got to say, 20-odd years down the track, the experience did help me settle into my new big city environment. I didn’t get down the south coast a whole lot during my time in Sydney, gobbled up as I was by the world of deadlines, pro contests and inner city indulgences. But it was always good to know it was there if I needed it.

And more importantly, I think, it helped me realise that as surfers, where ever we’re from, the things we have in common are greater than our differences.