[ THE WEBBER BROTHERS ]
[ Tim Winton Interview ][ Strong Current ]
[ Nat Young's Dream ]
[ The Tao of Mick Fanning ]
[ Tackling Gorillas in Peru ]
[ NORTH SHORE TRADE SHOW/ SHARE HOUSE/REALITY TV WEBCAST ]
[ HIGH SURF INTRODUCTION ]
[ GORDON MERCHANT INTERVIEW ]
[ THE SCIENCE OF THE SUPERBANK ]
[ BEN AIPA ]
[ HAPPY ACCIDENT ]
[ FLOATING ]
[ ALBE FALZON INTERVIEW ]
[ FULL MOON IN THE MENTAWAIS ]
[ JAMIIE MITCHELL ]
[ THE HUMAN BONFIRE ]
[ MENTAWAI LAND GRAB ]
[ GEOFF McCOY PROFILE ]
[ WHERE TO FROM HERE? ]
[ AUSTRALIA DAY WITH HERRO ]
[ ROBBIE PAGE ]
[ RIP CURL PRO PREVIEW ]
THE WEBBER BROTHERS
The environmentalist, the shaper, the film maker, the intellectual, the metalhead and the Aussie champ ...
By Tim Baker
People warned me I was crazy. Maybe I should have listened. To gather together the entire Webber clan and attempt to interview them sounds - with the invaluable benefit of hindsight - like madness.
But the untold story of their extraordinary childhood in Sydney's eastern suburbs, their raucous surf adventures in ever widening orbits, and their amazing, divergent yet intertwined paths since, is irresistible. From the early ‘70s scene at Bondi, to early surf trips to Angourie, Lord Howe and Grajagan, and an ever-expanding catalogue of stunning creative endeavours, the Webber Brothers’ story practically mirrors the evolution of Australian surf culture.
If you could harness the combined creative energy of the Webbers you could light up a small city. To witness a gathering of all six of the surfing siblings is a rare and hilarious event.
The venue is eldest brother John's historic Angourie beach house, built by Tracks cofounder John Witzig. The dilapidated timber structure nestles in the coastal scrub like an overgrown kid's cubbyhouse, and the Webbers infect it with a fitting boyish, mischievous energy. The walls wreak with surfing history, from the snapshots of memorable days at the point thumbtacked to bare wooden beams, to the mass of old surfboards stuck at odd angles in the branches of the paperbarks in the backyard. To see them together, it's hard to believe they're related - such are the vast physical and lifestyle differences between them - but there's a warmth underpinned with simmering tensions only brothers can generate.
There's John, 44, the elder, the environmental architect, who's led the spectacularly successful re-vegetation of Angourie foreshore through the local Dunecare group, ridding it of the accursed, introduced Bitou bush and cramming it full of native trees. There's Greg, 43, the shaper to the stars - from Barton Lynch to Shane Herring to Taj Burrow - with that cheeky chipped tooth grin, and as many outlandish and complex theories on life and the universe as you have time to sit through.
There's Monty, 41, the bearded, avant garde surf film, with a maniacal thirst for creative adventure, like a surfing cinematic Hunter S. Thompson. Then there's Dan, 38, the unknown Webber, the Clark Kent, mild-mannered, immaculately groomed, bespectacled, polite, well-spoken, a linguist by training, but who transforms Superman-style into the fearless "Barometer" in heavy waves, sent out first to see if its rideable.
Then there's the two youngsters, Will, 33, and Ben, 31, always spoken of together, like the flowerpot men, who could have been perpetually trapped in the shadows of their larger than life brethren. Yet they are arguably the most accomplished surfers of the lot, at least competitively. Separated by five years from their next oldest brother, they were born into a different era, after the hippy idealism and carefree adventure gave way to serious pro career ambitions. Will collected a swag of respectable placings in the old APSA events, and Ben notched up an Aussie title, and they both gave the pro tour a nudge, before the domestic circuit collapsed under them. Like a whole generation of aspiring Australian pro surfers, they were left without a stepping stone to the big league, and wound up shaping, as if joining the family business. They've dabbled in an impressive string of enterprises since - surf shops, wax, hard core metal bands. Will's touring seriously with latest band Toe 2 Toe. Ben's dossing down temporarily in the shack out the front of John's place and working hard to support two young daughters.
The brothers are excited. We've had a surf out the Point in abysmal, howling southerly lumps. A mass of sausages and a carton of throwdowns have been purchased, and it's barely midday when the first twist top illicits that familiar "kkssshhhhhhhhhhhh." "Thanks for this. We haven’t had a beer together for ages." says Will keenly. By the time the sun goes down, it will become clear why.
MUM
Mont: There’s the joke that Mum actually did everything and we’re totally talentless. I even pushed it to the limit when I claimed to someone that Mum actually shaped the board that Barton won the world title on. He went: “You’re fucking joking, unbelievable”.
GROWING UP
SW: Tell us about growing up in Rose Bay.
Mont: Rose Bay was an amazing house. We called it Rose Bay. The place just evolved over the years.
Greg: it got looser and looser, from a real ‘50s cleanliness and conservatism to a new version of the ‘70s that mixed mini bikes and sculptures and washing.
Will: Martian heads in the trees ...
Greg: You could condense it down to little moments when you could have looked over the fence and gone, fuck, what a weird household ... The Christian prep school up the road was told at assembly not to look into the house on the corner. Heathens lived there! ... We did beat the crap out of some of their students and steal from the tuckshop.
Dan: There were these big trees in the backyard and Monty’s girlfriend Nicky said there was a rumour at Ascham (the girls’ school) that the Webber brothers fucked chicks in the trees. (Much laughter)
Monty: No wonder they were climbing over the fences, those naughty little Ascham girls.
John: Mum’s garden was turned into a motocross track.
Mont: Yeah, she was a bit sad about that.
Will: Weren’t there dungeons? ... How about everyone else, the neighbours played cricket, or regular things, had swimming pools, and the activities in our backyard were shooting, star knives, trapping.
Mont: Cross bows.
Dan: And blow pipes.
Greg: What about dad backing us up for what we did to the church? “Oh, it couldn’t have been my boys.” “Three blonde haired boys who ran across the road and into your house.” ... So we had to respect dad forever for that one, ‘cause how the fuck couldn’t it have been us?
SW: What did you do?
Greg: Oh, some unsavoury things.
Mont: Did wee in the holy water.
Greg: Mont did a giant skid mark down the aisle ... The carpet was a three foot wide red strip so he put a brown stripe down it.
Mont: And what did you write on the little noticeboard there?
Greg: I had a think about it and it said something about some country club there and I’d written “God is...” and I saw the words “country club,” and it was a moment in my life when I was about 10 and I thought - “What’s a word I can choose out of country club?” And I thought, “If he’s there, I don’t think he’s there,” I thought, “but if he can’t deal with me writing that and it’s only a muck around anyway (laughter) then what sort of a god is he? He’s got to have a sense of humour.” I got the letters out and went ... (hysterical laughter) ... We liked the church though.
John: As there were more children born the house just grew. There were three bedrooms. There was a stack of boards in mine, which is where we ran the super 8 films. Mont had this tiny room and occasionally there were holes punched through the gyprock walls.
Mont: It made me feel powerful punching that gyprock.
John: Greg loved warmth and cosiness and had the top button done up on his pyjamas and his room was all closed up ... I’d sleep with all the windows open lying outside the covers, for genetic reasons, passing on the genes so my children could endure cold. ... There were a stack of girlfriends who were not approved of by brothers at one stage, and this was the first time a live-in girlfriend was allowed to stay in the family house ...They really wanted to get rid of her, out of the house and away from me, and apart from her fluffy dolls being adulterated ...
Greg: Yeah, we strung Kermit up from a light fitting with holes in him.
Dan: And tomato sauce ...
Monty: Die kermit, die.
John: One night lying in bed, I’d proposed to her or she’d forced a proposal out of me ... The sex was great but we were fighting all the time, and the guys were really determined to get rid of her. And lying in bed, my door opened and someone really quietly slipped in ... and then, what is that fucking smell? Someone had done a shit in a milk container with one side cut off, done a shit in it and poured a hot batch of resin in (laughter) ...
Greg: The worst chemical smell mixed in with the worst cooked shit smell, whatever that is, and that was what we spoiled their sex with.
All: Who was it?
Greg (gleefully): I did it! (much laughter)
Mont: I was in the lounge room hundreds of metres away at the other end of the house. I was looking at mum when it hit, and it was like, this is the end of the world. The French have attacked or something.
ADVENTURES
Will: Our whole life before surfing was insane. If that was my life, that would’ve been perfect. After Rose Bay, if all of us had died, that sort of life would have been perfect.
SW: Where did that sense of adventure come from?
John: It was probably the eldest having to take care of the brothers and I don’t know why it was like, commandoes at night and raiding the bomb shelters, breaking into schools. Rose Bay was so perfectly placed, the house as well. The 322 (bus) went to Bondi one way and to Nielsen Park the other, so we were centrally located between the harbour and Bondi.
Will: We didn’t have a worry in the world. We’d just muck around. We had the workshop where you could weld anything up, John’s nocturnal adventures. We’d be out blow piping, blowing things up.
Ben: And then you’d come home and there’s Mum creating everything and keeping us busy. Like, something would be built, like the fishponds.
Mont: It was a mix of adventure and creativity which I think Dad really did encourage us in, and encourage John to take us on adventures. And I remember John would organise a trip somewhere. “Oh, I’ve got a plane flight booked,” but I was like a modern day little pro surfer. I was like: “I‘m not having a lay over for half an hour. You’re going to have to do better than that. I’ll be in my bedroom.” (laughter) He’d organise these amazing adventures, and then one time he asked me to clean up and it was like the last straw. I’m never going away with you again. We started calling him “Camp Commandant”.
Ben: I remember the stories of everyone going away and coming back. We were young, Wilbur and I, and we’d sit in Greg’s room and he’d have pictures of the boys and the odd one of Peterson or Simon Anderson or whatever, they’d just be stills, and they’d go, “What’s this manoeuvre?” And we’d go: “Cutback.”
Will: Heavily groomed ... We felt like surfers already. I knew in my heart I didn’t actually surf, and I was talking to Ashley Smith, she was going to be like the best little surfer ever, and I went: “Yeah, so I think by the end of the year I should have the Aussie title and be sponsored by Rip Curl,” and I believed the whole thing. John shaped my first board.
Dan: We had to go across to Manly to get our wetsuits, and we went across in the ferry and there was a big swell in the harbour.
Mont: Whenever there was a big swell, we’d take the ferry over to Manly just to scare the shit out of ourselves. But if you wanted a custom wetsuit you had to go to Manly. We were very slim little boys, and we tried the ones on off the racks and they fitted like garbage bags so that wasn’t going to work. So they said, “I think you kids should go over to Manly where they can measure you up.” So we caught the ferry over, and I remember getting the first short johns and the vests, because that was the standard that all the older guys had that you wanted to have and you could pick the gusset colour. So we all picked a colour. I remember I got purple.
John: We slept in our wetsuits, we were so stoked to have our first wetsuits.
Ben: I slept with my Horan and Webber (surfboard).
Mont: We were too passionate about surfing. It was bizarre. If it had been something else there might have been a living there for us, but it would be interesting to find out what it was. I think Dad encouraged us, he thought surfing was the most wonderful sport. He just thought it was marvellous ... Meanwhile all the other kids in the neighbourhood’s parents just thought it was where the drug culture was, and they were right, but they were just warned off the beach and Dad was like, get out there.
Greg: We had the only parents who would go down to Bondi to watch their kids.
Dan: The Central Coast was a huge part of our childhood.
Mont: I think in a lot of ways, the spirit of adventure caught us really heavily.
Dan: We had a campervan and there was a ‘77 trip up here that was one of my first big trips away, that was like a month we were up here. But we’d mainly go to Banzai, Forresters, and Mont and I used to surf at what we called Pipe, which was the Suck up. Never made a take off. It was generally a long weekend. In the beginning of this period there was also Bower.
Mont: What happened was, there were these series of places we went to. It started with the Bower.
Dan: I was about 10 at this stage and I used to go along and watch.
Mont: And there were places that we kind of had to conquer.
Greg: There is a distinct difference between our approach to surfing and a lot of other people and it has to do with the place that you’re at. You want to be totally absorbed by the place. You’d go there and land there and almost want to live in the place. We’d make huts and spend as many hours as possible, like finding the bomb shelters at South Head and climbing the cliffs and finding places that people had been but don’t go any more, and making a cave. We really wanted to join surfing with a sense of place, and I know that’s a modern phrase. We had no self-consciousness about it, but all those places we’d have an incredibly deep and strong feeling for. And some other guy we knew from Bondi, he’d come and have a surf and go home, but we’d be glued to the place. We’d have Nielsen and South Head to ourselves when Bondi would be packed. George Wales was the only other guy from Bondi that we used to see out there.
Mont: We came up here to Angourie and we ended up kind of convincing Dad to buy this place in ’77 and then it was just like, next stop was Indonesia.
Greg: And that’s another funny thing. There was a group of people who wanted to buy this house, umming and ahhing about the price, which was $13,000 or something pretty low. But in a way you almost had to be given the right to buy it, and it was really up to Rod Dahlberg. He told the owner John Witzig that we were totally into the place.
Will: As you can see, it’s totally unchanged.
Greg: It doesn’t get ripped down for a set of units.
Mont: I remember going back to Bondi from our holidays, or long weekends, or anything, even before school. We’d go on these surfing adventures, we’d get to first period maths and everyone’s wiping their eyes and we’d have been out at Winki Pop for the early. It was like, fuck, we’ve already had five lives! And then it went on with all the trips away, and I remember coming back and talking to guys, some of the great surfers, guys like Crammy and Cheyne and Joe, back at Bondi, and they’d been off chasing contests and we’d had some mad trip like four weeks on Lord Howe Island, before leg ropes, surfing outer reefs on our own before anyone had even surfed ‘em. But, they got caught on that contest thing, and I swear they were a lot better surfers than us, there was a reason for them to chase those comps. But our holidays were just so full of adventure. And I always think John was mainly responsible for this because he had some bug about, you’ve got to get out there, we can’t wait, we’ll get all the gear together, we’ll get a gas stove, we’ll get tents and stuff. And he’d prove to Dad that you could take four people away for three weeks for like $2.80 (laughter), except Greg would sneak off and buy a vanilla slice or something. It’s like six weeks of food budget.
Greg: Or a teriyaki steak burger.
Mont: Because we were living on sausages and Weetbix. “You can have as many Weetbix as you want, as long as it’s not over five.”
Greg: And living on day old bread, we had to live on that for about 10 days, candles for light.
Mont: We went to Byron in ‘73 and didn’t come here ‘til ’75.
John: Yeah, pulled up at Spookys and thought that was Angourie Point. There was this picture of Angourie Point that didn’t have a caption on it and I used to go to bed at night dreaming about it. One day I knew I was going to be there, or we were going to be there. Every trip we came here we had great waves. The locals would say, shit, every time you guys arrive, the place turns on. We’d go up to the Gold Coast and have a shit time, get robbed and everything, come back here and it would turn on again, so we thought, oh, this place is magic. You’ve got Back Beach, there’s always a wave offshore somewhere, little hidden tucked away corners, the Pools. Luckily we bought the house. And years later I was flicking through old magazines and I got to that page and thought, my God, we’re here.
FILM MAKING
SW: How did the film making get started?
Dan: Dad bought an 814 super-8 camera before the family went to Lord Howe for a holiday in ’73.
John: Mont got into film making at school, and in our trips away from Bondi up to Fairy Bower. I think our first filming sessions on super 8, we’d do these trips away and wait three weeks to get our super 8s done and we’d compile a little half hour film on our trip somewhere. Sometimes we’d pretend it was Mexico or somewhere just to protect the identity of this sort of new frontier. And at one point there were some crazy films, like GI-Joe, which was an animated pornographic film.
Mont: It actually became quite famous, that film. For five years John thought all the super 8s were lost and the super 8s are about the most important thing we have of that period all the way back - thousands of hours.
John: Early stuff of Peterson.
Will: And you’d have to wait three weeks to get the footage back.
Mont: You’d do what’s called editing in camera in the old days. You don’t just shoot mindlessly everything. You work out a shot. Every time you shoot a wave, you work out, is this wave worth shooting, because it’s going to cost me. I think the filming thing was interesting for us because it wasn’t an ego based thing. It wasn’t because we wanted to film ourselves and go back and show our friends. We really enjoyed taking a camera out, taking turns, doing water footage.
Greg: I remember wanting to film every single thing that happened because I was buzzed off the idea of going over it all again, and editing it, and experiencing it again.
Dan: I distinctly remember watching the films and with the super 8 you’d have this freeze frame and it was scary because we’d naturally freeze frame the best frame and then hold it too long and then it would burn. (moans of agony)
Will: Film was a thing that had to be handled carefully, rewound beautifully back on or dust would get on it. The thing has life.
Mont: Our footage wasn’t so much performance based, it was to do with beauty and light and form and reflections. If you look at all those great films of the ‘70s it was purely about the beauty of the experience of surfing and making the person watching feel like they’ve been out in the water, seeing what you can see. That is what inspired us. We were really inspired by cinema through our parents as kids. We’d see continental films and come home and talk about these European films, Felini or Bergman. While we might have only seen one or two of their films, we became obsessed and we’d track their films down.
Greg: Dad used to get us up early in the morning for Shintaro.
MUM AND DAD
SW: How did your parents cope?
Dan: Mum was really industrious, incredibly. She built fences, furniture, knocked out walls.
Greg: How many mothers are going to get a router out that does about 12,000 revs, and can throw itself into orbit, it’s that powerful, and build a staircase.
John: When dad went into hospital for an operation on his back he came back to a new room built under the roof.
Will: She put a whole second storey on the house.
Ben: Knocked out walls, put in doors.
Mont: It’s almost like east meets west, or new school meets old school, ‘cause Dad’s really quite old fashioned in lots of ways. He’s quite stuck in an old English way, but they’re the most compassionate people ...
Will : There goes your funding. (laughter)
Greg: And accepting.
Mont: Yeah, accepting, beyond anyone else you know.
Greg: But accepting maybe just of us, the six boys. Anything to do with fun. The thing that I remember as both a blessing and a curse was his suggestion that so long as you’re having fun, then everything’s okay. I’d been studying and I had my little desklamp there but I wasn’t doing my homework. I was writing stuff about Lord Howe, how much I loved Lord Howe, and I was off in a dream world and he said, “You’re not really doing your homework, are you.” “Oh, I can’t stand it, I’m hating it.” And he said, “Well, as long as you’re having fun.” So, in a way, it’s a good thing, because you’ll always have fun, but you’ll never be committed, you’ll never be driven.
Mont: He always encouraged us to participate. What amazes me is when we were at school we decided all we wanted to do was surf and it was a nightmare. There was not one conversation around that kitchen table for a 12 or 13-year period that was about anything other than surfing. And I remember once, Dad went: “Please for the sake of your mother, can we talk about something other than surfing?” And John went: “Have you seen the new Elna Go Lightly sewing machine?” (laughter) And the next thing he said was: “How was that shorey!” (laughter) The most beautiful woman in the world surrounded by seven shonky males.
SW: What did your father do for work?
Dan: Dad had a framing business and he used to ride a Yamaha 500 and he had a beard. In ’74, he won the Australian Sculpture Award.
Mont: Jack of all trades, small businessman. By that I mean he was only 5’1”. (laughter) He had various businesses.
Will: Life insurance.
John: Picture framing studio, bought up a stack of terraces in Albion Street and South Dowling Street
Will: Brothels.
John: He didn’t know the brothel was there. Photography business.
Will: Car racer.
Dan: That’s right, he came 2nd in the 24 hour race ...
Ben: He was a wrestler at school, boxer and car racer.
Will: Sold insurance, made heaps of money doing that ...
Mont: And then he retired very early, which was the bad influence he had as a role model. “Well, if you’re retiring, I’m retiring.” But we never even went to work ... I blame him. If he picks any holes in me I go, well, have a look at my role model. I think dad being raised by his grandparents and sent off to boarding school. Being raised by grandparents is different. They don’t seem to stress as much as first time parents do and they understand that it’s all going to work out. “It doesn’t mean anything, just try and enjoy it as much as you can.” Whereas a lot of friends can look at us and say, “It’s funny you’re all financially, what’s the word, insolvent.” (laughter). Like, at every level, living exists at so many different levels, and on every level we seem to have got it down pat except for the financial. ... John’s done all right but we’re just so shonky when it comes to understanding how to make a living and once again I think that’s dad’s fault. No, only joking. (-:
Will: He put us all through Cranbrook which works out to something like two million dollars of today’s money.
Mont: Well, I’d like to get that money and have gone to the local public school.
Will: I did that. “I’m leaving, I’ve had it, I’m leaving in third form. Can I have one term of money to go to Hawaii?”
Dan: Mum used to serve up the best baked dinners again and again and in the morning she’d make these sandwiches for our lunches, gourmet sandwiches, lamb and salad.
Ben: She made the bronze sculpture at Bondi of the lifesaver running into the ocean, heaps of surfing trophies.
Dan: I can remember sitting next to Mum as she would be sketching, and just being around someone that creative, it rubs off on you.
Greg: The Manly Daily employed her as a fashion illustrator before they used photos in newspaper advertising. Should we try and get the distinct differences to highlight the genetic and psychological trauma that all of us went through?
Mont: I reckon there’s a court case there.
Dan: You know that book ‘the Celestine Prophecy’? That’s exactly what it says, that your mission in life is to resolve the differences between your parents.
Greg: Well, I never knew that because I purposely would never a read a book like that.
Mont: I went to read it and it said, “Nothing is by chance,” and someone came and took the book off me, and I went, oh well, there you go ... (laughter). I think that’s interesting, Dan.
Greg: When you look at dad who was an only child, although he has a younger half sister. His father left when he was three, and then his mother left him with his grandparents. So, this is effectively an only child. He went to boarding school. He was on his own in an absolute sense and dealing with it, being a little bit of a nugget, a bulldog, he took care of himself. Very strong, good fighter, good boxer, but a creative guy as well, and that was proven by his ability to communicate with people and sell. So he could tune in and understand people really, really well and sold amazingly well in his early 20s, and became very successful. Mum was a complete contrast, in that she’s the eldest of five and went straight into the mother role, taking care of her younger siblings at the age of 12 or younger. So, you’ve got a role that’s been defined hugely by your family circumstance on both sides, massively. Dad’s got all his thinking going on - where’s mum and where’s dad, and he’ll never talk to anyone, I bet, about how deeply that affected him ... but the contrast between what he experienced and mum, which is the complete opposite. “I just do, I’ve got to do, I’ll do the washing up, I’ll make the clothes and I’ll cook the food.” And to be married quite young and to have six boys in a row, and now in her 60s she’s still doing the same thing she did when she was 12 and so we all feel bad about that. That’s a massive period of time to be caring for people, and to be selflessly accepting in a way that not many people are, because she oddly enough doesn’t even mind that much. And the only things that shit her are the things that I’m really steered by - if mum’s got the shits about something, then it’s probably true. And I think our culture needs to look at women who’ve had children. Fuck the new age movement, look at the grandmothers who have gone through either a depression or a war, and they can deal with guys and their horny ways, so what if we want to root everything that moves, that can be worked out. And they can deal with male aggression ....
Mont: How did we get off on to that tangent?
Greg: I can’t believe it didn’t go there faster ... The point I’m making is there’s an acceptance that goes with that perspective and only really experienced women have got it ... Dad’s also got acceptance but oddly enough for the opposite reasons. He’s got acceptance for what he never had, so when he saw all of us popping out one after the other, this is like the gift of the universe. To have six boys, to be so energised, so he probably thought, just let it happen, and he didn’t want to restrict it.
Ben: Mum’s incredible, her views on women these days ...
Mont: She’s a man lover, not a man hater.
Ben: She didn’t want to have girls or boys, she just wanted to make a family, knowing that dad just wanted to make friends, make the family that he didn’t have.
Will: Mum even said she didn’t like most of his friends so she said “I just make my own friends.”
Greg: And used to be entertained by us and entertain us.
Will: Like vinegar and oil, opposites but make a great dressing.
Mont: They’ve had such an incredible impact on us, and we could go on about it forever, not least of which because we’re kind of still working it out as parents. But they’ve had just such an incredible impact and influence on us and we just respect them so much that it’s kept us together as a family.
Dan: One of the things is they listen, they really listen. They’ve really got time for it ... Mum’s very creative with her craft skills and such but dad has given us a workshop. Not everyone has a workshop, we just took it for granted. We had these drills that you pull down, these big grinders.
Greg: Metal rollers. How many kids get to roll eight-inch thick steel? An arc welder...
Dan: I just thought that was the way life was, and then I’d come across other kids, and now I’m a parent and look at what I’m providing my kid. I’m not coming anywhere near what dad did for us ...The drill bits for a drill press, that’s like 200 bucks worth of drill bits ... All those jokes about the funding, I had no qualms about ringing up dad when I was in Bali once and asking for 600 bucks. It never crossed my mind that there was anything wrong with it. I was like 19 at the time. I simply didn’t know that that was a lot of money. I don’t think dad wanted to give it, though. It was mum who sent it. We’re not that rich, no way. It’s bullshit to think that we’re stinking rich but the 50s come out of the pocket pretty quickly I reckon.
Mont: I can remember asking dad for a 50 and then writing it down that Dan had borrowed it. I was bad. At one stage they tried to make us pay for telephone calls. I left home at 32, it was a very rude awakening. And that was only because they sold the house. There was no house. I went back there. I tried to move in with the new people.
Will: I went back there and told the people, this is my fucking house, I was born here! They went, we don’t know what the situation is. We rent from someone else.
Ben: How was it when we sold the house and the first tenants moved in and we had a report that there was the first break in at our property in 33 years. A guy broke in with an axe through the front door.
Dan: It was probably Will.
Will: We would’ve killed the guy.
Greg: John used to make weapons that were outrageous. Like nails through the end of a solid bit of timber ... And for good effect he’d stick red-tinted resin towelling to it, so it had a ball at the end of it like a mace.
Mont: There was this obsession with weapons.
Will: What was the old motto we had - don’t smoke, don’t believe in god, kill dogs ... no, don’t smoke, don’t believe in god, and kill cats.
Dan: And dominate.
Will: d - o - m - i - n- a - t - e. I knew how to spell that at six....
SURFBOARDS
SW: How did the shaping thing start?
Mont: It came from Dad: “Be involved, don’t kind of sit back and go to a shop and buy your board. Can’t you make them?”
Dan: It was Christmas Day, on the front veranda, and there was a big box of coolites. Dad also bought the equipment that to shape boards, the planer. Greg used to wear this Makita cap a lot. When you buy a Makita tool you get it, red and yellow ...
Greg: I saw a couple of guys with them and wondered if they shaped. ...
Will: I was spewing, I bought my first planer and didn’t get one. ...
John: He loved the Makita cap so much, once I opened the door to his bedroom and he had his box of special magazines and he was naked except for his Makita cap (laughter).
Mont: One of the early experiences for me was seeing Endless Summer. I think we were already going down to North Bondi, the family end, with the bad boys down south, the no man’s land of South Bondi, walking down with their malibus. They always had the cool chicks . . . and Dad bought a malibu once, when we were visiting our Grandparents on the Central Coast. Five pounds it cost him, a big old heavy thing, and John and Greg took it out on Wamberal shorey and it wasn’t long after that John and Greg went: “You know what we’ve got to do, we’ve got to cut this down and reshape it.” I mean really, thinking back (to Greg) you started out shaping coolites. I remember what he did to mine.
Greg: I shaped it upside down by mistake.
Mont: The irony was that board went better.
Dan: That’s how you make progress in surfboard design.
Mont: His was beautiful like a finished thing. We always sold our boards at a profit.
Greg: I sold it to a friend who became a kneeboarder because it was so short.
Mont: And John’s ding repair business, very industrious. Mum and Dad always encouraged us, with buying tools and things, a business idea or if you were going to embark on some little project he’d always be 100% behind it, and they started doing ding repairs. I remember John and Greg doing it out the back. I never really liked the resin and all of that, I had nothing to do with any of the surfboard production. And I remember a couple of years ago going through some stuff and finding John’s ding repair book, and it was amazing, like there was, fin job, 80 cents, snapped board $1.25, onion rings, 28c, because he invented a way of fixing onion rings.
John: We were too young to move down the south end, which was the big guys’ domain, so we were riding coolites up north, these corky things that were dogs to ride. So: “Okay, let’s make ourselves a board.”
Greg: That’s a pretty cool thing. There are thousands upon thousands who will take that product out of the shop and ride it and accept that someone else has made it, and that’s the way it’s designed. We’ve been inherently tuned by the parents somehow to modify and vary and sculpt and alter.
Mont: You can’t take Greg anywhere. I tried to have a game of golf with him and I said: “Just hit the fucking ball.” And he’s looking at the club going: “I can fucking redesign this.” John is much more survivalist, like, he’d love nothing more than to be thrown out into the outback. You’ve got a couple of things, how can you survive? He’d have a little toilet set up somewhere. Greg and John both became obsessed with the surfboard thing. That was fascinating for me because I never touched foam, and these guys were cutting down mals and reshaping them. I remember one time, we took the first board that John made, it was a very short board.
Greg: We stripped a mal and it snapped as we were stripping the glass off.
Mont: So, then it ended up being like 4’8”, a tiny little thing, but they sprayed it, two really young guys, and wrote Webber Surfboards on it and it smudged. John wouldn’t take it down to the surf shop, he had too much pride for that, but he sent Greg and me down, and we were like 12 and 14.
Greg: Robert Conneelley Surf Designs.
Mont: And we went in and Greg showed it to them and they sort of laughed at us. I’ll never forget the bus ride home. Greg just looked at them and he was furious.
Greg: I though they were kind of fucked in a way because we were obviously kids and it was a good effort. It was a scaled down beautiful little surfboard, completely unsaleable, but they did say one thing. They laughed about it and can you remember the phrase? They said, “You never know, one day you might be shaper to the . . .” Remember the phrase? “. . . shaper to the stars.” And that’s pretty funny because you end up being that.
Mont: I was like, what a bunch of dickheads. I’d thought those guys were legends. Greg was like. “I’ll show you.” (laughter) Then Greg went off into the stratosphere. He was making boards and he went down to G & S in Cronulla. It was probably 1980. Greg took off and he’d just been making boards out the back.
Will: John gave up shaping early because he thought Greg was better.
Greg: That’s a critical moment.
Will: That’s a real critical moment because they could both be in the same place now. John was an equally fine craftsman and I think, he’ll have to tell you, but the same with Dad and Mum with sculpture. Dad was a sculptor and handed it over to Mum and I think John did a similar thing with Greg.
Mont: He did the same with surfing films as well. He did all these surfing films and he gave Greg the shaping and he gave me the surfing films in a way.
John: Any of my girlfriends, I’d hand on. (laughter) I think I might have shaped a few duds and didn’t handle that very well, whereas Greg would go, “Oh well, the fucking guy’s an idiot, if he can’t ride that I can’t help that.”
Will: I think John was as good, possibly better.
Greg: I think there was a precision of John’s in general that would have been a very, very good if not equally or better shaper. I was just a bit looser. The only thing I had was the looseness and John had the precision and I was a bit greedy and wanted to do every single board that came in. Every custom order that came in, I was: “I’ll shape it, I’ll shape it.”
John: You were just a better shaper.
Greg: You reckon? I made a board, another one of those weird flukes, it was meant to be 6’4” and it turned out 5’10”. I chose the wrong blank and took the appropriate inches off the end and made a stinger swallowtail single fin like Mark Lydell and Buttons used to ride and the guy was a very talented surfer and he went mental on it. So it was a dumb mistake but he claimed the board and went and told one of the guys at G & S: “This guy could be okay.”
Dan: And then there was the time you made a board for Greg Day and accidentally slammed it into the ceiling of the shaping bay and broke the nose off it.
Greg: Is this the only way I’ve created anything? (laughter)
Mont: Remember when you left that board in front of the heater and it turned into a banana? (laughter)
Greg: Don’t tell anyone. (much laughter)
Mont: There’s the joke that Mum actually did everything and we’re totally talentless. I even pushed it to the limit when I claimed to someone that Mum actually shaped the board that Barton won the world title on. He went: “You’re fucking joking, unbelievable”.
Will: So many things that happened were Sunday night about 10 o’clock, and I’d go: “I’m thinking about making surfboard wax.” I think I was 13. And Mum went: “Alright.” So, we went down the back to these guys’ rooms that had been changed into a studio and we had a bell that we used for the mould. Ten o’clock Sunday night was when projects got done, and we made up the first bunch of wax and called it “Dinosaur Wax” and Dean Cook was doing airs with it. It was the first sticky wax. They were going: “It sticks you to your board.”
Greg: G’Day claimed it and Sunny Garcia used to use it.
Will: I sold a box and then I’d get the money for another box and I got it up to 17 boxes and then someone took it and sold it and didn’t pay me, took my whole business, 17 boxes, took the whole thing and never paid me. I saw him down the beach and said, “Can you pay me?” and he went, “Look grommet, I’ve got Rip Curl, Oakley, Quiksilver breathing down my neck, go away ...”
Mont: I always thought if we had a card between us it could just be - “ideas men”. ... We’re very inspired by different things.
Greg: It’s the work thing we have an issue with.
Ben: Opportunities that you miss out on, ideas that mum had given me when I was a young surfer competing, I used to hang out with her at night before going to bed and chat about contests or what went wrong, and mum used to be out at the contest site filming Will and I ... She would end up with wind blistered lips. And I remember one time, she says, why don’t you when you go up on the top of the lip spin it right around? Or hit the whitewater and tail slide it, like a reverse. It was when Slater was probably just tapping into it, like 12 or something, and I was going, “Yeah, it sounds really good,” and she’d go, “Just dream about it and put it in your mind and I reckon you can do it,” and I thought about it and I dreamt about it but it never came naturally. One thing we’ve never done is anything that we’re uncomfortable with ... I wasn’t comfortable with the idea, maybe my brain didn’t have the capacity. Mum’s guidance was incredible, but I never took it on.
Greg: We’re happy to do well and if it makes money that’s a bonus, but only if it’s easy. Who can be fucked working really hard to be successful?
Will: I remember these heats we’d have with Davo at back beach when we were just starting to surf good and we were doing the first lookback reo’s, and I’d get five waves and surf as good as I could and I’d come in and Davo would go, “What are you doing?” and I’d go, “I’m too excited to continue ...”
Greg: That’s a great philosophy of life. ...
Mont: It’s pretty easy to have a party every night if you’re happy about the way things are going. I’ve seen Ben exploding out of himself, going, “What are we meant to do? How can it be this much fun? How come we’re allowed to have this much fun?” I don’t know, what’s everyone else doing? Get a case then? That’s the obvious conclusion.
COMPETITION
Will: I remember seeing Monty on the veranda one arvo and saying: “Fuck it, I’m no good. I have a fear I’m no good.” And that’s why you gave me the Creative Visualisation book and I picked it up and went unreal and got a fifth at a Pro-am and beat Aussie champs at 17. And you could fold Ben up like a director’s chair to get in the barrel. We’d say: “How come he didn’t get through?” And they’d say: “He’s too small.”
Mont: I think it was a different time. I remember times Ben would come back from a competition and he would have surfed his little heart out and then he’d say to me: “Can you just tell me about the olden days?” And he wanted to know about the adventures and the holidays and he got caught up in that. By that stage, professionalism had been so accepted, and you know what, they did well in comps. When Ben won the Aussie titles at that stage he was so focussed on surfing, both of them were so focussed. But I remember seeing Ben surfing in his sleep, go into his room and he’d be this little burnt out bit of bacon lying there going whoo, whoo, doing re-entries in his sleep, and it was like, it was kind of hideous and beautiful at the same time.
Ben: If I could have done reverses I’d have been right.
Dan: I reckon their drive to make the pro scene was around the same time that Greg began shaping for the pros. Greg was just shaping for the guys at Bondi and then a couple of guys like . .
Mont: Crammy.
Dan: Some hot surfers, and then it got to the point, around the time of Occy, Greg’s drive to get one of those superstars on his boards, it introduced the Will and Ben to the idea of a world championship.
Mont: It became a goal.
Dan: Greg was after pro surfers just as much as the guys aspired to becoming pros surfers.
Ben: And just to reinforce that, I won the Aussie titles and the next year you would be voted the best shaper in Australia
Will: Ben had a much stronger want to win, and I didn’t want to come second to Ben. I never cared through my whole pro surfing career, if you can even call it a pro surfing career. I was just happy to be there and surfing. I just wanted to surf good and hang with my best mates in the world.
Greg: You guys wanted to do well, you wanted to do really well.
Ben: We’d push each other harder. We’d go out at Bondi when we were grommets, like 13, Dan took me out in the biggest surf I’d ever been in. My leggy snapped, closing out Bondi, scared shitless. I’d come in and Wilbur had this arrogance, push, be strong, go hard. I’d be like, whoa, way more in with the flow of the ocean. I don’t want to be out there because I’m going to get hurt, but he was more like: “Rahhh, we’re going to get to the top.” And then when we were 13, 10 to 12 foot closing out Bondi, we’d just go out for a laugh.
Greg: I think their experience of surfing was influenced by what surfing meant at the time. But it was a much broader experiential thing when the older four experienced surfing, and then it got narrowed down by the magazines and the IPS at the time into a sport that was to do with winning and competing. And that’s really obvious to say that, but it goes to show that even though these guys had four older brothers that were going off on to the broader experience of surfing that they didn’t miss out on, despite that, they got channelled for a certain period in their lives away from the broader experience. You did get trapped almost by the need to be one of the best surfers in the world. And they wanted to fucking be the best, and I think that’s a rip off.
Will: Early ‘90s the APSA dropped the whole thing. All pro surfing wanted to go to Brazil or the US and they barred us. You look at who were champions of the APSA, I looked at it the other day, it was just sickening, down to the 100th person, you look at the talent ... There were guys like Matt Cattle, 50 people that in two years could have been world champions. We were lucky, we got to go to England and that. I ran out of money in England, both of us ran out of money there. The APSA let down Australia massively.
Ben: Two years later America ruled. We were doing 20 contests a year, two years later there was no tour. The Seppos when they don’t do so good, they go back to the PSSA. We came back to nothing.
Greg: But what if there was no need for a winner?
Will: Nah, nah, we weren’t after a winner, we just wanted to keep doing it, the experience.
Ben: The travel.
Greg: There’s a winner and then there’s the guys who get in the top places and then there’s 95% who never get there and I think that’s unfair.
Will: Nah, that’s got nothing to do with it. The thing that Ben and I loved is doing it, being a part of it.
Greg: And both of you found out that the dream was bullshit.
Will: I feel more for the guys who didn’t even get to do half the pro tour. Ben and I did half the pro tour, ran out of money in Europe, and there were guys who never got to do that, and we came back and the domestic circuit was over.
Mont: I think we are a decade apart. What we grew up watching, listening to, aspiring towards was different to Will and Ben even though they can just love and listen to Hendrix and Morning of the Earth and all those kinds of things. Their time was 10 years before and their aspirations were different to ours. They still loved all the travel and all the adventure but they thought, well, fuck it, we’re going to give this competition thing a good go and I think they got a hold of it and sometimes I feel like it was a bit unfortunate, because sometimes I think the whole professional surfing thing is a contradiction in terms. It’s so fucking ridiculous that all of a sudden you’ve got this criterion and you send these guys out and you go: “So who’s wining here? The corporates?” What is this system that you’ve organised and you’re judging it? You don’t have competitions where everyone’s got a canvas, go, let’s see how good you are? Why has it been belittled to the point that it’s been taken away from being an art.
Ben: So, what’s the point? You’re saying our era sucked?
Greg: Yep. I reckon to grow up in.
Ben : The way we are?
Greg: No, no, no, not at all. I think you got your zero to 10 or zero to 15 in the perfect time. You spent the first years of your life in the most beautiful place. When they wanted to be young men in power they were slotted into.
Mont: Every generation has to define themselves almost through their fucking difference to the last.
Ben: You know what Will and I were born into? Sex, drugs and rock and roll. Really, that is really it. We related to it. We had woman interaction, drug interaction.
Mont: You’re going to be in danger, Greg, of presuming that you can always read into what someone else experienced and people take offence at that.
GRAJAGAN
Mont: We all spent time there.
Dan: I didn’t know anything about Indonesia before we went there, and I remember when we paddled out at Ulu together for the first time and, fuck, we were grinning from ear to ear just because it was like the biggest triumph to have the experience of paddling out at Ulu. I didn’t know shit about Bali when I first went. I just got dragged along by Mont. My world was a couple of hundred kilometres or something ... We were over there and we decided to go to G-land and I remember we bumped into Ant Corrigan and he said it doesn’t work at under eight foot, and I hadn’t surfed anything over six foot and I was shitting myself...
Mont: It’s such a lie too ...
Dan: He told us to talk to Bobby Radiasa and so there we are, off to G-land. But I wasn’t surfing, I cut myself badly down the very end of Ulu.
Mont: We took him over as cameraman ... It was an unreal trip, that one.
Greg: Out of all the film I’ve seen of G-land I think two of the best waves out of three or four, these two (indicates Mont and Dan) have caught ... There’s one of Dan, this thing just funnels, like a four to five foot wave.
Dan: Ah, I pike it though ...
Greg: How’s the peel line, you guys? It’s like five times the height. The peel line’s really long ...
Will: Dan used to be called the barometer.
Dan: Because I couldn’t see clearly, I’ve got this eyesight problem.
Mont: They’d send him out to see if it was rideable.
Will: The Newcastle boys would go, “Where’s the barometer? Where’s Dan Webber”
Greg: That’s not us being polite, Tim.
Will: I’ve seen Dan on film ... But, eh? How big was that wave? 12 foot? Nah, bigger.
Dan: It was giant.
Will: We got the boat out. I said, I just want to get out there, so we got dropped off out the back. These things, you didn’t know whether to look at them, or ... I tried to catch the second one, which was bigger, but you couldn’t catch it in a million years. I don’t know where we were.
Dan: This wave was so big, it didn’t know we were there. We were irrelevant... (hysterical laughter and shrieking)
Will: It was like Sunset ... It was massive. We jumped off the boat and went, “Where are we?” And these big things appear.
Dan: I reckon we were just inside the bomby.
Will: I would say the waves could have been 15 foot, I couldn’t say. Same as the waves in Sumbawa I saw. I don’t know. I don’t know, but bigger than 12 foot ...
Mont: No one’s even mentioning the volume.
Will: We were just inside the bomby. We went, what do we do? Do we duck dive. And it’s foam for eight foot and the rest of it was wave and it went like this (growls). What do we do? I’m going to catch the biggest wave I’ve ever seen. And it just went, whooo ... (laughter) .... It was like Sunset when we first surfed it .... Im out with Owl Chapman and that and a wave comes, and it was a west peak and it was like the devil, a whole football field, and you’re paddling, you’re like a leaf in a fucking washing machine.
Mont: But you’ve got to deep stroke and breathe and keep a head on ...
Will: I don’t know if it was bigger than 12 foot but it was massive. They were black, and they had eight foot of white water at the top and rolling ... Mont got the longest barrel, which was in “Surf Into Summer.” I’ve seen this guy turn up and show this film to me, he’s made this film about G-Land, and it’s Ben. They called him the Tube Jew. Ben takes off at Lipthrowers which is mid tide, the whole section, and he gets five tubes on one wave. He goes one…, down, two…, down, three…, down, pumps up, sets up, four…, comes down, last one, pulls in five…, at the back of Speedies, comes out and that’s where the name Tube Jew comes from. And in ‘88 I was in fear of the reef. All I could see was reef. I couldn’t see wave. I didn’t understand reef. And Mont was taking off into close outs and I was going, “The guy’s psycho, he’s fucking crazy.” Then I saw him get three barrels. And Ben went over and just Tube Jewed Ulu.
Mont: The funny thing is that fade, it’s really similar to Dan’s fade but it’s different. Ben goes along and gets tubed and as soon as he comes out he goes, “Okay, well obviously, I’ve got to go right for a second, come around . . .”
Ben: Because I’m out.
Mont: Then goes along in the tube for a while, straight back down. It’s amazing to watch, you’ve never seen anyone so Jewish about getting tubed.
Ben: That’s why you pay to go there.
Mont: G-Land at that stage when Dan and I first went, there were more people taking care of us than there were being taken care of. There were eight of us, and there were 12 guys looking after us. We were having fun with them and you had that whole fucking reef. It was like being the most privileged surfers in time. You had the fucking joint to yourself. We didn’t bother naming sections, but at that stage surfing right from the top of Kongs down past Speedies there were sometimes three or four guys down that whole thing, and you’re looking for your brother out there.
Dan: It doesn’t turn on all the time, but I reckon in those early days we just lucked on big time, really.
Will: Someone said the other day: “You can go to G-Land, you can get it flat.” And I said: “What? Never. I’ll bet a fucking million bucks if I go back it’ll be breaking.”
Ben: Talking about the competitiveness, with that five barrel wave that I got at G-Land, I remember paddling into it, it was a similar section to Monty’s barrel in Surf into Summer. I looked at it and went: “Right, this is Monty’s wave, I’ve got one, I’ve got to hunt that wave out.” I took off and I had extreme pressure on myself to outdo Monty’s wave. I was stressing, going, this has got to be it ... Will took off on a wave at Speedies, the second wave in a set so it was whitewash through the barrel. Wilba takes off and you’re back in the black hole.
Will: It was a mind hole, and I just went down and went into it and went, Oh fuck I’ve made it, and just went like that (sideways) and went, Oh, I’ve got no control ... And I went over, and if I could grab your body and slam you on to a coral head, bang, mate, I nearly died. Bang, and just went, no good, no good, no good, no good. And what was pushed in got pushed out ... I felt all my organs, got up, floated around for a while .... and got washed in and took an hour to get up. I walked passed this chick, covered in blood, and walked up and she goes, “Ay, good waves out there, ay?” I’m just going, (blows a raspberry) walking like an insect. Got into Bobby’s camp, and this nurse went, “Stop, stay still, stay still.” Nyoman got me into a room ... made me piss into a cup, put me in a room and gone, “Look, we think he’s got a ruptured spleen, he’s probably got 24 hours to live.” I said to Ben, “I need som