Making Friends With The Neighbours

In Australia, we have a Federal election coming up on 2nd July . Even more significant, it's a double dissolution , which means the whole government is dissolved and is up for election, including the entire  (Senators sit for 6 years and usually only half the Senate is elected every 3 years). A double dissolution can be called if the Senate and House of Representatives fail to agree on a piece of legislation twice. The Governor-General (the Queen's is still our Head of State and the G-G is her representative. I KNOW!!) calls it, but the Prime Minister asks them to do so. There have only been seven double dissolutions since Australia's Federation, so it's a pretty big deal. Since we have three layers of government - federal, state and local - and since under Australian law, it is compulsory that all citizens over the age of 18 enrol and vote in elections , many Australians find elections annoying. Not me though. I love them. I love elections for lots of reasons, not le...

via ASAP Science

One of the things I love most about surfing, is being outdoors and in nature. I love watching the surface of the water, the changing colours of the sky and sea, the clouds that drift across and light up in the sunrise and sunset, the birds that wheel above us, the creatures that swim below and around us, the line of the shore from the water, and the cool and warmth of the air, water and wind. Being immersed in this world of light and colour and sensations and creatures has taught me a lot about my place in the world. It's taught me that I'm part of something, that my behaviour has effects, and that being a human in the sea has consequences. It's taught me I am not in control of the world and the plants and animals that inhabit it, but instead that I'm a part of that web - that ecosystem. With so much of my focus on surfing being about the culture and the relationships between people - good and bad - there have been times when immersing myself in the beauty and immen...

*To be filed under: #notallmen One of the joys of life is walking alone, taking in the world around us. I love it. I love walking around cities in the day and night, looking at buildings, watching people, learning the lay of the land, but even more I love walking on the beach or in the forest - surrounded by trees and sand and rocks and water and birds and animals and clouds and sunrises and sunsets.Walking alone, taking it all in. Sometimes, I even run on tracks like these, challenging myself as I negotiate the twists and turns on the concrete paths, roads or bush tracks. One of the places I often walk and run is the Lighthouse track in Byron Bay. It's beauty and accessibility makes it a very popular track with all kinds of people, from those returning from watching the most easterly sunrise on the mainland, to pairs and groups of women walking and chatting, pairs of men walking (and chatting?), as well as lots of people on their own running and walking, often with earphone...

It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the notion of mobile phones in the surf . I know it would be really useful for those whose jobs mean they're on call etc., by giving them more flexibility in the water, but still, the idea fills me with dread. I accept that it's inevitable, but it sucks. Voluntarily and involuntarily, our lives these days are so connected to friends, social networks, knowledge, news and media. W're constantly looking, listening, watching, reading, absorbing, responding, capturing, posting and sharing, and I'm totally part of that and I think there's lots that is wonderful about it. I mean, I'm writing this on online an online blogging site, using social media video sharing capabilities of YouTube, with text messages popping up on my screen and two email accounts open in my browser, all while listening to Cat Power via Spotify. So, yeah. Because I have so little discipline when it comes to being logged on, I really love those moments...

As it happens, I've moved back to Australia! Back home to Byron Bay. It was a sudden move and it feels weird, but it's also wonderful and I'm enjoying the familiarity of home. Yesterday, as I was looking at the shitty waves being messed about by a strong on-shore and strong currents, I noticed some commotion over at the Table of Knowledge*. I could see there was attention being paid to the nose of a longboard, so I went to have a stickybeak. Sure enough, the board was damaged. A long incision that cut through the whole board, deep into the body of the nose. The cut was as long at the span of my outstretched hand from my middle finger to my thumb. Obviously, the board had been hit hard. It was a dolphin! the man told me. He looked, while not exactly in shock, certainly in bewilderment. Yeah look, it's left some skin behind , John pointed out, sticking his fingers into the torn fibreglass. I stood, mouth open. I took the opportunity to talk for a while ab...

And here's one of the waves she caught in the final (when she already knew she was the world champion). Seriously an inspiring athlete. And woman .

As much as I'm loathe to contribute even slightly to this article getting any more attention than it's click-bait style writing aims to achieve, I still really want to say to Alex Haro and the rest of The Inertia editorial staff, 'Are you fucking serious?' ' 3 Reasons How Surfing Can Make You Into A Full Blown Sex Machine ' not only hacks at rules of grammar, but is also an actual article that The Inertia published on their website. So if/when you go ahead and click to read this piece of crap, lad's mag style, stereotype-filled 'comedy' piece,  keep in mind that it's written by the Senior Editor at The Inertia , a website that has variously described itself as 'The Thinking Surfer's Website', and the 'Definitive Surfing Community'. The Inertia is a website that flits unreflexively between publishing strong articles that highlight and argue against the sexism, homophobia and racism that can be so common in surfing cultu...

So, I know it has been around for a while, and I also hate that this is ultimately advertising but this little film is pretty great: Some super interesting points that help highlight how and why surfing was possible or not for women in the past. For example, the capacity to carry their own surfboard (which was limited by the weight and length) and the limited number of other women participating. Fingers crossed I get to live and surf as long as Gwyn.

The last couple of months, the weather has been pretty crappy here, making it hard to get outside to run, to walk and to generally be outdoors. To be fair, it has been winter. But last weekend there were some wonderful, sunshine-y breaks in the weather. Sadly these didn't include any waves - through circumstance and timing, I hadn't surfed in weeks, but I feel pretty zen about that these days. There'll always be more waves, and in the meantime I still got to go for a long walk. I rarely check the surf before I go for a walk, so I always wonder if when I get to the top of the hill if I'm going to see anything tempting below me. A few times I've crested the hill and found myself running the kilometre or two home to get my board and rush back to the beach, or kicking myself for not being more organised. Other times I've been floored by the crazy, messy ocean in front of me - whitewash as far as I can see. Last weekend was somewhere in between. It wasn...

I haven't written much on my blog this year. I've wanted to but the stories didn't seem to flow from my brain into words on the screen the way I've always found they have. It's not writer's block because I've been writing lots of other things in other places, so perhaps my word count got used up. Or something. I don't know. But I think about it a lot because I really love writing this blog. Actually, I really love writing. But I have a couple of stories I want to share from today and last weekend, so I'll write them up over the next couple of days. In the mean time, how beautiful is Aotearoa!!

Only because I'm feeling equal parts 'ugh', 'meh' and impressed. On her Instagram post, the surfer, Maud Le Car, says she lost a bet hence the get up. But the clip description on YouTube is a but more political: "Being a sexy pro surfer is one thing and being a skilled and accomplished pro surfer is another... Pro surfer Maud Le Car wants you to know that female pro surfers can look glamor and talented at the same time. She wants to prove that surfing is not just about glamor. Surfing is one of the most physically demanding sports there today." I'm not entirely convinced of what kind of awareness it raises, but you know. I get it. Oh look, I made comment!

Hopefully it ends very soon... I've been avoiding watching this clip all day but it got sent to me in an email* and, after watching it, I can honestly say I have seen few things more pointless and lame and irritating than that clip. The money, the time, the image of a Red Bull sponsored guy gunning past a woman on a SUP and Tahitian men in a waka is mortifying. It is everything I hate about Red Bull sponsored everything, in one tidy clip. When I watched this clip, I didn't see the new horizons of human endeavour. Instead all I saw was a waste of money, time and human capacity and ingenuity. And this is coming from someone who believes in art, music and sport. Near the end I was actively cheering on the heaving wall of whitewash, wishing it would engulf that fool and smash his stupid contraption, but then I realised that if it did, petrol would flood into the crystal waters in that lagoon. How was this even a thing that happened in this place? How did they even get per...

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I'm a passionate advocate for voting in elections. Although I don't always like the choices I have on offer, I still go along whenever I have the opportunity to participate in the form of democracy that we have on offer, to make sure that I have contributed to the formation of government. Along with paying tax, I see voting as one of the few responsibilities we have in return for living in a safe, prosperous society. At the very least, I feel that voting gives me the right to whinge about politics. Of course, not everyone shares my enthusiasm for elections. Over the years, I've wondered if the apathy Australians (and many others) feel about their right to vote - seeing it as a bother rather than a power - is due to the fact that as a nation we didn't have to fight for it and thus take it for granted. This morning I remembered that's a load of crap. Most people except land-owning white men had to wait and often argue for the right to vote, including, of course, wom...

Confession: I love action films. As in, they're one of the few things in life that makes me happy to momentarily throw aside my politics and critical thinking and just get lost in the insanely problematic maelstrom of explosions, car chases, violence, and special effects. I don't even need a plausible plot! I just love the total craziness of it all. That's not to say that I don't notice all the propaganda, sexism, racism and homophobia because you know I do. I so, so do. And it's not to say that I don't want the film industry to find ways to fix all of that stuff up. And of course all of this is something that is hotly debated online:  Mad Max: Fury Road has certainly inspired some good debate and media around that, any film by Joss Wheadon* is also an opener of worm cans, and The Hawkeye Initiative sure highlights the degree to which comics and superhero films treat women really terribly. Of course, I think through all the issues later on and think of ways...

One of my favourite things about New Zealand is their national airline, which has these great safety videos that take a totally different and engaging approach to seat-belts, emergency lighting and the brace position. Honestly, they're clever and funny and engaging and you actually want to watch them. Let me repeat that: You want to watch the safety video the whole way through. If you don't believe me, you can visit their YouTube channel , where they have all of these safety videos for public consumption.Think about that for a second. A couple of months ago, there was on that made me feel pretty uncomfortable. It was all Swimsuit Illustrated girls and women in bikinis. They played on the bimbo stereotype, twirling their hair and doing their makeup, all in bikinis. I suppose that's okay on paper. I mean it's sexist, but pretty standard. But the experience of sitting next to people watching sexualised images of women for our entertainment and consumption - on a safety v...

So I know I talk a lot about the inherent sexism in surfing, especially in surf media. I know I also talk a lot about how social media offers a way for individual surfers to make their own decisions about the kinds of images they post and promote in relation to surfing and life more generally. I've been pretty stoked on how social media has contributed loads of new representations of women and women's surfing - @babesonwaves is a great example of this. Of course, it can also be used to sing the same song of butt shots etc, so don't think I'm saying it's all rosy, but still, there is lots of potential and lots of cool things happening. So when I see images like the one below being used to promote a really great cause, and being re-posted by people who want to sincerely want to promote that event, I get bummed out. I found this image on Kassia Meador's Instagram site , which she uses in part to promote her new wetsuit range (which is pretty great, by the way...

It's not summer here anymore. The days are getting shorter, the mornings are crisp and tonight... tonight, I turned on the heater in my bedroom.  To be honest, I've been looking forward to hunkering down in these colder months. I'm on of those people who feels guilty sleeping any time that it's not dark, so the long, relentless, sunny days have left me feeling very tired. Also, summer is always so busy, which is wonderful but I'm ready to stop. I'm ready to spend a lot of time on my couch, listening to tunes, slowly cooking my dinner, which has the added bonus of warming my little house.* Of course, the cold brings other benefits too, the first one being 'waves', the second being 'fewer people'.  (Photo by the very clever Kath Bicknell )

*And with that in mind, all hail soup!