Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello everybody, welcome to barrelserve podcast. Namu here.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: And it is a fantastic episode that.
[00:00:06] Speaker A: We have for you today with west australian photographer Peter Jovik. He is renowned for his blurred speed.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Photography, some incredible photographs of the southwest region.
[00:00:18] Speaker A: And as usual, this week's podcast is brought to you by the good folk.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: At Cheeky Monkey brewing, forester estate wines.
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Shark eyes wetsuits down south physio.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: And before any further ado at some of the show, enjoy fledgens. Barrel Surf podcast. Barrel Surf podcast. Barrel Surf podcast.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Barrel Surf podcast. Barrel Surf podcast.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Barrel Surf podcast. Barrel Surf podcast. Yeeha.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Here we are. We're in the shed quarters.
[00:00:59] Speaker B: Back in the shed quarters. Been a little while, mate. We got a special guest today. We're going to do a little bit of a profile episode. You know, I'll try to keep a lid on my stories as much as possible, but no guarantees. And to here to keep me in check, tell me to wrap up under somewhere under 6 hours is my good friend t bone. How are you, mate?
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Good buddy? No, that's Namu's job, isn't it, mate?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Cut you out. Yeah, but he's not here, so you have to try to keep the lid on me a bit.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: It's epic. Summer has definitely started early. Lots of fun little ways over the last couple of weeks. Only small, but lots of fun little wiggles down there, down at Yelly Eva today of the family. Absolutely magic love this time of year.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: We've got a special guest in the headquarters this afternoon. He's driven up from Kawaram up, mate. He's in a bit of an enigma, actually. He's an absolute underground mystery man. He is a total mystery man. I had conversed with him for well over ten years via social media, direct messages. When I finally met him for the first time, I actually walked straight past him, didn't even know who he was. Met him down at ain't that swell? Live podcast. He's like, oh yeah. And I'm like chatting away to him and he's like, you got no idea who I am. And I'm like, mate, I'm sorry, I have no idea. And he's like, it's Pete Jovik. And I was like, get out of here. Pete Jovik, mate. We'd literally over ten years, had been sending messages.
[00:02:16] Speaker A: Oh, shit. And you finally spoke. Yeah, face to face, ten years later.
[00:02:20] Speaker B: Because the thing about Pete, he's an underground core lord of a photographer. For those that don't know, he specializes in hiding in the deepest, darkest bushes from the most obscure angle you can find.
I think this is the first time anyone's actually seen him ever, to be honest. He likes to get up. Way he gets up before me to start shooting, mate for a dawny. He loves that very first crack of light. He's a speed blur specialist. He loves to go out and swim around before even a surfer gets in the water, take a water shot. He is the ultimate. He'd make the best pervert you've ever seen.
He's like a peeping Tom of the surf world. No one's ever seen him before. Welcome to the. You, Pete Jovik.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Thanks, guys. Thanks for the introduction. I don't know what to make of it, to tell you the truth. Especially the peeping Tom bit. That kind of stuff. Yeah, no, that kind of doesn't really happen at all. There's no one down the beach that time anyway, mates. Yeah, but you got to maintain your values and stuff. And it's all about the ocean and photography for me.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: But, yeah. Thanks. And by the way, Adsi, I actually didn't expect that you'd know who I was. I don't go around, you know. You know who I am. But it's just like you say, we converse so often. And then that evening, I'm pretty sure I walked past you as well. I've got. Oh, I'm pretty sure that's, hey, Adsy. So luckily I got in first and managed to make you feel bad instead of making me feel bad. No, you killed it.
[00:03:48] Speaker B: He won that round.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Was that at the last ain't that swell show or the one at beer farm?
[00:03:51] Speaker B: It was at the last one, Margie's. And then we shared a couple of beers beforehand. Yes, we did. Yeah. And had a good laugh about it. It was pretty classic. And then not long after that. Yeah. Had a pretty funny story about a photo that he'd taken and ended up going to his house and getting it printed and stuff. But we'll go into that because it's.
[00:04:12] Speaker A: A really cool story.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: But I don't think we'll start there, mate. Thanks for coming up, Pete. On a Saturday afternoon and joining us. You've been on the list of guests for a while. You probably didn't know it, but I had you written down. Even had a couple of people nominate you. Say, hey, get of a. He's a bit of a sleeper in terms of. You know, what I mean by.
[00:04:31] Speaker A: Well, I don't know, but for anyone to suggest that I'd come on is pretty flattering.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: Shout out to Luke Gerson. He definitely told me. You should get on, mate, let's dial it all back. You are a surfer as well as a photographer, and no doubt that's where the passion of surf photography came from. Mate, where did you grow up?
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Well, I grew up in Perth and I grew up pretty much solid blue collar country for those that might know. Suburbs. Like, I initially grew up in Balga before we moved up. So you are the beaten.
So, yeah, we moved up, but we moved to Giraween after that, and I grew up there as well, so pretty much got to know where every alleyway was, because you kind of needed to know where they were on a Friday or Saturday or any night, really, when you get chased by a gang of hoodlums.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Just for those that don't know, Belgian were definitely some of the rougher suburbs of Perth back.
[00:05:28] Speaker A: But the beauty of that was we used to live pretty close to beach road and that was really only as the crow flies. It's like about ten minutes from those sorts of heavy duty neighborhoods and then next thing you know, you're at the ocean. So it wasn't difficult at all. My neighbor, who was from Torquay originally, he used to come knocking on the window early in the morning because he was a full frother and it was pretty good. Occasionally I'd sort of be able to ditch school or whatever it was and go surfing. And there was a small crew of us that were right into it and so we'd kind of make trigs our local and so on.
[00:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah, closest wave would have been Watermans. Yeah, that was my closest wave. Yeah.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: I used to surf a little wave, God knows, called Gravis as well. That was quite a. Gravis. Yeah, Gravis. Yeah, that was our sort of go to spot.
[00:06:21] Speaker B: And that was my first ever reef break.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I used to think it was unreal and then progressed down towards trigs and so on beaches down there. What's the origins of your surname? Jovik. Yeah, well, my mum and dad, they moved over from what you'd call the former Yugoslavia, I guess they moved to Manjimup.
[00:06:42] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So the old man, actually, they lived in Dean Mill, so there was a timber industry there. He worked at the timber mill. He had a workplace related injury and he fell from a scaffold or something and broke his hip and spent a fair bit of time in hospital. And then mum was picking apples and the orchids and so on.
Croatian, mate. Serbian.
But I was born growing up in Australia, so that side of, I guess, my heritage, if I can call it that seems like such a world away, if you know what I mean. Especially in the suburbs I grew up in.
It's just pretty hardcore Aussie and it's all about football, cricket. I was going to say that. Did you play a bit of footy as a young tacker? Yeah, actually, no surprises. I actually even played soccer. But the football side of things was more related to school and interschool footy. And we were a force to be reckoned with because no one wanted to play Guerraween just for the reputation that they had, for sure, which was never warranted because there was a lot of really talented people there if they could channel those energies.
I swear I went to school with people that probably could have been.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: So there was definitely some bad influences.
The avenues towards the right direction probably weren't very prevalent or available for a lot of people.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
[00:08:12] Speaker B: Because it was definitely a lower socioeconomic area.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Totally. For sure.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: I know why T Bone asked you about his surname. Tell him, T Bone.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: I know because I've former Yugoslavia too, mother side, so. Yeah, they're a Chovich, though. I just thought. Jovich Stovich. But I was going to ask you, mate grave in that area as a young surfer, did the.
[00:08:33] Speaker B: Because I grew up in Rockingham.
[00:08:34] Speaker A: Okay. So if you were a surfer, you'd probably just get beaten up by the rockers.
Bogans. Yeah, the Bogans and the river rats. Was that same with you, mate? No, not so much, really.
I think school was from my memories of growing up there. It wasn't so much. I mean, you had all of that and even the goths as well. There was quite a lot of those gothics. Yeah, but I remember lots of tensions when it came to intercultural type of societal, those sort of issues that we have in society, which would flare up on a regular basis too regularly. For some of the things that I've seen in the past.
It was a pretty intense childhood growing up there. But it was also really good because you got pretty street wise pretty quick. You had to, didn't you? But people still made the best of what they had and people playing sports. And I didn't see anyone that I knew that was denied of having the stuff that was going to make them happy, like running out into a field or board under their arm, whatever it is, for sure.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Could you ride to the beach from.
[00:09:53] Speaker A: Too far for me because I was.
[00:09:55] Speaker B: In Kareen, which is about probably two suburbs closer down the same beach road. But obviously we could ride to the beach. It was within reason, but yeah, Balga was definitely.
[00:10:06] Speaker A: That little bit were on the. You're on the good side of town as.
[00:10:12] Speaker B: We definitely were nervous when we had to go play balga. Gearween football club was like, here we go, lads.
That was when we're kids.
[00:10:20] Speaker A: We were nervous about to go play Kunana and footy.
[00:10:22] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: Back in those days, I still get nervous going to Kwanana. Anyway.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Shout out to Kunana. Yeah, shout out to listeners in Kwanana.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: No disrespect intended, but it's great. It's fantastic.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: Fantastic. If you don't live there, can't wait.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: To get back there.
[00:10:39] Speaker B: Yeah, mate. So I'm assuming your dad didn't surf then, obviously.
How did you find surfing?
[00:10:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I had one or two friends at school that were right into it from primary school years and just sort of.
I guess they sort of influenced me. But it was also my brother who got right into it as well. So I'd hang out with my brother a lot. He's actually still up there in Perth and we just used to froth out and. Especially when he got his license before I did.
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Sweet.
[00:11:11] Speaker A: So he was driving me down to Market river and all that when I was like 15 or whatever, and he had his license and. Yeah, we could do. Yeah, so we'd come down here all the time and.
[00:11:21] Speaker B: What vintage are you, Pete?
[00:11:24] Speaker A: What vintage as in year born? Yeah, 1970.
1970, yeah.
[00:11:31] Speaker B: And you found surfing sort of as a mid teenager?
[00:11:34] Speaker A: Yeah, about 15, 1415.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: All right, so you're talking about 85 there. So maybe first board, 20, something like that.
[00:11:41] Speaker A: No, just like looking at your courtingly that you've got here in the shed kind of back there. Probably something more like that, maybe.
I don't know. I remember my first board was just a horror story. It was a single fin and we ended up. My brother and I ended up painting it like flat white from some jewelux can of paint from bunnings or whatever. And we've done that and had the old, like a piece of rope for a leg rope with a sock on the end of it or whatever. You've heard all those sorts of stories.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: But that's interesting to hear everyone's.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Yeah, and it was cool. But it doesn't sound that cool. Well, at the time it was.
Yeah. So we were right into it. So that was your first thing?
[00:12:24] Speaker B: You shared it with your brother?
[00:12:25] Speaker A: Well, yeah, not for long. He. He used it more often than, you know. I'd whinge on the beach every now and then that he was out longer than you know, what's your brother's name? Brian.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Shout out to Brian.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: Yeah. G'day, mate. How you going? I've spoken to him for a cool.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Yeah, right. And, mate, so you started wagging a little bit, getting down the beach a bit more. Can you remember your first sort of wave where you got that clean face?
Because obviously we all start in the whitewater and then you get that little clean face moment. Can you remember that at all?
[00:13:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I reckon everyone probably does. It's just one of those magic things where I think so distinctly recall that first time we actually get that clean face, that wall. And it actually feels like if someone had said to you, it's like walking on water, that's exactly what it felt like to me.
[00:13:23] Speaker B: Sick.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Like walking on water of it. So I remember I got probably. My first wave was at Trig. It was down towards trig point and waves were kind of fat and blah, blah, blah. I ended up getting one in the white water. It kind of reformed on the inside and that was like. Oh.
But then it was after that we actually came down to Margie's and we actually went down to Augusta, took our boards down there and so on and paddled out at Augusta. And there was a little wave there. Am I allowed to say that?
[00:13:51] Speaker B: No.
[00:13:51] Speaker A: Yeah, because it goes off every day.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Yeah. It's so rare. Yeah, it's a fickle beast.
[00:13:58] Speaker A: No, it was like a summer day where it's just like weak sort of.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: So it wasn't the river mouth?
[00:14:06] Speaker A: No, it was at the river mouth there. But the waves were kind of like forming up and sort of zipping along them and just doing that. And I just remembered that as well.
[00:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah, cool. Well, that's a pretty cool spot to get your first memory. I don't think anyone's nominated that one yet.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: I've never surfed there since. Really?
[00:14:24] Speaker B: No way.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Well, there's never any waves there.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: I know, it's such a fickle beast.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Don't go there. Don't bother.
[00:14:30] Speaker B: No, it's one of those ones that you just need the exact right angle. It was probably just bloody wind chop that you got.
[00:14:36] Speaker A: That's exactly what it was. It was pretty much howling you.
[00:14:40] Speaker B: Here's a little interesting piece of information for you today, Cape naturalist. We live on the Cape to Cape region. For those listeners over east in that, Cape naturalist in the north, Cape Lewin in the south, what? Maybe 120 K's. 100 K's today at Cape Naturalist lighthouse was 36 degrees and easterly. Cape Lewin lighthouse at the exact same time, 20.
[00:15:03] Speaker A: Bullshit.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: Not kidding you, mate. 20 degrees and 35 knots southeastern.
[00:15:08] Speaker A: Bullshit.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: 15 degrees difference, mate, because it's so windy. And you look on the charts, we got this light easterly, and down there is 30 to 35 knots southeast, which.
[00:15:19] Speaker A: Is effectively their sea.
[00:15:20] Speaker B: Southeast is their sea breeze down there because it goes. It's where two oceans meet, the indian and the southern ocean. And it just gets these crazy winds, mate. 15 degrees cooler on the same day, 100 K's apart. I couldn't believe it. So, mate, I know where I'm going when the climate change kicks in.
[00:15:36] Speaker A: Head down there.
[00:15:37] Speaker B: Except it's onshore, like when it goes onshore up here at eleven, it's onshore by 730 down there. So that's another reason not to go down there, isn't it, Pete?
[00:15:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, I've had days where I've driven from Margie's and there's not been a cloud in the sky and got down to Augusta and it's been like bucketing rain.
[00:15:54] Speaker B: And we think that about Margie's from here, which is Margie's is the halfway mark between Yowles and there. So it's pretty interesting the capes can have such a variance.
[00:16:03] Speaker A: Yeah, the microclimates are amazing. That's what I love about the region.
Yeah. Cheers.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: Almost better than Victoria.
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Hey, what I want to ask you, mate, as a grommet, did you have any surf heroes? Did you into professional surfing as a young grommet? Yeah. Because when. As he asked me before and when he mentioned about the era, I was thinking about guys like Tommy Carroll and then Barton Lynch, Gary Kong Elkerton. He was one of my.
Those. Natural footer. Natural footer, yeah. And then I used to love the Carvers. Like his name escapes me now. Richard Cram. Richard Cran. Yeah, he's cut backs.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: We had his son bow in here.
Did you manage to get any photos of Bo? He's been sniffing around wa for a couple of years. No, he rides Christensen twins all the time. And. Yeah, he sort of floats around here and Cal Barry and I think he's still floating around, actually.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: I think he is still chippy.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: He's a part time chippy, part time tube pig.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: He's good. What about local surfers, mate?
[00:17:11] Speaker B: Who were you looking up to in those early years locally? Was there anyone?
[00:17:14] Speaker A: Yeah, we had guys like Benton Moran was one guy, Paul Cunningham. I remember him back in the day. I don't know if you remember him, but for me he was like one of the most talented surfers or gifted surfers that I felt that I'd seen out of the area or out of the region? Out of the state. He was amazing. Then you had guys like Richard Kelly.
[00:17:39] Speaker B: Popped up a few times.
[00:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah, and I'm sure there's more of know. And then you had your guys like Matt Branson and so were.
[00:17:50] Speaker B: We were going to try to get Matt and his brother Todd in because his brother Todd lives in Dunsborough. Matt's over east. We were trying to line it up. He's a sander for Js, isn't he? I'm not sure what he does exactly.
Mates.
Grommet abuse. Did you cop any? I mean, it was pretty rife in the 80s. You were probably pretty rough and tough from Balga. They might have picked bitten off more than they can chew if they hunted you boys. But you cop anything down there at trigs, it was pretty synonymous. No, I was scared in the early ninety s of rocking around down there like that. Someone was going to take my board. And I remember always getting told if you had a new board and you were like a twelve year old at trigs, you can't have a new board because they'll take it off you and sacrifice it, like surf it and then snap it in front of you or something. So it was like, oh, you had to have an old board. I don't know if mate was just the urban myth or whether it happened, but did you cop any abuse at all?
[00:18:43] Speaker A: No. I think probably one of the first times I actually went out at Trig, I remember one guy kind of said to me, what are you doing out here, idiot? You shouldn't be out here. Why don't you just piss off? Sort of thing?
So I did. I think I went back down to Watermans and I didn't go back there until at least I could stand on a board and turn or get out of people's way or not run them over, if you know what I mean.
It's just one of those things that you do, isn't it? Yeah, but other than that, I didn't really cop, like really any Grumman abuse or anything like that.
Cool. Sorry.
No, that's good.
[00:19:21] Speaker B: I like it that this guy told you to beat it and you actually did. Okay, I'm going. I'm out of here. I'll come back when I'm better. It's like you took his advice. It's pretty classic. Yeah. Cool mate. You mentioned you had an older mate and started coming down south. Can you remember your first ever down south trip?
[00:19:43] Speaker A: I don't think I can actually remember the first ever one. They all seem to have mashed into all of these different trips and also living down here now, I first started coming down here with dad. Dad was right into fishing, so he'd go out at North Point and so we'd just go wherever. And then after that, like I say, there's just so many of them that there were so many of them, like where you'd drive down the middle of the night and you'd end up at the bear's car park and you'd sleep overnight and freezing cold. And even though it's going to be 35 the next day, it's still freezing cold because you bought no supplies and just trips like that. And they just became more and more frequent.
Pretty similar for all of us. And then, especially after, I guess, no longer leaving school and then actually moving to another area or whatever it might have been, and surfing a lot.
You met so many other people at your local, and before you know it, you've got this little crew happening, and then we're all going down south. And most of those people, I think you probably know, and they all live down here now as well and have been for a long time, for sure. So it can seem like a natural progression. Sorry, I know I'm going off the rails here, but.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: No, you're not at all seem like.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: A natural progression that everyone sort of starts making their way down here.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I think for obvious reasons, that's exactly what happened to me. So you're painting the picture that probably happened to most of us. We come down and then we come more and more, and then eventually we just go, fuck it, I'm not going back. I'm going to try and make it work from here. We all followed that path. Is there any one of those early trips that's memorable for one reason or another, like some crazy drive?
Because back then, like you say, it was always like you came down on a Friday night, maybe after the pub, like, had a few of those story anything where something went wrong on those early down south trips due to any mishaps or anything like that, that pop in your mind?
[00:21:49] Speaker A: I think there was stuff like getting bogged in your Holden HG sedan on some of the tracks that now you can kind of. That are all sealed.
[00:21:58] Speaker B: Can you remember your first surf down south where you were just like, oh, holy moly, there's a bit more juice down here than old gravis. Have you got a memory there that pops out by any chance? If you don't, that's cool.
[00:22:14] Speaker A: Yeah, no I remember one that kind of really stands out for me was the first time I paddled out at a place like Southsides, down the other side of Maggie's reef there.
And it was myself and two of my mates were sitting in the car and kind of coaxing each other. Get out there. And I don't know what size it was. It could have been four foot, could have been eight foot. We're probably thinking it's eight foot or whatever, but when you come from trigs, yeah, three foot full on your first surf south side. Well, the thing that struck me was that when I paddled for that first wave, it kind of felt like the wave had actually already traveled underneath you. And then all of a sudden, it's just like grabbed you and tried to catapult you down the face sort of thing. And I'm thinking, wow, these waves are so thick, they're so powerful, and I don't want to be out here, sort of thing.
Yeah. But stayed out and I don't even know if I got a wave, to tell you the truth. I actually cannot remember. But I do remember seeing my mate take off on one on the inside, and I was, like, just yelling and going, oh, it was incredible. And I don't know. I don't know what sort of size wave it was. And he was pumped, and I was pumped. But I remember just sitting out there and looking out and you could see the greek chapel from out there. That view from there is just amazing.
But from there, I thought, oh, no, that's like a bit too much for me. It's like a bit too powerful and so on. So we started going to places like Smith's and taking that on instead and having a go and just kind of finding our feet. But it's like down here, it doesn't take you long before you want to start pushing yourself, and your ability is getting better. And even if your ability is not getting all that good, as long as you're able to paddle and take off and bottom turn, you get accustomed to.
[00:24:09] Speaker B: Four to six foot pretty quickly down.
Even if you're just an average Joe Punter like us guys, you do get accustomed to a five to six foot wave, like, after not long, because it happens once a week.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:24:22] Speaker B: For this week. What sort of boards were you riding.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: When you came down south? Did you.
Well, do you remember Mick Manolis? Yeah, I was getting a heap of his boards at the time, so a guy that I knew had a pretty good rapport with him, and so we'd go down and go down to. At the time, I think he was living at engine up. Oh, yeah, he was. So we'd go there and go check out the shaping bays and all that and have a chat and order boards. And that's who I was mainly getting my boards from. But before that, it was pretty much like, mentioned earlier, like going accordingly or whatever, and grabbing a second hand board off the rack, or dare I say, even driving past down beach road, you might have quite a few of those bulk rubbish collections or whatever it is, and then you might see a board out there. Because think about it, back then, and it would have been ideal to start harvesting boards. Back then, no one knew anything.
That would have been crazy. I remember Claire Bevo said she pulled a board out of a dumpster up in City beach.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: Really?
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Probably would have been brand new being city beach.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Probably, yeah. You imagine all the singalees that got chucked out on verge collection in, say, the late 80s, early 90s that were just like, no one wants these anymore. There would have been some gems go down.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Speaking of old stuff, I remember my mum threw out all my tracks magazines. 25 years traveling.
[00:25:50] Speaker B: I think you've already complained about this on the potty. It's not your first.
[00:25:53] Speaker A: No. Easy. It won't be my last. Therapy for that.
[00:25:57] Speaker B: What about the first tube?
[00:26:01] Speaker A: Yeah. I think I might have scored this barrel in sort of contentious circumstances, sort of thing.
I remember one of my mates who I was surfing quite regularly with, he sort of started not really surfing so much, and one day I rang him up and said, oh, you know, I think it's pumping down at third or second car park at trigger, whatever it was, I should come down, we'll go for a surf. And he's like, oh, I haven't been surfing. Blah, blah, blah. Ends up he comes down and we both paddle out and this is trigger. And it was actually like a really good day. And I remember this peak sort of coming through and it was quite a decent sized one for trig at least.
[00:26:41] Speaker B: Which is a Perth beachy for.
[00:26:44] Speaker A: And it's usually like really bad, but.
[00:26:47] Speaker B: It has its 95% of the year, it's terrible.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Every dog has its day.
And I saw this peak coming and my mate, who's on the inside of me, who's like barely surfing and all that, and is kind of struggling a bit, I'm thinking he's right in the perfect spot for it and he's just going to get like this cracker of a wave and blah, blah, blah. And I watched him, I watched him paddle for it and I could see him sort of laboring for it and I was kind of pretty fit and pretty frothing and whatever, you're all ripped. And I just basically burnt him.
I took off. Anyway, I remember bottom turning into this wave and next thing you know, this thing's just like perfect barrel over the top of me in that. And then it kind of seemed to peed it out, like sort of hit the flats a little bit and then there was like this little rip bank on the other side of it. And I kind of like went over this flat section, then into this little rip bank and kind of got like a double delight sort of thing. Your first barrel was a double barrel? No, but.
[00:27:48] Speaker B: No, you're telling me.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Hang on. I'm not saying it was like 5 seconds, it might have been like half a second, it doesn't matter. And if you split the two barrels, that's like a quarter of a second each.
[00:27:58] Speaker B: It's still a double.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Wow. But anyway, I burnt my mate to do it.
[00:28:04] Speaker B: I think it was going to do anything.
I don't think one, I don't think anyone's ever got, and anyone on this podcast has said my first barrel was a double.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: So you're breaking new ground there at least. And then two, which is classic. But I want to know what happened with the mate. Was he sour or what happened?
[00:28:24] Speaker A: Oh no. Well, I kind of just paddled back and said, I'd like to say I'm sorry, but I actually said to him, I said, I just got a barrel. And he was like, I haven't spoken to him for a number of decades since actually he quit surfing after listening to this podcast.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: I still remember that wave. That was the turning point in my life. I've gone down the wrong path ever since then. It could have been my two barrel. Probably a meth.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Never became a surf photographer, that's for sure.
Oh, jeez. Well, that's a pleasure and pain story. That's epic. That's a great first tube story. One of the better ones. I like it.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: It's probably one of my only ever tubes I've ever had.
[00:29:16] Speaker B: How many other times in your life do you reckon you've got two tubes on a wave? Because for the average punter, I find that is a bit of a rarity.
[00:29:23] Speaker A: Well, probably never, probably never.
But everything's like, you know what it's like when you're surfing. I remember some waves that I've had where I just thank God that back when I was surfing, not so many people were videoing stuff and posting stuff and all that, because I'm pretty sure I got some pretty good barrels back then. But I reckon if any of that had been recorded and posted somewhere, I'd be like the full barrel dodger, sort of.
[00:29:50] Speaker B: You've done that to me plenty of times. I can understand completely.
[00:29:54] Speaker A: It's all about the angle, isn't it?
[00:29:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.
[00:29:57] Speaker A: Were you interested in the little better cams and the little cameras at an early age? Now you mentioned it. Yeah, kind of. I imagine a lot of people would be able to relate to this sort of thing where you go out with your mates and whenever someone takes off and they tuck in under the lip or whatever it is, you're sitting on the shoulder and you're pretending that you're doing the old.
[00:30:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I still do that.
[00:30:17] Speaker A: Don't we all?
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Pretend you're winding the old movie.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right.
So just stuff like that. But me personally was more stills photography. I remember my dad had a video camera. It was one of those great big things that you sit on your shoulder and it's got a great big battery pack in it, like a Tesla battery or something. Probably weighs about a ton.
[00:30:42] Speaker B: It'd run a car.
[00:30:43] Speaker A: Yeah, it'd run a car. That's right. So that kind of didn't really interest me much because it was big and cumbersome and blah, blah, blah. But I really like still photography.
[00:30:51] Speaker B: Yeah, nice.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: And the one thing about the school that I went to, even though it was sort of that blue collar thing, like I mentioned earlier, because of that sort of thing, I guess state governments, in a way, probably provided some good funding for some of these establishments to keep people interested, for crying out loud. And we had a wicked photography lab there. We were able to do dark room was just Spano.
[00:31:21] Speaker B: Was it joined to the tafe at all? Because I always remember a lot of tradesmen. Balga tafe was like the biggest tafe in the area. Tafe being.
[00:31:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't remember, but it was.
[00:31:30] Speaker B: Like all your apprenticeships and that everyone went to TAfE as opposed to uni. I always remember Balga Tafe was a big.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: This is at the actual high school, so it was actually quite incredible.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool.
[00:31:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know if it was, like, one of the first for wa schools.
[00:31:44] Speaker B: How many high schools got dark rooms these days?
[00:31:46] Speaker A: Well, and we were doing.
[00:31:50] Speaker B: You don't need a dark room anymore. But still, it would have been a bit of an anomaly. Not every high school had one back then. That's for sure.
[00:31:58] Speaker A: But having that facility available, even though I started taking an interest in photography, and so you've got that sort of facility available to you, so you're able to utilize it and it really motivates you to progress because you've got all the tools that you need. It's like if you're shaping a board, you go into a shaping shed and everything's there that you need all the tools that you need to work and commence doing whatever it is that you need to do. It's pretty similar sort of stuff.
So you went straight into photography at school, where you had a teacher that obviously taught you? Absolutely, yeah. Cool.
[00:32:37] Speaker B: I didn't expect that.
[00:32:38] Speaker A: So I had this elderly fella, and he was totally committed, totally passionate about photography. And when I look back on it now, it's interesting that you've asked me, because I never really thought about it. I've think about this teacher every now and then, but he was pretty much my main inspiration. So we learned how to develop all our own negatives, right, do all our printing, all that sort of stuff. So you'll pretty much. We had studios and it was a proper setup, and we used to go on excursions at night, like do night shots of the city and that sort of stuff, and just his passion for it. And I think that's also where I started gaining that full sense of freedom that comes with photography in general, because you're going out and you're doing stuff and you're going out to create something or whatever it might be, and it just puts you in a different space and takes you away from everything, life.
People find relaxation and comfort in other things.
[00:33:39] Speaker B: Meditation.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I was going to ask you, buddy, what was catching your eye in those early days? Well, I was right into a journalistic style of photography. That's the sort of thing I love doing. So I would like to do things like go to a rally, go to some huge meeting, people are arguing and blah, blah, blah, and they got banners up and blah, blah, blah, like real news related sort of stuff. And I'd go take photos of that sort of thing. But the other thing that I used to really get into was sports photography and believe it or not, motorsports photography. So bikes and cars, that sort of stuff.
And that's how my love for motion photography or motion blurs developed from doing sports photography. You've got to tell me, mate, I'm not a photographer. Tell me, how do you do speed blur? Yeah, basically, it's a technique that you use to slow down the function of the camera and it gives the impression of your subject matter moving. Okay.
[00:34:42] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: So it gives you that impression of moving. Right.
[00:34:45] Speaker B: Still. But you're always moving.
[00:34:47] Speaker A: Got.
[00:34:47] Speaker B: You're moving. Yeah.
[00:34:48] Speaker A: But the whole idea of it is to have your subject matter has got to be pretty much in focus or sharp because otherwise it doesn't really work. Then you've got a blurry image and no one really likes a blurry image.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: And is it better to have a softer light for a speed blur as opposed to a midday sun?
[00:35:07] Speaker A: Yeah, midday suns. You can't really do it unless you use filters for your equipment, like your lenses. But I don't really use, the only filters I use for my lenses are like a polarizer. That's all I use. So, yeah, to answer your question, say in the morning, in the evenings, that sort of stuff.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Because I just noticed a lot of.
[00:35:24] Speaker A: Your shots are super early, proper early.
[00:35:27] Speaker B: Like first rays of light sort of stuff.
[00:35:29] Speaker A: You can still do it depending on the equipment that you've got. Like, some cameras allow you to really dial down the sensitivity of the camera and so you're able to then, in essence, be able to collect that brighter light. But having dialed down your settings, it's kind of difficult to explain. But middle of the day, kind of. And the other thing about middle of the day is things. The colors just kind of go pretty standard instead of getting different hues and different shades. Sure might be. You mentioned you like the journalistic stuff and you've been to a few rallies now. Have you been to any really violent, angry rallies where I take you went doing speed blurs. I could imagine, mate, that'd be pretty cool.
[00:36:12] Speaker B: Going to rallies where people are worked.
[00:36:14] Speaker A: Up and they have a thing that.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: They want to protest for.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: And you're capturing photos. Some people may or may not like getting photographed. Have you got any stories you could share about? Well, I found that, like a lot of people, if they're at a rally or whatever it is, they're there for a purpose and having a camera kind of there capturing the images, a lot of them probably actually want that sort of stuff, if you know what I mean, because they're there for a purpose, they're there to have a presence. And so they're usually expecting either journals or someone to be around.
Myself, I wasn't working as a journalist photographer. I actually did my school when I did the work experience. I went to the west australian newspapers and hung there for a couple of weeks with them and probably pissed them off a fair bit and so on. But that was really cool. It was an eye opener to go to some of these rallies. And at the time there were like teachers rallies because the government wasn't giving them enough money and pay rises. And then there was also electrical trade union one as well, thousands of them.
But it's all quite interesting. But you mentioned before taking like a motion blur to that sort of scenario. If you imagine how you could use motion blur in that sense, where you might have all these people who are still and one might be animated, punching his fist in the air. And if you can get like a motion of a fist that looks like it's trying to penetrate through the ozone layer, then I reckon you could probably do something with it.
That's how I look at it and that's how I use it, and that's the perspective I carry with me when it comes to shooting.
[00:37:55] Speaker B: Did you ever remember back in the day, they had those disposable 25 shots, Kodak waterproof?
[00:38:03] Speaker A: That's what I thought, that Pete started his career with them. For some reason.
[00:38:07] Speaker B: I thought the same TiVo, because I thought, surely that's where.
[00:38:10] Speaker A: Surely you would have had a disposable waterproof camera.
[00:38:13] Speaker B: Yeah. Did you ever run those ones?
[00:38:14] Speaker A: Well, no, not initially, because I used to have one. Everyone used to have one. I remember you'd go to your photo processing place or whatever. Or was it the pharmacy? I don't recall.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I reckon pharmacy, I reckon pharmacy.
[00:38:26] Speaker A: And it would come in the little foil packet usually, and you'd sort of tear it open and you got your, like you say, your 25 shot. Hopefully you get 25.
[00:38:33] Speaker B: That's great.
[00:38:34] Speaker A: So, T bone. My first camera was an Olympus om ten. Okay. So it was like just a film camera. Olympus actually did a remake of that model several years ago with a real manual. I don't know a lot about cameras. A real manual one, not an automatic? No, yeah, that's exactly right. So I never had a motor drive or anything like that. And mine was a semiautomatic and I had to buy a manual adapter. It was this tiny little thing that plugs into the side of the camera and you can operate your shutter speed through using that manual adapter. Yeah, it was kind of pretty mechanical, pretty trippy. But I remember saving up like I had a tin can and put all my change in there and ended up saving over. I don't know, I can't remember how much the camera was now. But, yeah, I got my first camera like that.
[00:39:19] Speaker B: Okay, cool.
[00:39:19] Speaker A: So I never really got in the water to start with. And I had periods where I was, like, right into photography. But surfing really got in the way as well.
I used to do, like, lineup shots and all that, and I was doing all these other things in my life. I like playing drums. I was playing in bands as well and with the photography. But surfing was where my heart was at at the time. And I'd go up trips up north and all that sort of stuff. And I started taking less and less photos and just more and more sort of surfing.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: Fair call.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:39:52] Speaker B: And so you used to take the OD lineup shot, like you'd surf and then come in and then whack the tripod up and take a couple of shots?
[00:39:59] Speaker A: Pretty much. I would say that I had a hiatus period. So from the time it went, say, like from your analog through to your digital, so to speak, I had that period where I kind of faded away from it for a year or two or whatever it might have been before really starting to get back into it.
I think it was at that time in life where the age that you're at, there's other things that interest you as well.
There's gigs all over the place and you go, yeah, music festivals and you're surfing and chasing tail.
[00:40:38] Speaker B: Mates.
What were you doing for work through?
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I was working my first real job, if I can call it that, was working at the water authority in Perth. So I had a government job and I was doing the nine day fortnight, which was just crazy good for. I'd be down here every second weekend on a long weekend. But before that long weekend, I'd be up here for the weekend before that long weekend sort of thing. So every weekend you're coming down here, but every second weekend you get three days off. So, yeah, that was cool.
[00:41:12] Speaker B: You had that little hiatus and then what was it, the digital era that sucked you back?
[00:41:17] Speaker A: I went to Hawai for about a month, and before I went to Hawai, I thought to myself, you know what? I can't go to Hawai without getting right back into photography. But I was still, like, riding a surfing. I was going to Hawai. What year, roughly?
I can't remember, mate.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: Within a few years.
[00:41:33] Speaker A: Yeah, within a late 90s. No, later than that, I reckon.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: Early naughties.
[00:41:39] Speaker A: Hang on.
[00:41:40] Speaker B: When the. What are we now, 23?
[00:41:43] Speaker A: 23, yeah. Okay. No, it's going so fast.
[00:41:45] Speaker B: I got my first digital video camera in about 99, 2000. And that was, like, pretty early in the digital era.
Well, mate, I think it was just.
[00:41:57] Speaker A: After that, just a little bit after that.
[00:42:00] Speaker B: And it was like, back then it was like, whoa, it's like, mate, one megapixel digital still camera was, like, big news.
Now they're probably like, 50 megapixels.
[00:42:10] Speaker A: How many megapixels are there these days?
Yeah, jeez, I don't know.
Gigapixel, what the fuck they call you? Still like 50 pixels or something like that.
I'm shooting with Nikon D 810s, so they're kind of a bit more of an older camera now, but still high quality cameras in there. 36 megapixel. So you went to Hawai whenever it was, and you took a camera with you, and did you go during the winter of Hawaii? Yeah, it was in the late winter, into February, February, March. And I take it you got some photos. Yeah, I did heaps of photos at home. Cool. Can you tell us a few shots you took time? Well, I had some pretty solid days at pipe sick that were, like, proper.
There's been some footage come out lately of pipe just going off where it's breaking out in the third reef and then second reef and then reforming from there and those sick inside bowls, like days like that.
It must have been exciting, like, verging to be out of control. And then you're thinking, oh, is there a wave at Waimia sort of thing, pumping? Do you need to have a surfer on the wave to take a photo, or is it just a wave for you? That. Yeah, that's a really good question, because it can be either one. It doesn't matter. The thing about the way I do things and the person that I am, my attention span is not too great.
Here's the other thing. If I'm shooting somewhere, if I can find a surfer who's out somewhere on his own or with another couple or whatever, and they're surfing somewhere that's going off, or it's pumping, then I want to capture that, especially if they're local lads and they're just going for it. That's kind of what I love doing, apart from trying to look at wave or surf photography in more of an abstract type of way. Sure. But when there's other surfers in the water, that's primarily what I'm looking for, and it can be anyone. I don't care who they are. You would have got some legends. When you mentioned about the pipe conditions, you must have shot some pretty surfers during that time. Well, they all had stickers on their board.
No, I didn't see him.
[00:44:28] Speaker B: It would have been some legends, no doubt.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Would have been. I think for me, the way I look at it is there's no ulterior motive for me, I'm not tied to anything and I don't have any responsibility to anything or anyone. That would be nice if I was a paid sponsored photographer and that'd be awesome. Of course, don't get me wrong, that'd be fantastic.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: Take the check.
[00:44:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be good. That'd be good. But because I'm not, then I've got nothing to. And that's one thing that allows me and frees me up to do things like motion blurs. Because if I miss the shot, does it really matter? It doesn't really matter at all because it's not like someone's going to be going, oh, well, you missed the shot, so that type of thing kind of frees me up.
But you're right in what you're saying.
It's all about the ocean, it's all about the light. And if there's crew out there that are just going for it or the conditions are just good.
A while ago I was shooting some guy who was out surfing at Cobbley's on his own. I don't shoot there very often these days and it was just an amazing afternoon. And he's out there on his own and I reckon he would have been out for about an hour or so. And I just kind of walked around like I normally do because I normally don't sit in one spot. I like to move around and yeah, I was just shooting this guy for about an hour. I don't know who he was. I ended up meeting him afterwards because I went up to the car park and said g'day. And blah, blah, blah. Ends up he lives in quarrel up and so on and just shot him for an hour. And for me it was like the whole therapy thing and just this dude out on his own and I'm not surfing so much these days. But it's that whole connection thing and with photography that allows me to be fully still connected to what the ocean is doing. Still checking what the charts. The crazy thing is, I'll be checking charts to see what the tides are doing, the swell direction, the wind. Because even though I might not be shooting anyone on a wave, I still want to go somewhere where the conditions are optimal for what I want to achieve. Yeah. Sick. So you mentioned you had the hiatus and you went to Hawaii.
Did that sort of kick off your photography? Have you sort of started from that time and haven't stopped since? Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much. I think I've slowed down a bit over the last twelve months or so.
And I've just even found, like, since COVID it's kind of been a bit difficult in a way, kind of changed a lot of things. And I still froth, don't get me wrong, it's a little bit harder to get up really early in the morning now if I know it's not going to be like the way I want it to be, but I had a thing happen the other day where I've just like, if I don't get down there and do something and start shooting, then it's like that saying, you never know if you never go. And so I just did it. And you always end up. And this is like surfing, you can always go out and there's always like a wave that you're going to get, that you're going to go, oh, that made it worth paddling out for. So when you, way back then, how many years ago that was, did you have aspirations to be full time, make it a job in photography and chase the shots and try to get paid for it as a full time gig? Was that a dream for you?
That's a really tough question because the answer to that is yes, in all honesty. And I never really pursued it the way I should have.
And it's a tough thing to think about in life if you think that there's maybe it's more so not even whether you think you're good or not, it's the fact that you've got the passion related to what you're doing is the most important thing. True. And I think that now where I am in life, I'm pretty content in life, pretty happy with the people around me in terms of my family and so on. But it would be pretty sick to go. It comes back to saying before you're not sponsored by or you're not getting a paycheck by Red Bull, whatever it might be. But that would be pretty cool. And I would have loved to have done that, but I don't know if it would have been in the surf photography realm, though. Sure. It could have been other sports. Yeah. Cool. And kind of one thing, I think freelancing is really interesting. So where you're able to go out and kind of work in diverse areas, it's like my photography in a way. I can't go to two spots and shoot the same spot two days in a row. I can't do it right. I have to go somewhere else. I just get bored back. I have to move on. And that's why I think something like freelancing would appeal to me because 1 minute you could be shooting some island resort and next thing you could be out in some war torn sort of place getting. Capturing images which tell a true story about life and things.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: Like you were when you were talking about that solo surfer at Cobbley's. Obviously that's where our connection came through. You said you don't shoot it that much anymore. Have a sip, mate. Grab your beer there.
Why don't you shoot it that much? I know you've got a bit of a love of that spot.
[00:49:34] Speaker A: It's funny because even the stretch beyond there, heading down to lefties and so on, it comes back to what I said before about I get bored if I shoot the same spot two days in a row.
And I don't know if it's because of coming down from Perth and all that. We'd always go to different spots. It didn't matter if you were down further south or further north, you're surfing anywhere, right?
[00:49:57] Speaker B: You drove 250 K's to get another 20.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: And that's what I'm like with my photography. And it's kind of like, I think I have so many images of those particular locations. Sometimes you just feel like you might be just repeating yourself. Exactly. Right. So you look for other places and then maybe it could be some sort of sandy beach break. But yeah, so it's not just that cobbley's area, it's also around the back there as well.
But you know that when it's good, you'll go around to places like. Well, don't want to mention them, but fair enough, there's a couple that, you know, they command your attention, so you.
[00:50:35] Speaker B: Want to go there and try to get an angle, mate. Sorry to jump around, but all our stories, obviously any story's got branches on. And I just want to jump back to that Hawaii trip. We talked about the photography element. How was your surfing element at that trip in Hawaii?
Did you get good waves?
[00:50:54] Speaker A: Well, I loved Hawaii. I've done a fair bit of traveling in my life. But Hawaii is one place that when I left, I felt like I could just cry. I didn't want to leave the joint, really. I love the energy of the place.
Just even being able to get your bike and go for that ride along the pathway through sunset and pipe and the beaches and through.
What do you call it?
[00:51:18] Speaker B: Rocky point or something.
[00:51:19] Speaker A: Rocky Point, yeah, that one.
The first day I got there, we were staying in this place at backyards, at the point there at sunset. And the guy who we're renting this house from, this is myself and my wife.
He's got like quivers down in the know, Brad Gurlax boards and stuff like that. He's showing me all these boards and, you know, and I hadn't been out in the water at. Oh, actually, I'll tell you quick, just going off on a different tangent here. When I got there, as I was pulling into the road, which goes into Sunset Point, because kind of not being used to driving on that side of the road, I've turned onto the wrong side of the road and this car's coming the other way. And we've gone almost like head on. And he's hit the brakes. And I've hit the brakes and I've looked at the person in the car. Yeah.
[00:52:06] Speaker B: And it was not Eddie Rothman.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: Eddie Rothman.
[00:52:09] Speaker B: I'll get out of here.
[00:52:11] Speaker A: It's Eddie Rothman. What you doing sitting in the car? Sitting in the car. And he's just looking at me. And I reckon my jaws down by the accelerator, I didn't move. Eh? I was like sitting there going, oh, no way. And I'm in a cool speed blur shot.
I'm straight away thinking.
I'm straight away thinking, oh, he's just going to come over and bash me. Or only said Eddie Rothman, because it.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Was like the gnarliest person I could possibly think of.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: Well, the funny thing was, several days later, I actually did it again. And it was him again, right?
It's like the double barrel thing, mate. But anyway, and then it was like a couple of nights later, there's a knock at the door. And I look through the window and it says, son Rothman. He's knocking on the door.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: What?
[00:53:03] Speaker A: And I'm thinking, oh, shit, he knew.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: It was his son.
[00:53:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I knew it was. And I'm like going, oh. And I've looked at my wife and said, one of the Rothmans, should I jump the fence?
I want to hightail. L I'm out of there. And I opened the door, I said, oh, g'day, sort of thing. And he's like, oh, can you give me a hand with your skate? I want to try and get my ski in. And I'm like going, oh, yeah, cool, no worries. Going down there and helped him with this lock and blah, blah, blah. And the whole time I'm thinking, I'm waiting for him to say, are you that guy, you that dumb ass Aussie, that driving on the wrong side of the road, you stupid idiot.
[00:53:45] Speaker B: And a double barrel head on with my.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: No, but it was really cool. But in terms of no, no, I'm.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Not finished with that. That was the best tangent ever, by the way, mate, what did Eddie do in those?
[00:53:57] Speaker A: Oh, nothing. No, he just looked at me. He just glared at me.
[00:53:59] Speaker B: And that was enough, wasn't it?
Jammed it in reverse. It's like tires smoking. Just reversed into a bloody coconut tree and got it the hell out of his way.
[00:54:11] Speaker A: He would have seen that. I was like freaking scared.
You grow up with it. You're watching all those old videos back then, Hawai 90 or whatever they were, and you got these hard hitters.
I got Dahui on my tail and I've just got there and I'm driving on the wrong side of the road. Haven't even got a wave yet.
[00:54:32] Speaker B: Okay, I feel like that's going to be better than any of your surfing stories, but tell us about the waves you got.
[00:54:38] Speaker A: My first surf.
[00:54:39] Speaker B: You didn't drop in on Eddie by any?
[00:54:41] Speaker A: No. I'll tell you what, after that I was surfing places like Velzi land because we were just walking distance from Velzi's, surfing there, out there quite a bit. And it's got that reputation for heavy localism. But I just go out there and kind of sit in the channel and just wait for some big Hawaiian to take off on this wave and give him a big old shucker when he's like flicked off the wave and it'd.
[00:55:03] Speaker B: Be like, yeah, bro. Yeah. He gave him the fake rolling camera.
[00:55:08] Speaker A: No cameras were allowed.
Surf there a bit.
I actually had one surf at pipe.
[00:55:15] Speaker B: Did you?
[00:55:16] Speaker A: Yeah, but it was like you look at you. I didn't really surf pipe. I got probably about four waves out at backdoor and it was like this.
[00:55:25] Speaker B: How big are we talking?
[00:55:27] Speaker A: Four, five foot.
[00:55:28] Speaker B: Oh, awesome. That sounds unreal.
[00:55:30] Speaker A: Perfect size. Yeah, that's perfect for me. Manageable. I wouldn't above that. No way.
[00:55:36] Speaker B: That's unreal because it's still really good at that size, isn't it?
[00:55:40] Speaker A: Super fun. Super fun. And the swell direction, I think, was from a bit more from the north.
And when I got there, it was like, oh, there was one guy out and everyone was surfing the pipe traditional at the left. And so I've paddled out and went out, said, g'day to this guy and ends up being his from holidays, from Tasmania. And so we're just chatting about these waves and going, how is it? You're from Tassie, I'm from Wa. We're out here surfing backdoor with no one else and they're all, what the hell is.
[00:56:08] Speaker B: Know that? Wouldn't happen now.
[00:56:10] Speaker A: But then this set came through and the other people that were on the pipe. Yeah, they started drifting over a bit. And this is, I reckon, worse than the Eddie Rothman scenario, right? This set came through and there was this body border and he was a monster. He was, he was. Anyway, he's like, gone to duck dive this wave or something like that. And I've kind of punched through the lip, and as I've punched through the lip, I've gone down the back of the wave and I've landed right on top of him.
Yeah. And straight away, I'm thinking I straight away thought I was going to get, like, clobbered, right. Punched right in the head. I was just waiting for it. I was almost sitting there, just going, oh, please, just hit me. I was like, probably pointing at my face and that. Just going to hit me. Hit me.
[00:56:56] Speaker B: I deserve it done.
[00:56:57] Speaker A: Yeah. But there was another wave coming and he just kind of shook it off and then just started paddling for this other wave and took off. And I think that's when I paddled over to the left because the other people started paddling over.
[00:57:06] Speaker B: When you paddled straight and I took.
[00:57:07] Speaker A: Off on one wave at pipe, got dropped in on and I went straight and that was it.
[00:57:12] Speaker B: That was it.
[00:57:13] Speaker A: That was my only wave at pipe proper. Yeah, basically went prone. Well, you got out unscathed, I guess, after landing on a big heavy.
Yeah, it's a couple of gnarly moments. I'm surprised if I'm allowed to go back there, actually.
[00:57:26] Speaker B: Have you been back to Hawai?
[00:57:28] Speaker A: No, I haven't.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: I'd love to, mate. You said you'd been on plenty of overseas surf trips. What other ones have you been on?
[00:57:39] Speaker A: I went to South Africa with my wife.
[00:57:44] Speaker B: Now T Bones has got a real hard on. He's got a real hard on for South Africa. Don't get him started.
[00:57:51] Speaker A: Conveniently had our honeymoon at Jeffrey's.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Great place for a honeymoon.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: It was one of my better surf trips ever because I was basically surfing at least twice a day, all the way along the point, from supers down the tubes, through salad bowls and into the point, surfing all those waves, different conditions, and I was so fit, surfing and all that. I didn't see much of my wife in that week, but that was cool because she wanted to see the big five and we did all that. But, yeah, spent some time in Jay Bay and back then we stayed in this place and I guess it was almost like an Airbnb or whatever. It know, back then, there wasn't Airbnb, but it was part of someone's house and we just stayed there. They were really cool. We had privacy, and I just surfed every day. It was wicked. I mean, there was it. JBA is one of the best right.
[00:58:43] Speaker B: Handers in the world, but isn't it the most beautifully photographed, like, photographed wave as well? The lineup, it's just. You got to love an epic JBay.
[00:58:53] Speaker A: Lineup photo, probably from almost any angle either. Now you get, like, the drone shots of it and super sick. Half the reason I watch the comp, obviously, because the waves are cracking, but the scenery and all the shots that they get from those lineup shots, crew paddling back out after getting a wave and you're watching the one coming through and you're going, two guys out in the water and all these waves are going through unridden, and it's fucking torture. What year was that when you were there? I've been married. I hope my wife's not going to listen to this. I can never remember.
I need to work it out by trying to figure out how old my kids are. I'm just trying to remember what year they were born.
It would have been about 18 years ago. Yeah.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:59:36] Speaker A: So in the 2000s or something or other.
[00:59:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I was just trying to work it out because I was there. 94, 95.
[00:59:43] Speaker A: Right, okay.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: Tebow wanted to know if you dropped in on him and got too. Yeah, trying to work out. He's like, were you that guy? He stuffed me.
[00:59:53] Speaker A: Not that guy again.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: Mate, where was your first ever overseas trip?
[01:00:00] Speaker A: No. Second prize for guessing Bali. Bali, yeah. It might have been rotnest.
[01:00:05] Speaker B: Well, I get a prize anyway. I'm going to the fridge. Anyone want.
[01:00:10] Speaker A: A piss break?
[01:00:10] Speaker B: You're good. Or you good? Yep.
[01:00:13] Speaker A: All right, tell us about our first trip there. Spent the customary time in Bali. Does that mean you did the peanuts pub crawl? Probably. Sorry.
[01:00:25] Speaker B: Club bandana.
[01:00:26] Speaker A: No more.
Yeah, probably spent a lot of time hanging out at tubes. Yeah, okay.
[01:00:32] Speaker B: Classic institution back then, wasn't it?
[01:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. Loved the tubes, movies, pool table, bintangs, crew talking surfing the whole time.
It was wicked. And then from there went to Sambawa, I think it was, yeah. Stayed at Lakeys for a little while and finished up at, I think, nusal and bongen. I did well. Spent a bit of time in the south of France or France and surfing around there, around the beaches around that area around Biaritz and that sort of area angle as well. That sort of stretch.
Anglet. Yeah, whatever. Anglet. I thought the t was an A. Or an A or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, Sarah Lee.
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, I was there for a bit, surfing around there. That was great. I loved it. I love the beaches. I love the way they changed so frequently. You'd go down early in the morning, look at it, and there's just like fat right hander. And you go down about 3 hours later and it's just piping left hander that's spitting down the beach because it changes so fast. You can get it. With not many crew out, this is a while ago now, but, yeah. And just surfed a lot of those waves and ended up in.
Got some impromptu lift by some swedish dude over to Portugal, and I just got to Portugal and it was a bit of a bad story, really.
[01:02:03] Speaker B: They're my favorite.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: I don't really even know if I want to.
[01:02:05] Speaker B: No, these are 100% my favorite.
No one wants to hear how you just scored and everything.
[01:02:12] Speaker A: This is a surf story where I didn't even get in the water because I ended up in some bloody portuguese hospital. No, not portuguese. Where were they? Portugal. Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. I get there and first thing I do is sort of go check out the surf and that, and it's pretty average. And I had some sort of accommodation there. And as I'm putting my stuff away, I bump into this guy and he's this kiwi fella and what are you up to? I said, I bugger all. I've just got here. He's gone. Oh, do you want to go down, have a beer somewhere? I've gone, oh, yeah, all right. Why not? So I gave a beer with this guy, and Carl, long story short, ended up having a few tequilas and that sort of thing, and we ended up meeting some Welsh teacher. So it's kind of like, it's almost like a joke. There's an Aussie Kiwi and a Welsh guy all sitting at a bar in Portugal, kind of in Portugal. And that's kind of what it was like.
[01:03:05] Speaker B: What could go wrong?
[01:03:07] Speaker A: I'll tell you what could go wrong. Kiwis love their rugby and all that sort of thing. As a had a few drinks and I was going to head off up to the toilet. You'll need to go to the loo. And as I'm coming back, I just felt someone just tackle me from behind and down a set of concrete stairs. Cracked my head and what? Next thing you know, I'm lying in this hospital bed in Portugal. Someone took me into the hospital and they're stitching me up and stuff like that. And bandages on my head and blah, blah, blah.
I don't know what they'd given me alongside the tequila or whatever it might have been, but it kind of pretty much rocked my world, so I thought.
[01:03:53] Speaker B: So did someone tackle you or did you?
[01:03:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, this dude tackled me and I went down the stairs and cracked open.
[01:04:00] Speaker B: One of your mates or some random.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: Just the Kiwi guy. And he met like, just a few. So your mate, basically not even my mate.
[01:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but he was your mate right? At that moment.
[01:04:08] Speaker A: At that moment, he was your new mate. I didn't even drop in on him either. I didn't know.
[01:04:13] Speaker B: Steal his double barrel.
[01:04:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I didn't do that.
I remember some dude was carrying me and putting me in a car or something like that. And then next thing you know, I'm in this hospital and bandages and stuff. And I kind of remember getting up and wanting to maybe run out of the hospital or something like that. And then the cops turned up and then they threw me in. They didn't throw me in the car. They put me in the back of a car and they took me somewhere. And then I was on some corner on some street in panish there, and it's dark. And I was like, oh. Didn't really know what was going on. And somehow I found where I was staying. This is after the hospital. This is after the hospital, still in the middle of the night and bandages my head and stuff. And I end up finding where I'm staying and I've just gone, oh, I got to get out of here. Freaking out. And grabbed my concussion, bleeding on the brain.
So I grabbed my board bag. I was traveling with two boards at the time in a double board bag. And I had my backpack and grabbed my stuff and walked out and kind of.
It's all a little bit kind of hazy in a way.
[01:05:27] Speaker B: No kidding. You were drunk with concussion.
[01:05:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:05:31] Speaker B: Probably had painkillers as well.
[01:05:33] Speaker A: Yeah. But I remember waking up somewhere on the side of the road.
[01:05:38] Speaker B: Fuck.
[01:05:39] Speaker A: And I was kind of like, looking around going, where the bloody hell am I? And I've kind of looked around and my board bags are gone and my backpack's gone as no way. And I'm thinking, oh, shit, it's all gone. And by then I'm kind of peeking and I'm in a pretty bad way as well.
[01:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah, no kidding.
[01:06:00] Speaker A: And there was a block of land across the road and it was like all these bushes and stuff in this block of land. And so I've walked across the road and started going through the bushes and I found my board bag and my backpack, really, in the bushes. And I reckon I probably stashed it in there without knowing, I don't think.
[01:06:18] Speaker B: Subconsciously thought you might have done it and went over there.
[01:06:21] Speaker A: And so I pulled my stuff out, and as I pulled my stuff out, I walked back towards the side of the road. I'm thinking, oh, I've got to get a ride somewhere. I don't know where. And I see all these people walking up the road like a.
[01:06:31] Speaker B: And you're traveling by yourself?
[01:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I was on my own. It was a big group of people walking up the road.
And I knew straight up what was going to happen. There are these people coming up the road. They see me, they start yelling at me. They start swearing. I've got bandages around my head. I look like I still want to go another ten rounds with someone, if you know what I mean.
[01:06:52] Speaker B: And we're talking, like, sun up, morning, next day here.
[01:06:54] Speaker A: Oh, no, it's still dark. The sun still hasn't come up from that time from going into the hospital. Right.
[01:07:00] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:07:02] Speaker A: So they're kind of, like, walking towards him. We're going, this is just not. And then it would have been about a dozen of them or something like that. And then they've kind of, like, starting to form a ring around me. And I'm like, I'm just going to get my head kicked in. No, what's left of it.
It must have looked like I wanted to fight because of the way I looked. Probably blood on my face, and blah, blah, blah, crazy. I've just gone, oh, this is where the old Gerawine part of it sort of kicks in. You just go, well, all right, I'm not going to go down without a fight.
So I've opened up my board, bag, cover, grabbed my board out, and just held it, Finn's first, and just kind of said, all right, I'm ready.
And they all just walked off. They just swearing at me and carrying on. They all just walked off. Wow. Like a gladiator shield.
[01:07:51] Speaker B: That's a heavy story. A heavy story. Come on.
They would have seen you. The bandages is blood dripping off you. Your probably clothes were probably all torn and rummaging through bushes, sleeping on the side of the road, and you just started wielding a border. They probably didn't even want to fight you. They probably look at you go, what the hell is this maniac on about?
[01:08:15] Speaker A: They weren't asking me about where the closest Nando was. I can tell you that now. Better clocking with your bloody boy.
[01:08:21] Speaker B: Wow. That's a crazy story.
[01:08:23] Speaker A: But anyway, so, got out of that alive, which was good.
[01:08:29] Speaker B: And where did you end up later that day?
[01:08:31] Speaker A: Well, I ended up waking up on the. Well, I remember someone was, like, kicking me and it was someone trying to get into the visitor center or something. So I was at the front door of some visitor center.
[01:08:43] Speaker B: So you fended off the pack and then you must have stumbled towards a visitor center and then fell asleep.
[01:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, something like that.
[01:08:49] Speaker B: Something like that.
[01:08:50] Speaker A: And that's pretty much it.
That's pretty much it. And then I must have asked someone, is there a bus out of here? Or something like that? And I got on the bus and I was pretty unwell on the bus.
Well, I get on the bus.
No, well, there's this guy, and he's sitting across the aisle from me, this portuguese fella, and he's looking at me and I'm looking at him, I'm, like, going, I just don't feel really good about this at all. I'm feeling sick as well. And he just keeps looking at me. And I just sort of said to him, I said, oh, g'day, mate, how you going? And he's going, where are you from? And I said, I'm from Australia. And he goes, I fucking hate Aussies.
[01:09:31] Speaker B: And I've got.
[01:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah, but anyway, obviously I wasn't the greatest ambassador for the nation at that point in time either, so I don't see any.
You weren't saying that you hated Portuguese? Oh, mate, I love Portuguese.
[01:09:50] Speaker B: Happy tourists.
Wow.
[01:09:52] Speaker A: Yeah. No, I love portuguese people. They're great, mate, that was a fucking.
[01:09:57] Speaker B: Ripper of a story. Well played. I love that one. Let's take a quick pause. Bongia. I'm Jaguar Dieter and you're listening to barreled surf podcast. And we're back. Had a quick break there, and Pete was just finishing up on that epic travel story of Pete's Portugal, and he just informed us that he never got in the water in Portugal. And what was the ongoing effect of that trip?
[01:10:22] Speaker A: Whenever there's a comp on at super Tubus now, it takes me back and probably need a bit of therapy treatment on the couch.
[01:10:31] Speaker B: And now it's like, mate, Portugal, it's got, like, right hand points.
[01:10:34] Speaker A: I know, mate.
[01:10:35] Speaker B: It's got the biggest wave in the world. And you're just like. It wasn't through lack of trying. You tried, you just didn't. Just didn't pan out for you, that trip. And you end up back in France. All right, well, let's get back to photography a bit because obviously, that's what your really known for these days. Can you give us a couple of your favorite images that you've ever shot? I know that's probably a bit of a hard one, but is there anything that is worth talking about that brings a really nice memory for you or for one reason or another?
[01:11:07] Speaker A: I don't know if this is going to sound a bit cliched, but there's a lot of them that lately, with the smaller run ins of swell and so forth, I've been going back through some of my folders and having a look at some of the stuff. And this is part of the reason why I love photography, because you immortalize that particular time in life. It's like if you hear a song that takes you back to what you were doing back in your previous life all the time. Or maybe it's something if you eat something or you smell it, like back in Bali, for example.
So that's one reason I love it, but it's hard for me to pin down, like, one or two or whatever it might be. But I like some of the motion blur ones that I've taken or captured from the water, just because they're a lot harder to do, obviously, from the water, because you've got all these opposing forces and so on. You're moving in different directions, as opposed to standing on the land using a tripod and so on. And if there's also maybe other people shooting from the water as well, it's able to. Well, I might revert to that as a default, because in the hope that I might be able to obtain something a little bit different.
So there's a number of those that I like. There's one in particular of Jasper Endersby. I don't know if you know Jasper.
[01:12:23] Speaker B: I know a Jasper from Margaret river.
[01:12:26] Speaker A: And there's one of kale Walsh that I captured a shot of him out at rabbits one day. It's a motion blur. It's not from the water, though, but the angle of it kind of. You're looking straight into the barrel and it's actually in there.
[01:12:39] Speaker B: Is it?
[01:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's kind of nice and crisp. And he's in this barrel that's just kind of like a rabbit special, if you know what I mean. Yeah, for sure. There's those, like, that page that. Oops. That you're looking at there. So just tell everyone what this magazine is. Yeah, it's called White Horses magazine. So we've got a copy of it sitting here in between myself and T Bone and T Bone's just turned to a page. Just shots like that, I suppose those memorable days. But for me, what makes a photo my favorite or more memorable is if I've been able to capture it at a. A different time or maybe a different perspective. And that's why I keep referring back to maybe, like, motion type shots.
Yeah. Because it's just something I enjoy doing. And if I can, there's actually one in here of a guy taking off at Margie's. And I called the shot Ghost Rider. And it's a black and white shot. Well, initially it wasn't a black and white shot. It's a color shot. But because the morning was so dull, I've just basically taken any other color out of it and just that's converted to black and white. So why'd you call it ghost rider, mate? Because the surface. Because I use the motion type effect in the actual image. The wave has got a bit of a softness to it from the motion. But the actual surfer themselves, that one right there. So the surfer themselves are sharp, but the whole environment around them looks like it's kind of eerie.
[01:14:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it does sound nice and eerie.
[01:14:25] Speaker A: That's how I perceive it. Looks sharky. Yeah, it does look sharky. So I called that ghost rider, and this guy was out here at that point in time on his own.
[01:14:33] Speaker B: Yeah. Cool.
[01:14:33] Speaker A: So it's pretty early in the morning, so that's why I've just left it black and white. And I think that he said a little hut there at Margie's where the barbecue area is. So shots like that are, like, my favorite ones. So where I've been able to maybe create something from nothing, if I can say that. So they're traditionally my favorite type shots. I love lineup shots. I love doing water shots.
[01:14:57] Speaker B: And you love an empty water shot early the morning, too. Have to have a surfer in it, does it? You just love that?
[01:15:02] Speaker A: No, absolutely not at all. And in some ways, you don't get that scale when you don't have a surfer in the image. But it depends what you're trying to capture. So for me, like we spoke about earlier, I'm more than happy to have a surfer in the image riding the wave, whatever it might be. But I'm also happy to pretty much capture that element of the ocean, of. I'm always intrigued by the fact that what we're surfing, what we're seeing develops from so many thousands of kilometers away. And to be there and to watch these things break, it's such the end of their life. After three, that's what blows me away at the end of their life. And we get to ride that end journey. And it's just that when you kind of dust my head in a bit, when I think about it, I love thinking about that. Yeah. For me, it's a fascinating thing. If I had my time again, I'd probably be one of those bathymetry.
[01:15:52] Speaker B: Bathy.
[01:15:53] Speaker A: Never say that either types of guys, I suppose. So when you say, like, do I have any specific one or two? I kind of don't. But there was a couple back there that were kind of different or not really different, but I guess back then, just trying to create a sense of something where you might have a particular wave that's down in that prevale region, that's a left hander that's breaking. And then you might have the cross of the chapel in the foreground or something like that. And maybe even the terracotta tiles, which are beautiful orange color, that real greek flavor, because it takes the whole region, or that whole area takes its name from the history know, Crete and so forth. You know what mean. Yeah. So in wartime era and so forth. Did it? Yeah.
[01:16:41] Speaker B: What, prevale?
[01:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:16:44] Speaker B: Is it. What's the history?
[01:16:45] Speaker A: I don't know that well, I think. Oh, God, you're going to put me on the spot here. Actually. I have to read. I have to get Wikipedia out and have a look.
[01:16:54] Speaker B: Prevaily related is some sort of Greek.
[01:16:56] Speaker A: That's right.
I think it's named after a beach on the island of Crete. Maybe. I stand to be corrected.
[01:17:05] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's cool. Throw it out there.
But whether you're exactly accurate or not is irrelevant. Obviously, there's truth to the matter.
[01:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah, there's an element of truth.
[01:17:17] Speaker B: Yeah, for sure.
[01:17:18] Speaker A: Going back to my lawyer days.
[01:17:19] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
Let's talk about this magazine. White horses is one of the only forms of print that still remains in this day and age of a digital era. And it does remain because it's a quality production. It's a coffee table book. It comes out four times a year. You managed to get an expose in it. It's called just southerly, southerly edition, and it sort of shone a light on southwest wa, south Oz and Tassie and just zoned in on a couple of local photographers. And you were one of them, mate. You managed to get the COVID shot of that particular episode magazine. Is that your greatest achievement in the worlds of sort of print media, in terms of surf magazines, getting the COVID of white horses?
[01:18:10] Speaker A: That's a really interesting question, because you'd probably automatically expect me to go, yep, for sure. And, yes, don't get me wrong, it's absolutely awesome. I'm absolutely honored. But I'll tell you a quick little story about this cover shot. Tell me a person on the COVID His name is Sam Golebowski, local fellow. He's originally from Esperance, I think, surfs really well. And apparently it wasn't that. Probably not that long after the actual image. I don't think he has a beard anymore. Okay. But anyway, so I got that shot of him, and I was asked by white horses, and white horses didn't actually tell me that it was ever going to be like a cover shot. They said it's in the running, that things are fluid. Things always change around here. And then they said, but in the meantime, would you like to contact this fella and have a bit of a chat with him? So I ended up contacting Sam, and when I said to him, because I wasn't allowed to tell him he could be on the COVID so I just let him know that white horses are looking at using a shot that I took of him, and it might end up somewhere in the pages of the magazine. And his initial response was that it's not the sort of shot or the sort of wave that he would think would end up on the COVID of a magazine, because it's a very tightly.
[01:19:23] Speaker B: Zoomed cutback shot where you can't even really see the wave.
[01:19:26] Speaker A: No, that's right. Well, what they were trying to. Well, I guess what the magazine was trying to do was trying to create that storyline of bearded men.
Southern. Yeah, exactly. Right.
[01:19:37] Speaker B: He's got a hood on, he's got a full suit, wetty, and he looks like a Viking, basically slicing his way through a fucking village to get to the gold.
[01:19:47] Speaker A: So, pretty much, right. That's pretty much what it is. Right. So Sam was of the opinion of, like, oh, I would have always imagined a great photo of me would have been, like, me standing in, like, a ten to twelve foot barrel, for sure. And I'm like, yeah.
When he said that, it's kind of, in a way, he's critiquing the image, but I could understand where he's coming from, because if it was me, I'd like the same thing as well. I'd like a cover shot of me taking off on that double wave tricks. Double barrel of tricks. Exactly.
[01:20:17] Speaker B: The best wave you've had. This is just like some cutback, but when almost like a portrait photo, it's that close in on the thing.
[01:20:25] Speaker A: And when I spoke to Sam about it, I said, look, I understand where you're coming from, but I think that they're trying to go down this particular path where they're going to try and tell this story, and you just happen to fit the bill because you seem to have that look. You've got that fit. But I said to him, but what you've also got to understand is that it doesn't matter if you would expect the wave of your life to be on the COVID of magazine, because at the end of the day, how the hell do you know that someone's going to be there to actually capture it for you when you do get that wave of your life? So you may as well just take what you're given in a. Like, this is the way it is. And I was just trying to encourage him. And so the follow on from that was when it went on the COVID and Sam saw it. He ended up contacting me and told me how grateful he was to have an image of himself on the COVID of a magazine, because he'd hardly had any photos of himself in the past. He's got a couple of surfing brothers, and they're really competitive against each other and they surf really good. And he said that his kids were really proud of him. Yeah. And so on. And when he rang me up and told me that, I'm actually getting a bit woiled up about it now, because good for me, that was something that was like, here's a local fella doing what he loves doing. For some random reason, this guy's ended up in the COVID of a magazine. You got to remember, this isn't about me, this is about him. Well, it's about what this is about, right?
[01:21:46] Speaker B: In a way.
[01:21:47] Speaker A: Look, what I see there is. I see an image that's captured by me, but I see the subject matter being something completely different.
[01:21:53] Speaker B: And the look on his face is so focusly intentional. And you know what?
[01:21:59] Speaker A: He looks so hardcore. And he's got a yellow board with polka dots on it. Right?
[01:22:06] Speaker B: Golden hue as well.
[01:22:08] Speaker A: Single fin.
[01:22:09] Speaker B: Well, he looks like someone who would. Looks like someone wrote a single.
[01:22:12] Speaker A: That's a cool.
You'd be stoked, though.
[01:22:15] Speaker B: Oh, God damn. You'd be. Cover shot. And it's an epic photo. It's such a personal shot. And it's not just a cover shot of, like, a magazine back in the day, where they pumped out one every month and there was ten different publications. This is surviving print media in a very refined and reputable magazine.
A company that's managed to withstand the digital onslaught, and here he is, he's got the COVID and only comes out. And, mate, I've got a really funny story about this particular edition of the magazine which we almost went into straight away, but maybe it's the time to tell now. My beautiful wife Katia bought this edition, sorry, of white horses. And she's like, man, these photos are beautiful images. This is such a cool book. I'm going to get a subscription. And the very first episode that turns up, I keep calling episode edition that turns up is this one.
[01:23:13] Speaker A: It'sick.
[01:23:14] Speaker B: It's got a West olseng in there. Our first one gets delivered to the door. It's a big, thick coffee book style, and there's a Pete Jovik special. And so we're flicking through it and how cool is it? And then all of a sudden there's this photo of three dolphins, and there's a surfer front and center in a striped wetsuit, a hand painted striped wetsuit, which I've been known to run every now and then. And I'm like, God damn, I can't believe it. I'm front and center. I'm not surfing. I didn't quite have the skills that old Sam had there on the COVID but here I am in the white horses double page spread front and center with dolphins jumping. It was a dolphin shot. I just happened to be paddling in front of them and I was like, I'm so stoked. It's like our first edition that's turned up in the mail, and what do you know? I'm in it. I contacted you later after bumping in you at that podcast, and we were talking crap. And I'm like, I want to get an image printed of those dolphins jumping out of the water and put it up on the wall inside the house. So I went down, I saw you. We all organized one, got this big canvas print, and it's freaking awesome. And I hang it on the wall, and it's been on my wall for six months or whatever. It's a really crispy sun's up. You must have stayed a bit later that day because the sun was a bit higher.
[01:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it must have been like 09:00 or something.
[01:24:24] Speaker B: Exactly.
[01:24:26] Speaker A: Having coffee or whatever.
[01:24:28] Speaker B: You got a really good expose in that magazine. Have you had 15 years ago when surf mags were a bit more than Norm? Did you get many surf photos run in those magazines or.
[01:24:40] Speaker A: No.
[01:24:41] Speaker B: You never even tried to?
[01:24:43] Speaker A: No. There was a time where I started sending images through to magazines or whatever, and for the most part, you'd get a reply from some, some wouldn't reply to you. But also in reality, like, you look back on it then and I look at some of the photos that I would have submitted and if I was to look at them now, I'd probably go, oh, you know what? There's probably a reason why the earlier images didn't get a look in because they probably weren't that good.
[01:25:16] Speaker B: Yeah, right. In reality, weren't sharp enough.
[01:25:19] Speaker A: No, just something not quite right.
I remember there was one particular image that I sent to. I think that's when stab had their mags up and running and so forth. But I know it wasn't all that long ago, but there's one particular image that I really liked of a guy in this barrel. And it was like a split image where you could see the back of the wave as well as the curtain in front of him and so forth. And they responded back to me by saying that they actually critiqued it and said that the image would have stood a much better chance if you would have been able to see more of the surfer's board. So a little bit of board was sort of hidden from the barrel or whatever. And I look back on that now and I go, well, it was spot on, really. Absolutely. And so that's why you look at these magazines and the images that are in there. Like all that day going back to reading tracks and all that. And it was always the best of the best, wasn't it? Yeah. And a lot of those guys, a lot of those guys are looked up to in terms of what they were doing. So it's hard, but I guess you got to keep persisting and you've got to keep trying to improve what you're doing. And I was really lucky with white horses because they kind of backed me. And it all started with pretty much just a tiny little image in a magazine for the first time with white horses, that is, it could have been probably like, I don't know, a thumbnail. I don't know what it was. And then my first proper ones were like, ones that were printed as contents page. You got all the writing and all that stuff over it. You're like, oh, yeah, who's that photo by? You can't see it because you. More what's on page 46.
So it started like that and then you might start getting a few more and it just kind of snowballs from there.
If anyone was listening, that was, like, right into photography and they wanted to progress it. You just got to keep trying what you're doing and be patient. But that by no means by saying that do I sit back and go, oh, yeah, I've made it in the world of surf photography? Because I don't. Because for me, you got to be realistic and go, well, you know what? This has actually really been a hobby pursuit for me for as long as I've been doing it, more than a monetary thing. And I've said to you at the start that pretty much I don't have ulterior motives. And this is why I do it, because the enjoyment I get out of it, it keeps me in touch with people, in touch with the ocean. And if you can get a shot in a magazine, then that's just an added bonus and you might get a bit of extra money and so forth.
But the whole mag thing, it's like you look on social media and things are changing, like every nanosecond. But to have that in a print or even your images on the wall, in fact, sitting in your shed, the amount of quality images that you've got here, that's sensational. And that's pretty much what it's about, isn't it?
Like I said earlier, immortalizing a moment, capturing it, and it's frozen.
[01:28:23] Speaker B: That's right. You can't have a digital Instagram photo hanging off your shed wall, can you?
[01:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, or like, my phone busted the other day, and then all of a sudden you'd start thinking, oh my God, I can't live my life without a phone. Everything's on it. Your photos, your passwords, your everything. Whereas magazine, I've got a draw at home and I'm really stoked to see that. That draw has actually got through other publications and all that and through other media outlets, especially when the Nikon Surf Photographer of the year awards were on. I had a pretty good run with that. I made the finals like three out of four years. And for me, I never expected to win because the caliber of the photographers in there was just amazing. And it's a friggin honor. Yeah, right. It's actually really humbling.
[01:29:14] Speaker B: It's like getting voted in for the Eddie, even if you don't win. Exactly. Right, the invite.
[01:29:18] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, even with this edition that we're talking about now, a couple of the other photographers that were featured, like Hayden Richards from South Australia and Stu Gibson from Tassie.
[01:29:31] Speaker B: Iconic.
[01:29:32] Speaker A: Incredible it for me, that's where it's at. It's like to be even put in the same sort of context as these people.
[01:29:47] Speaker B: It's flattering that's awesome, man.
[01:29:49] Speaker A: Yeah, but just on that, I was shooting down at the river dog one day and there were some waves occasionally there is in winter, whatever. And this dude had his dog there and I took a photo of his dog and I must have posted it on social media. This guy's contacted me and said, oh, you took a photo of my dog? Can I get a copy of that photo? I said, yeah, it's your dog, no worries. So sent him a photo of the dog, and about three or four years later, the guys contacted me and said, oh, I just wanted to say thanks for that photo of my dog. It was a great photo. Best photo we've ever got of my dog. He died just the other day, and I just wanted to thank you.
[01:30:29] Speaker B: Really?
[01:30:29] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:30:30] Speaker B: Wow, that warms the cockles, doesn't it?
[01:30:33] Speaker A: Yeah, mate, it does.
[01:30:35] Speaker B: How could it not?
[01:30:37] Speaker A: But that's how I see the power of photography, moment in time. And just like mentioned earlier, just capturing those moments and immortalizing something in time, mate.
[01:30:48] Speaker B: So how do you make a crust these days? Is it purely through photography or.
[01:30:52] Speaker A: No, not at all.
[01:30:53] Speaker B: Is it jiggle?
[01:30:55] Speaker A: Yeah, mostly.
Well, there was actually quite a long period of time where my wife was going to work and I was just going down the beach every day. So a bit of a raising the family. Yeah.
[01:31:11] Speaker B: You were looking after kids?
[01:31:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I was a stay at home dad, so I was working in different roles.
And to tell you the truth, what actually did it was when we got back from Hawaii, I went back to work. I went back to work for one day and said, I can't do this anymore. So I went home to my wife and know, I don't want to go.
[01:31:30] Speaker B: Back to work and work then. Hey, what was work at the time?
[01:31:34] Speaker A: I was working as like a safety advisor or safety coordinator or something like that.
[01:31:40] Speaker B: Didn't like the job at all on a mine.
[01:31:42] Speaker A: No, for.
It might have been for. Oh, it was a construction.
[01:31:50] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:31:50] Speaker A: Yep, yep.
And I've just gone into work the first day back from Hawaii. Walked in, I'm in the office and I don't even know how long I was in there, but I've just walked in and seen the boss and said, oh, no, I can't do this anymore.
I said, what do you mean? I said, I'm not coming back. I'll see you later.
[01:32:07] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[01:32:08] Speaker A: And they went, what? Are you just, like, going? I said, yeah, I'll see you. And I walked out and went home and, yeah, my wife started working full time because she was quite career orientated. I didn't like my career. Yes. So I became the stay at home dad, which was the sickest life ever. Take the kids to work, take them to school in the morning.
[01:32:30] Speaker B: Kids that are like, go off.
[01:32:31] Speaker A: I'd be down the beach and then go picking them up at 03:00 or whatever. And then the afternoon would give me time to go through and sift through images and clean the house a little, do a bit of. Yeah. So I did that for quite a number of years. I've sold quite a few images, prints here and there.
But, yeah, it's hard to sustain that. And if I want to use. I don't know if you're going to ask me later about the Clive Palmer award or something like that, if I can preempt it and go, the cost of living just sucks.
[01:33:02] Speaker B: Jump in with a clive.
[01:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And to be totally upfront and honest about it, my wife has always said to me, you'll never. This probably sounds a bit crazy, but you'll never really make a good photographer in the sense that you cannot market yourself.
And I said to her, yeah, I know that. I know I can't because I just find it difficult.
[01:33:24] Speaker B: Therein lines your charm as well. I know, yeah. It might not be beneficial economically, but it definitely gives you a lot of moral substance. And why people adhere to you and your images, because they know the people that know how you shoot, why you shoot. And that gives you street cred, for want of better words, obviously. Street cred doesn't.
[01:33:48] Speaker A: Maybe.
[01:33:48] Speaker B: Well, I would know, definitely. I mean, you're known as someone who does it for the pure love of it. And that might not pay the bills, but it definitely has got to be something. It's something solid that everyone knows. Like mate, Pete Jovik. He's there a lot. He's there early, he's there when there's no one there. He's doing it for the love. And, mate, that is your contribution to west australian surfing culture and history.
[01:34:16] Speaker A: Thanks. Yeah, I appreciate that.
[01:34:18] Speaker B: It's true.
That's cool. So, mate, while we're on that subject, how can people view your images? Give us your handle. Give us your.
In terms of not promoting yourself. I'll do it for you.
[01:34:34] Speaker A: This has all gone really bad, right? So obviously I have Facebook and I've got Instagram.
I had my web page.
I had a bit of an issue with the website and I've actually ended up having to take the website down. It's been down for quite some time.
[01:34:54] Speaker B: Okay.
[01:34:54] Speaker A: But what my intent is to build a new website and have a proper, I guess, ecommerce aspect to it as well. Because one of my issues is it's hard for people to reach me because I am quite aloof.
[01:35:09] Speaker B: You are?
Took me about twelve years to find out.
[01:35:14] Speaker A: Yeah.
But I think one of the hard parts for me is that I love it the way I do it. And whilst it would be good, like I mentioned before, it'd be great to get paid for it and do it for work and do it professionally, but I don't want to lose my full enthusiasm and just the relax.
The hard part about it is with photography, for me, it takes me away to a different place where if things aren't going well in whatever aspect of your life, I can go down to the beach and the sun's coming up behind me and whatever it is, there might be people out surfing, there might be whales, there might be dolphins, there might be sick waves, whatever it is. But you know what? I'm totally at peace with myself. Totally. And that, for me, is what it's all about.
[01:36:01] Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome, man.
I can really feel that coming across there, man. I can. I can feel it because I know what you do, and I've seen so many of your images, as much as anyone, probably, in all honesty, because I've been following you for a while and I know the images that you're aspiring to create, I can feel through that image what you're getting out of it. It's not just for everyone else. I can see that it's for you and that's what I mean, man. There's no denying the honesty and integrity in your passion for that ocean image. It's fucking cool. So I can understand how it must feel really good for you. And it's not always just ocean. It might be the trees, it might be a sand dune, or it might be exactly right. Like just something that you see on the way that just goes, wow, look at the colors or contrast and something in that.
[01:36:56] Speaker A: Totally, yeah.
[01:36:56] Speaker B: And that's cool.
[01:36:57] Speaker A: And when you start looking quite deeply into it, that's the sort of. And there's photographers who I'd really admire with the way that they see these little things in the waves, in the ocean, in surfing, whatever it might be. And there's so many of them out there, there's so many artistic, talented people, and it's good to draw inspiration from them as well. And there's a lot of people who I follow and who I admire and who I look up to. And you think, oh, you know, actually it's probably a really good time to say that. The people that have supported me throughout this journey, nothing gives me greater satisfaction than someone coming up to me. Half the time I don't know who they are, but they'll come up to me in some car park, some obscure car park or standing up on top of a hill out in the middle of nowhere. And I've had people come up to me and go, oh, is your name Peter? And I'd go, yeah. And I'd go, oh, I think you were shooting at such and such, at such and such back in 2019, and I was surfing in this green board with this blue wedding and I think you were taking photos. Do you remember that day? And I'd go, actually, yeah, I do. Because I remember the wetsuit they're wearing and all that. I remember the waves. That's all I remember.
Those details. You never forget them. You can pinpoint the time. Wow. But if I bump into you in the car park, what? I don't really recognize that. If you just tell me who you are, but if you tell me where you're surfing, when you were surfing and blah, blah, blah, then, oh, yeah, I remember that day. I know exactly what I was doing.
[01:38:24] Speaker B: Awesome.
[01:38:24] Speaker A: Where I was shooting and whatever.
[01:38:26] Speaker B: I still don't think we gave our listeners anywhere to find you, at least. Yeah, that's.
Won't even tell us where to. Yeah. What's your Instagram?
[01:38:36] Speaker A: Yeah, Instagram. So it's Peter Jovikphotography and just Facebook is the same Peter Jovic photography. Yeah. Here's my bit of promo. My website is on its way. It's coming.
I'll let you know through my other social media platforms that I'm so adept at using.
[01:38:56] Speaker B: Well, you do post fairly regularly on IG and I obviously follow you and I love to see it.
[01:39:03] Speaker A: Thank you.
[01:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I love those early morning water shots and the speed blurs and all that sort of good stuff, man. So, yeah, definitely. Our listeners out there have a look at Peter Jovik photography on IG and you will not be disappointed. There's probably a hell of a lot of images on there. You're fairly active on there. As much as you probably don't want to be.
There'd have to be a few hundred images on there.
[01:39:29] Speaker A: I would probably like 1000.
[01:39:31] Speaker B: Yeah, there you go.
[01:39:32] Speaker A: Probably six. Yeah, probably about 900 too many.
[01:39:35] Speaker B: No, they're pretty sick.
All right, I'm just looking at my notes here. We've covered a fair few there, mate. Those early morning water shots that you do like, mate, you're rocking up in pitch black a lot of the time.
Well, okay, yeah. Sometimes with no subjects, no one pre organized to meet you there. And you're just like, I'm going to swim out at the earliest possible chance and just take a photo of an empty wave. What's your mindset behind that?
[01:40:08] Speaker A: Well, my mindset is that I've got to get out there before crews start going out and then I can't get the empties. That's pretty much the mindset.
[01:40:14] Speaker B: Right.
[01:40:15] Speaker A: And then once there's like you go for a nice cozy little swim out at a place like supers, for example, you get some beautiful light and nice shape and color and so forth. But as soon as you got six guys out there, you're kind of like, well, it depends what you want to shoot, of course, if you want to get guys in barrels or whatever it is. But if you want to shoot those early morning empties, which is what I like to do, then you got to be up and you got to be out pretty quick as well. Yeah.
[01:40:42] Speaker B: How are the nerves when you're paddling around by yourself early in terms of sea creatures, let's say, do you ever think about that or are you so focused on the task at hand that you're not really thinking about swimming around in pre dawn light with nobody around anywhere?
[01:41:00] Speaker A: I reckon that it's definitely in the back of your mind. Definitely. But I think that once you actually hit the water and especially once you see, once you can tell that it might be firing, it's like surfing. All you're worried, all you're thinking about is the next wave at the star or in between lulls or whatever you might be going, oh, it's a bit dodgy out here. And then boom, you have booming sets coming through. You're not thinking about what might be lurking. You're thinking about getting the best wave you can. That's exactly the same thing.
[01:41:30] Speaker B: Oh, that's cool.
[01:41:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, especially once it, you know, and I guess when crew do start coming out and that, and then you're out there shooting and you've limiting your chances for starters, right? Yes, but, yeah, you've, you know, you got your mind on other things.
[01:41:49] Speaker B: Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Cool. Have you ever followed the barrel so hard with a water shot that you've been sucked over the falls?
[01:41:57] Speaker A: And plenty of times I think I've heard the really good photographers say that.
I can't remember if you're not getting.
[01:42:10] Speaker B: Sucked over Russell Lord might have said something like, Russell.
[01:42:14] Speaker A: Yeah, that'd be Russell. He'd say something like that. You're not going over the falls, you're not doing it right.
[01:42:18] Speaker B: Fucking animal.
[01:42:21] Speaker A: What a guy.
[01:42:22] Speaker B: What a legend. Legend, mate.
What's your favorite contrast between water and land? Like, you got your land shots, you got your water shots. Obviously they're very different.
Is one your favorite or what's the joy between both?
[01:42:46] Speaker A: Well, I think initially from the water, it still puts you in that zone. So you get to feel that whole energy of the wave. It's like you're surfing. Sometimes I feel like I've been barreled way more shooting than what I have, like getting double barrels at trigs, if you know what I mean.
And so when you shoot from land, you don't have that connection. And when I first toyed about getting myself set up to go in the water, I had a guy say to me, say, look, mate, just don't do it. I said, why not? He goes, because you're going to miss so many shots. You can get so many more shots from the land. You get in the water, you're going.
[01:43:22] Speaker B: To miss heaps, you're going to get.
[01:43:23] Speaker A: Annoyed, blah, blah, blah. And I just went, oh, yeah, thanks for that. And so I went and got a housing for my camera, and the first time I took it out. Do you want to hear about this story?
[01:43:32] Speaker B: Yes, please.
[01:43:33] Speaker A: Yeah. The first time I got a rig set up, and I got a rig set up from Dave Kelly, who's based in Newcastle. A legend, mate. He makes water housings that are works of art. That's the way I see.
[01:43:45] Speaker B: Had one.
[01:43:46] Speaker A: So there you go, right? You know what I'm talking about?
[01:43:48] Speaker B: Yeah, I do.
[01:43:49] Speaker A: I had one of his housings and I'd been practicing putting the camera in the housing, dunking it in a bucket of water and all that, making sure getting it all right.
[01:43:59] Speaker B: So paranoid that it's going to leak.
[01:44:00] Speaker A: Right? Yeah. And then there was this one day, actually, it was up in north of Perth somewhere, and it was a pumping day, a really, really good day. I'm going, right, I'm going out, I'm swimming, and I was going to shoot fisheye, blah, blah, blah, jump off the rocks, jump into the water. And as I'm swimming out, I just see the water level in the housing start to increase. And I'm looking at it and this red light comes on, it starts flashing. And then next thing you know, it's like, oh, no. And I've looked at the housing, I've just gone, what the. So I start trying to swim to shore trying to hold the housing up above the water level and it was too late. So I lost my camera, I lost my shy. And then eventually, a little while later, I found out that the pistol grip, the wiring had all corroded due to the salt water. So I had to get a new pistol grip as well. And then the dome for the fisheye had all sort of calcified from the salt water and it was horrid. So I literally started all over again.
[01:44:56] Speaker B: Why did you leak the first time, though?
[01:44:58] Speaker A: Because the cable that was used to operate the shutter or the shutter release cable leaked that wasn't properly secured in. It had pinched in between the body and the actual, say, dome or the plate.
[01:45:13] Speaker B: So it was no fault of your own?
[01:45:15] Speaker A: No, it was my fault. I did it wrong.
[01:45:16] Speaker B: Oh, really?
[01:45:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I totally ballsed it. I've never done that since.
[01:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah, I bet you in all those.
[01:45:22] Speaker A: Years, it's never happened again.
Yeah, that cost me a fair bit. Hey, but, yeah, it's your thing, mate.
[01:45:30] Speaker B: Here's a funny story I haven't thought about for a while. My date. I don't know what happened, but I must have been shooting water one day for one reason or another. I was driving my Sandman, which is parked straight behind you there.
Must have been on the medicinal or something, because I got out and went inside and then I came back out and must have been going to town and I reversed over in the Sandman, drove over, reversed over my Dave Kelly housing in the Sandman.
My camera wasn't. I can't remember if my camera.
[01:46:01] Speaker A: How was your car? Because those things are pretty tough, eh?
[01:46:04] Speaker B: Yeah, well, mate, they're pretty tough. But no, it definitely put a bit of a crack in it or something. And I wasn't that good.
Very weirdly, Ian Cannes turned up within a week.
Kanga cans and some other american dude. I can't even remember who he was. And they were talking about distributing my movie in America.
I have no idea how this happened. I can't even remember. And that american dude that was with Ian Cans was like, mate.
And I told him, like, oh, man, I broke my housing.
And he's like, I'll fix that for you, no worries. I wish I could remember his name.
[01:46:43] Speaker A: Ian cans or the other.
[01:46:44] Speaker B: No, the other dude that was with Ian cans.
[01:46:46] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:46:46] Speaker B: They came inside and I got really scared. They were talking like all big time, like, mate, let's do a deal. I want to get involved on a business level with you because apparently Ian cans was that sort of guy.
[01:46:57] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[01:46:58] Speaker B: I didn't know, I was just some young dude, like 21 years old and no doubt baked as fuck.
And I've just rehearsed over my freaking Dave Kelly housing with a sandman. And then here's Ian Cannes, like, freaking talking business with me about movies, these crappy movies. I was like, and then this american dude's like, mate, I'll fix your housing. And he's just taken it. And it was some fiberglass because they're obviously just fiberglass. But I was no good at fiberglass. I didn't know what I was doing. And he patched it for me and fixed it and it worked. And I got another five years out of. Yeah. And it was all. Yeah. So shout out to talking about jumping forwards to clives. And Steve's mate, the Steve Irwin salute was to that random american mate of Ian cans who turned up at my house and fixed my Dave Kelly housing after I versed over it after smoking too many doobies after a freaking surf session. I haven't thought about that in a long time, actually, but a similar ilk to your story, I guess, in a way.
[01:48:03] Speaker A: I haven't run over my housing, I've run over my boards. Just. Yeah, that's a pretty bad feeling.
[01:48:08] Speaker B: Iconic, isn't it?
[01:48:09] Speaker A: Especially when you do it in a car park and everyone's around and you run your board over.
[01:48:13] Speaker B: Run your own board over. What's worse, running your own board over or someone else's board or Eddie Rothman's board?
[01:48:21] Speaker A: I'd rather run over my own board than run over someone else.
[01:48:25] Speaker B: The embarrassment's higher, but at least you don't.
[01:48:27] Speaker A: Yeah, running over someone else's board is a bit like.
Unless they just dropped in on you or something like that. Double barrel trigger. You run over their board like cop that sucker.
[01:48:37] Speaker B: Yeah, classic. Where did you run over your own board?
[01:48:41] Speaker A: Was that the. Remember the old Margaret river lodge?
[01:48:44] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Well, it wasn't even at the beach.
[01:48:49] Speaker A: Well, like you, mate, talk about going back at that sort of age.
We all pile into the Holden Hg or whatever it was.
You're always having a big nights there and next thing you know. Yeah, let's get out of here. Crunch.
[01:49:04] Speaker B: So you took your boards out, probably to fit your mates in or something? Who knows? Sort of sleep.
[01:49:08] Speaker A: I don't know, but I know it was at least a board in a pub car park. No, sorry, it wasn't the pub car park at the hostel. That used to be on station road.
[01:49:27] Speaker B: Or like a backpack.
[01:49:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it was like a backpack.
[01:49:31] Speaker B: I thought you said hotel.
[01:49:32] Speaker A: No, sorry, you might have. It was a rammed earth places and we used to go stay there all the time. It's like classic $10 a night or whatever. It was some crazy nights there and then you run over your board the next day and it was good.
No, it wasn't good, but you know.
[01:49:48] Speaker B: What I mean, makes for a good story now at the very least.
[01:49:51] Speaker A: Yeah, I used to have some crazy nights, like sleeping out at the grunters car park and that sort of thing. Well, it wasn't car park, it was gravel, sandpit or whatever.
Yeah, those were the days.
[01:50:01] Speaker B: Free and easy.
[01:50:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:50:03] Speaker B: Awesome. All right, mate, one last photography question and we'll get close to wrapping this up soon, mate. Any advice for any young photographers in this day and age? Who knows what their motivation might be? But any young punters who just want to feel the urge to pick up a camera and do something similar?
[01:50:23] Speaker A: Yeah, probably shoot as much as you can, get out there, just do it. Especially now in this day and age with digital, you're able to look at an image and just go, yeah, well, delete. No worries. You're not worried about a roll of 24 or 48 or whatever, 36, whatever it might be. Just get out there, shoot, try doing different things. And I also think it's really important that it's really easy to get a camera and go through some of the settings. You like your basic stuff, but go through, actually learn your camera, learn the functions that you can do, because the camera is a really high tech piece of equipment and so you're able to do all sorts of stuff in camera that might save you time in post editing. So you might be able to overlay an image in camera just by doing multiple exposures, or it could be time lapse or anything like that. So try out all these different functions on your camera, get to know it. And what really you should be able to do is when you should be able to get to a point with your camera that you're so comfortable with it if you're going out shooting at night, that you can operate those dials and find those functions in the dark, so to speak, if you know what I mean.
[01:51:27] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[01:51:27] Speaker A: So take the time to get acquainted and also, I think, find something that interests you and work at it, stick at it. It's really good to be good at.
Good to be really good at something, like one particular thing, to be magnificent at it instead of being okay at a whole multiple discipline of photography styles, if you know what I mean. So if you're really good at portrait and that's what interests you, then stick at it and get really, really good at it. Yeah, really get dialed in. But if you're into surf photography, then get dialed in on that and just stick at that and maybe don't deviate so much. I don't know if that's the right advice, but also to be really patient with your photography and just experiment. Really experiment. Hey, yeah, cool.
[01:52:21] Speaker B: Yeah, that's some great advice. Was one of those images in there an overlay image of something about some trees or burnt trees or something?
[01:52:30] Speaker A: I remember.
[01:52:30] Speaker B: Is that right?
[01:52:31] Speaker A: Sorry, I read it a long time ago.
[01:52:34] Speaker B: But when you said overlaying images, I feel like that might have been in that edition of White Horse.
[01:52:39] Speaker A: Yeah. There was one particular one with the kind of looks, or gives the appearance of a golden mist going over the hillside. Maybe that's the one. Yeah. Referring to.
[01:52:50] Speaker B: Yeah, it is.
[01:52:51] Speaker A: And so with that, that was actually a case of getting quite bored because I was shooting up near the cape there and the waves were a bit hoham. A few guys getting waves, and I just sort of went, oh, I'm getting a bit bored with this. And I sort of spun around. And I remember a quote from one particular well known photographer whose name escapes me at this point in time, but he always used to say, don't always focus on what's in front of you. Sometimes you need to turn around and look what's behind you.
[01:53:18] Speaker B: That's a great piece of advice.
[01:53:20] Speaker A: I do that quite often. Like, there's a beautiful sunset. Wow, that looks really cool. But what's happening behind you as well? The moon coming up from the east.
So you just sort of try getting a bit holistic. So with that particular one, because I got a bit bored just going off track here. So what I basically did was I went into my camera settings and set the functions to allow me to shoot two frames at a time, and one frame got overlaid with the other one. So I'd go through and I'd just do, like a shot. It's all trial and error. Do a shot of landscape shot, and then I'd take a shot of the clouds and sort of pan along, and then that would get overlaid with the land image. So you've got a land image, which is nice and clear and contrasty with clarity. Then you've got the overlay of the clouds, which is all streaky and kind of just a different effect. And I've had a number of people ask me how I did it and or even, what is it? Is it mist? What is it well, it's pretty much just cloud, which I've given a different dimension to by adding the streakiness to it. And it looks like it's going into a valley or something like that. And it was something that I didn't have to go home. And because I don't have the programs at home to overlay and stack and all that, I just use a simple lightroom program, which means I use it for workflow. And I can do simple adjustments, like your exposure, your contrast, your color saturation, that sort of stuff. But I don't have Photoshop per se. Yes, shock and remove, like little dots and blah blah blah. But I don't have the actual tools to be able to go do stuff.
[01:54:56] Speaker B: Full crazy on it.
[01:54:57] Speaker A: Yeah, go full crazy. That's right. I don't have the time to do it either. I'd rather have the majority do it in the camera.
[01:55:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, that's cool, mate. That's really insightful stuff. To anyone who is interested in photography, I'm sure there's a lot there that they can pick up on. That's pretty cool.
[01:55:13] Speaker A: Yeah, just experiment and have fun while you're doing it.
[01:55:17] Speaker B: I reckon we get that a bit more up on the Cape natural ascend because it's such a thin, pointy piece of land we do get, and it's quite steep up near the cape natural ascend. We definitely get some weird clouds, like rolling over the hill and dropping down into the water. Bit of mist. Sometimes it's just a bit of cloud or smoke haze or. You definitely get that.
[01:55:38] Speaker A: It's like the microclimate we're talking about.
[01:55:40] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[01:55:41] Speaker A: It's always different.
[01:55:42] Speaker B: Sure. 100%. Yeah. I mean, that lighthouse at Cape Natural is.
[01:55:46] Speaker A: Fuck.
[01:55:46] Speaker B: It's such a bad indicator of wind sometimes, especially in summer, you're like, it's reading easterly and you shoot up there and that's like, not easterly at all suddenly. But it's got 270 degrees of water around it. So does Cape Lewin.
[01:56:00] Speaker A: That's right.
[01:56:00] Speaker B: It's like these lighthouses are giving you these readings of real time winds, but they're surrounded by oceans. So what's happening 2 km away where it's a bit more land and less water? It's not quite the same, but you've.
[01:56:13] Speaker A: Got to get down there and have a look.
[01:56:14] Speaker B: You just got to get involved.
[01:56:16] Speaker A: Yeah, that's it, mate.
[01:56:17] Speaker B: Let's have one quick pause and then we're going to come back and wrap it up.
[01:56:20] Speaker A: Okay?
[01:56:21] Speaker B: Hey, guys, I'm John Cunka and you're listening to the Barrel surf podcast. All right, we're back for our final leg of the Pete Jovik special, mates. All right, let's just rip straight in here all your years of taking surf photos. Do you have a favorite subject in terms of either A, the wave or B, a person can be either?
[01:56:49] Speaker A: Good question.
And it's a difficult one for me to answer because I don't have a favorite wave.
So I've been asked that quite a bit. What's your favorite wave to shoot or whatever it might be. But I don't have one because I like to move around a lot. So my favorite wave is the one that's like firing at the time. That's my favorite place to shoot.
[01:57:12] Speaker B: Sick.
[01:57:12] Speaker A: Regardless of whether people are out or not.
In terms of people, you could throw a blanket over the.
Even though I like shooting waves without sometimes a subject or a surfer gracing those waves, but you could throw a blanket over the amount of crew down here that are spanoed surfers that just always put on a show just from their attitude towards surfing and the way they surf these waves.
If Jay Davies is out in the water, I love shooting him because I love the way he just manhandles waves.
Yeah. And I've seen him up close at places like North Point in the water, and he's just a brute. And I say that with total respect. Yeah, of course.
[01:57:58] Speaker B: And then beautiful way.
[01:57:59] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:57:59] Speaker B: And then beautiful brute.
[01:58:01] Speaker A: Yeah.
If you rock up somewhere and there's a guy like Taj Burrow surfing, grab a shot of Taj because there's something.
[01:58:09] Speaker B: Special what they do, isn't it?
[01:58:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:58:11] Speaker B: You did comment as soon as you walked in here in the headquarters that you like. Oh, I like the borough jersey up in the corner.
[01:58:17] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[01:58:19] Speaker B: How can you not love?
[01:58:20] Speaker A: I don't have like a man crush on him or anything like that.
[01:58:23] Speaker B: On both of Taj and Jay, it's okay, they're friends.
[01:58:28] Speaker A: But any of the local guys who charge, and there's so many of them, like mentioned before, regardless of whether they're sponsored or not, if they're having a dig, and there's so many of them. There's so many. The level of surfing, the standard of surfing amongst a lot of the local crew, is pretty darn good. The froth factor is pretty high.
And wherever there's that energy, and if I happen to be there and the waves are on, then I love to capture it.
[01:59:00] Speaker B: Sick.
Well played. Good answer, mates. Okay, let's go into one of my favorite questions back into the surfer. Pete Jovik. As opposed to the photographer. Mate, worst wipeout ever.
[01:59:15] Speaker A: Oh, you mean myself?
[01:59:16] Speaker B: Yep.
[01:59:17] Speaker A: Oh, my worst wipeout.
[01:59:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, yeah, now that I think about it, that could be a two pronged question because you've probably seen some rippers, too.
[01:59:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen some crackers as. Yep. But I don't know, my worst wipeouts.
I suppose you want it. The. My actual worst wipeout ever was. I know you're talking surfing, but one was like photography when I did my knee, that was a pretty bad wipeout.
[01:59:44] Speaker B: Oh, how do you know that?
[01:59:45] Speaker A: I was shooting up at Mitchell's and basically went over the falls and it gets pretty shallow there.
[01:59:51] Speaker B: Shallow shore break, sandbreak. Yeah.
[01:59:54] Speaker A: The long story was that I tore three ligaments off the bone.
[01:59:59] Speaker B: Did you?
[01:59:59] Speaker A: My knee, yeah.
[02:00:00] Speaker B: You went over the falls and just slammed into the bank?
[02:00:03] Speaker A: Yeah. Leg first and hyperextended my leg underwater and I was the only one. There was no one there. It was just me.
[02:00:09] Speaker B: It's probably like five in the morning.
[02:00:11] Speaker A: No isolated beach. This was actually in the middle of the day. All right, middle of the day, yeah. And I just wanted to shoot some closeouts and so on. And I'd been out for about an hour and the swell was picking up and I started getting really tired. And it seemed like every ten minutes the ones that were coming through were just a little bit bigger than the ones previous. So I think I'm getting a bit tired. It's starting to get a bit unruly. The waves bouncing back off the rocks there at Mitchell's and big backwashes and blah, blah, blah. Oh, I'm going to get out of here. I'll just one more. Just like surfing. I'll just get one more.
But this one came through and I kind of went to swim through it and I was kind of really laxadaisical and maybe because I was tired. And next, you know, I felt myself going back and boom, over the falls and just felt this incredible pain. Reached down whilst underwater and like, where's my leg? And my leg kind of wasn't there, but it was there. But it was like, kind of behind my knee. It was pretty bad. And I thought, oh, no, I was pretty painful. I grabbed my lower leg and sort of yanked it up and it kind of seemed to go into place like it was there. And I'm thinking, oh, it's just a dislocation. That would be sweet. No worries, no worries. And then the next wave hit me and bang, my leg was gone again, back behind my knee. And because it breaks so close to shore. I think that second wave pretty much, like, deposited me on the sand beach.
[02:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I was like, gnarly shore.
[02:01:33] Speaker A: This is pretty bad. I can't walk. There's no one around.
[02:01:36] Speaker B: And just to put into context for those that don't understand this beach.
[02:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:01:41] Speaker B: It's probably a 300 meters, 45 degree angle climb down a steep goat track of rocks and sand and bush and a soft sand beach that extends for 500 meters to a k. Like, it's not an easy climb back to the car from there.
[02:01:59] Speaker A: No, it's not. Not on one leg.
[02:02:01] Speaker B: And then there's no phone reception down there either.
[02:02:03] Speaker A: And that's kind of what happened because to sort of shorten the story, I'm sort of laying on the long version. Well, I'm sort of like laying on the sand in pain, like mega pain, screaming my lungs out. There's no one around and there's no one.
[02:02:19] Speaker B: If a water photographer screams on an empty beach and no one's there to hear it, does it really happen?
[02:02:25] Speaker A: Well, it's like the sound of one hand clapping, isn't it?
[02:02:28] Speaker B: Or tree falling in the woods.
[02:02:30] Speaker A: Exactly. That's the one.
Yeah, but I'm kind of there, and then next thing you know, I see this car pull up into the car park and I'm like, wicked kind of waving my arms or whatever, and I'm.
[02:02:44] Speaker B: Thinking, oh, the car park to the south or the wedge car park to.
[02:02:49] Speaker A: The south at Mitchell's.
[02:02:50] Speaker B: Okay, so halfway down the beach there. Yeah, we can actually see the car.
[02:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:02:54] Speaker B: You couldn't see cars in the other car park. I don't think.
[02:02:56] Speaker A: No, my car was the only car up there and I could see these people standing up there. So I'm kind of waving. I thought I got their attention. And then I swear I saw them, like, driving off or going to leave or whatever, and I'm like, and you're screaming, yeah, no, but then I thought that they're going to come down and.
[02:03:13] Speaker B: Well, it would have been, well, six to 800 meters away from them, easy. By the time vertical and a bit of horizontal.
[02:03:19] Speaker A: Eventually what ended up happening was a long while after this incident happened, I had the lady who was there who saw me, ended up contacting me on social media and said, you're the guy that we helped out. When you hurt your whatever, blah, blah.
[02:03:33] Speaker B: Blah, you're jumping ahead.
[02:03:35] Speaker A: Who helped you out? Right.
[02:03:37] Speaker B: The car looked like it was leaving.
[02:03:38] Speaker A: Sorry, the car looked like it was leaving.
[02:03:40] Speaker B: But then what was?
[02:03:41] Speaker A: I'm just kind of laying there thinking, oh, they're gone. And then a little while later, two blokes rock up on the beach and they're, like, not ocean going type people.
[02:03:49] Speaker B: You're still just laying there?
[02:03:51] Speaker A: I'm just laying there, yeah. I can't move my legs. Just, like, mangled pretty much.
It's totally, like, stuff. Yeah.
Anyway, and these guys, when they rocked up and they looked at me, I just saw the look on their face. And I thought to myself, oh, my God. These guys are freaking out there like they don't know what to do. And I'm screaming and I'm yelling and I'm freaking them out. And they're just like. They're, like, in a world of pain like I am because they don't know what to do.
[02:04:19] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[02:04:19] Speaker A: And I know the swell is picking up and I can see these waves coming. And I'm still right near the shoreline. And one of them said to me, oh, what do we do? What do we do? I said, you got to get me away from the shoreline because we're all about to get hammered.
[02:04:33] Speaker B: You haven't even crawled that far that you're not at risk of getting sucked back into the ocean at this stage?
[02:04:38] Speaker A: No. Pretty much.
[02:04:40] Speaker B: I'm assuming you're on dry sand by this stage.
[02:04:42] Speaker A: I am, but it kind of, like, washes up. And I'm not far from the.
[02:04:46] Speaker B: Not far enough.
[02:04:47] Speaker A: Not far enough.
[02:04:48] Speaker B: Especially for non beach going punches like these guys.
[02:04:50] Speaker A: So then these guys try to drag me off. And then this set hits and bang. Knocks them off their feet. No way.
Yeah, knocks them off their feet. They're drenched. They're now drenched as well.
[02:05:00] Speaker B: Lucky they didn't get bloody. Tumbled back down into the.
[02:05:03] Speaker A: They had no idea, but they were good Samaritans. And I've looked at these dudes once, they finally dragged me off and I started feeling sorry for him. I felt really bad for him. I thought, oh, these poor buggers. They're tourists. They're here having a look around. I look how beautiful the bay is. And now we got to buddy sort this guy out. No. He's screaming. He's yelling. And I looked at him and I just stopped. I just calmed the farm, started breathing, just focused on the point at inchy point there. I just started looking at that. I remember it was so hot. The sun was beating down on my head.
And these guys just said, what do we do? What do we do? I said, I'll tell you what you're going to do. I've got my board up in the back of my car. Go grab my board. Bring it down. Use it as a stretcher.
[02:05:48] Speaker B: No way.
[02:05:49] Speaker A: That's the only way you're going to get me out. Fuck. And they've gone, yeah, okay.
By then, apparently, the ladies who are up in the car park, you mentioned the phone reception. They tried calling for an ambulance, but they couldn't get phone reception, not right there. So there's that place that was being built near injury, car park there. Yeah, that big house. They went there, they drove there, and they got some builders to ring the Ambos.
[02:06:11] Speaker B: All right?
[02:06:12] Speaker A: So the Ambos rocked up. Ambos rocked up to the top of the hill. And they've taken one look at where I was there and they've just gone, no, we're not going down there. Right. So they've then called the fieries.
[02:06:25] Speaker B: The whole time you're just laying on the beach.
[02:06:27] Speaker A: So eventually, the fieries rocked up as well. But by the time the fieries rocked up, these ladies went back to the building site and they grabbed all these builders and came down.
[02:06:36] Speaker B: The tradies would have sorted you out.
[02:06:38] Speaker A: So then they bought the most.
[02:06:40] Speaker B: 80% of the tradies would have been surfers.
[02:06:42] Speaker A: Anyway, after this whole thing finished, I ended up going back with a slab of beer back to that building site.
[02:06:49] Speaker B: I bet you did.
[02:06:49] Speaker A: And I still leg. I was just like, here you go, fellas, here's a carton. And they're like, oh, yeah, thanks. And they started telling me about that day and what they remembered. It was a bit gut wrenching. But anyway, they come down with the ambos and they all carried me back up to the top on a border or proper stretcher. On a stretcher.
And that's when the fieries rocked up just as all this was finishing. So the fieries, they're like, no worries, we didn't have to carry anything. That's great, blah, blah, blah. But the ambos, one of them must have been like, a lot of them are volunteers. And this dude must have been like 70 years old, I reckon.
[02:07:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:07:24] Speaker A: He carried me up with the other guys and as soon as we got to the top of the car park, this poor amber was on all fours. Just.
[02:07:30] Speaker B: Yeah, just reaching. Big breaths.
Soft sand beach, big, steep.
It's hot black sand. Inclined through goat tracks with bush and rocks and the OD rough step. It's not an easy hike for a fit man with a board under his arm, let alone lugging you up.
[02:07:51] Speaker A: They got the methoxy fluorine into me, so I got onto the green whistle because they're allowed to give you two vials in any dosage? Okay.
Yeah, I went through one vial. It didn't touch size, no pain, just full on, really. So I asked for the second dose, they gave me the second dose, and by then I was pretty much telling me, you guys did such a great job. I love you.
Thanks for coming into the back of the ambo, but from the time it all occurred and from the time everyone got me back to the car park and from the time I got into Busselton hospital, it took 4 hours. Wow.
[02:08:31] Speaker B: Right?
[02:08:31] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was like, just saying, oh, man, where's the helicopter? Like, I've never been in a helicopter. Couldn't have someone have just called the helicopter to come and get me off the beach? And the ambul was saying, well, the helicopter has been sitting here the whole time and no one's called the helicopter to come and grab you. And I was devoed because I missed out in the ride.
[02:08:51] Speaker B: While you're laying in the stretcher on the helicopter, you could have rolled your arm out the side and got a sweet shot of the cape naturalist.
[02:09:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. Drone shot.
[02:09:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Wow.
And then surgery and all.
[02:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So from there the next day I went to Bunbury, and then from, I had to go to Perth because they said, oh, we need to get a specialist because no one wants to take on this case. And they got some guy from the private sector to do my knee, and I've gone in for a consultation before and he's kind of like, oh, well, this is a story. You've ripped three ligaments from your knee bone. You've also got a high grade terri racil. Lucky you've still got your ACL. It's kind of holding your knee together. But other than that, if this was a third world country, they just cut it off, mate.
[02:09:33] Speaker B: Really?
[02:09:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And I was like, so he's giving me the full thing about you're never going to surf again and all this sort of stuff and blah, blah, blah. Wow.
[02:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:09:43] Speaker A: Long story short, ended up having the surgery. 8 hours it was in surgery.
[02:09:46] Speaker B: Wow, 8 hours.
[02:09:48] Speaker A: Yeah, 8 hours. It was pretty bad.
[02:09:50] Speaker B: My ACl recon was like 30 minutes or 35 minutes for ACL recon. Yeah.
[02:09:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[02:09:56] Speaker B: 8 hours.
[02:09:57] Speaker A: Yeah, 8 hours. Yeah, it was pretty bad.
[02:09:59] Speaker B: That's bad.
[02:10:00] Speaker A: They said it was like pretty much like a car accident.
[02:10:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[02:10:03] Speaker A: But I want to put this into a bit of context, right. Because when I was in perth waiting for the surgery, I was in the holding room before the surgery, pre prep room, whatever you want to call it. And just as I was getting ready to go in, or just before then one of the doctors come up and said, we're going to have to bump your surgery until tomorrow. And I've gone, oh, yeah, why is that? And he said, we've got, I think it was four teenagers coming in and all been involved in a serious car accident. So we're giving them priority over you. And I've just gone, oh, well, I've still got another leg. Yeah, sure, man.
And you think about that and you go, oh, here I am with a busted leg context. Here's these young kids who've been involved in a serious car accident. I don't know what had happened to them. And you just go, well, jeez.
[02:10:59] Speaker B: But to be fair, you wouldn't think you would be thrown into the same realm as four young kids in a car accident when you've just gone for a swim down at your local beach.
[02:11:10] Speaker A: Well, not at the time surprising that.
[02:11:12] Speaker B: You'Re like, why am I even in this conversation? Yeah, mate, that's a good wipeout story. That's a ripper.
[02:11:19] Speaker A: I know it's not a surfing one, but.
[02:11:21] Speaker B: No, well, it is. It's connected. It's the same. It's a wave that did it to you. So, yeah, that was an absolute ball terror, mate.
I go to that beach often, and I will never walk that beach again without thinking about that story of you laying there in the shore break screaming at some people 800 meters away in a car park.
[02:11:41] Speaker A: Well, several months ago, I went to that car park. I had my daughter in the car with me. And as we pulled up out of the blue, my daughter said to me, she says, dad. I said, what's that? She goes, do you ever think about it? That's all she said. And I knew exactly what she was talking about. But I said, oh, do you ever think about what? Do you ever think about, like, this is where you hurt yourself really badly. We're here now. Do you ever think about it?
And I said to her, I think I lied to her. I think I said, no, I don't, but you do, being a dad. But you know what?
It's kind of not really like that because I love going there and go there. It's awesome spot. I love it.
It's a mishap that occurred. It's got nothing to do with the fact that that place is whatever. It's just a beautiful spot and it happens.
[02:12:26] Speaker B: And have you shot water there since?
[02:12:30] Speaker A: I think I have once.
[02:12:33] Speaker B: It's a volatile beach. Break, that thing. Yeah, it can be very heavy snapper.
And it always doesn't look that gnarly from up in that car park. And then you get down there and no matter how many times you look at it from up there, you're like three to four wood and looks like there's the Od one amongst the closeouts. You get down there, it's always six foot, it's always bigger, it's always out.
[02:12:55] Speaker A: No, we could go off on a tangent here, because when you look at the crew who are surfing some of these spots around that area in different types of conditions at different times of the year with swells rebounding off rocks and stuff, and they're getting wedges. And some of the crew, what they're doing, not just the crew surfing it, but even the guys that are out there shooting it, I'll look at them now and I just go, man, you guys, that's incredible what you're doing.
Hats off to them. I think they're a bit nuts. I think they're a little bit nuts, but I think, well, Jesus, man, what you're doing there, that's ballsy, especially in.
[02:13:35] Speaker B: This day and age where you're just like scrolling through insti. And you're just flicking one thing to the next and you can so easily just scroll, look at, say, Tom Jennings at the wedge, filming some guy, and you watch it for 10 seconds and just flick straight past it without really appreciating all that danger that you were talking about.
[02:13:56] Speaker A: Okay, so that's one name that you've mentioned. And where this area is so rich with talented people, the videography is another realman itself. And you've had one of the guys appear on your podcast, and that was Rick Djakovich, I think it was.
And guys like him, their ocean knowledge. Sorry, I don't mean to mention names and single people out. No, they're all inspirational. They're all watermen, and they're all so confident in that environment and they're good at what they do.
[02:14:38] Speaker B: I mean, they're some of the best in the world. Jacob Russia, Lord Tom Jennings. There's so many that are easily as good as anyone in the world.
[02:14:48] Speaker A: Totally.
[02:14:49] Speaker B: They're comfortable in those epic ocean environments. And they're fishermen. They're surfers. They're bloody body surfers. They're cameramen. Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
[02:14:59] Speaker A: Yeah, they're watermen. That's what they are, mate. Yeah. But anyway, well, that was a fucking.
[02:15:04] Speaker B: Awesome story again, so well played, mate. We should probably wrap it up. But Saturday night I'm in my know, this is where Namu or T bone would be like, all right, we're done. And this is where, like, ah, just one more story, mate. Being a photographer, you've watched a lot of surfing, and I asked you for your worst wipeout. So what's the worst one that you've seen someone else suffer? Was it through a photography extent or was it as a passive surfer sitting in the channel?
[02:15:36] Speaker A: Probably a bit of both.
You probably would have seen around here, big yells or big bombie, whatever it might be, where crew, they get nailed, they lose their board, they're swimming out in conditions that are just like.
And they've been just brutalized by ten foot sets or whatever. I've seen a lot of that. It's kind of like half of the course.
One particular left down near the prev area, when it's big from a certain swell direction, and it breaks out on.
[02:16:13] Speaker B: That outside peak and then really big left.
[02:16:17] Speaker A: Really big left. I've seen guys, when I was shooting one day, it was just this massive set, and everyone got caught inside, on the inside, and just going, I'm looking at that, going, it's like 15 foot or something. And you guys, 18 is the time someone took me out on their ski, out to bombie and shooting southside and all that. And, man, it was so surreal. There were like boards floating in the channel everywhere. Like three or four boards. No bodies to be seen, just boards floating. And the ski driver's going, see that board over there? Jump off the ski, go get that board. I'll come back and get you. And I'm like going, yeah, all right. I've got my housing and camera and zoom lens and all. It's like five kilos. So I jump off the back of the ski, jump on this guy's board, like this precision equip or whatever it is, and I'm trying to paddle this thing, and next thing you know, the board starts sucking me out towards the bloody bombie out the back. And I'm just going, where the hell is this ski? And then you get those rogue waves coming through. I start ditching the board and all this whitewater. But one of the ones I saw out at a particular wave, which is known to maim people quite regularly, a.
[02:17:29] Speaker B: Left hander, I know, the one you.
[02:17:32] Speaker A: Might want to ask Damon Easto about.
There's been many come and go.
[02:17:39] Speaker B: Taco war, actually said. I spoke to him this afternoon. He said one of his favorite ever images that he's ever received, and he's had thousands of images because he's such a great servant. And he said, was that that particular spot? And you sent it to him and it was a speed blur shot.
[02:17:55] Speaker A: Oh, I remember that. I remember the shot. Definitely.
[02:17:57] Speaker B: He's a goofy footer. This wave is a gnarly left lab and said, it's still one of his favorite images.
[02:18:02] Speaker A: Cool. Yeah, that's nice. I really like that.
[02:18:04] Speaker B: So anyway, yeah, this wave is very dangerous.
[02:18:07] Speaker A: Yeah. So this one particular day, and I'll give a shout out, I think this guy's name was Aaron Ebert.
[02:18:13] Speaker B: Okay.
[02:18:14] Speaker A: Anyway, he's taken off on this one particular wave, and I was shooting.
[02:18:18] Speaker B: He's not another hapless natural footer out at this destifying left.
[02:18:22] Speaker A: No, he's a goofy. Okay.
[02:18:24] Speaker B: All these natural footers just seem to.
[02:18:25] Speaker A: Get wrong with them, mate, go to the box.
[02:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Why do you guys keep going? Everyone just keeps snapping femurs out there.
[02:18:33] Speaker A: I know.
Yeah. So this one dude, I was shooting from the water that day right in front of me. I've actually got the full sequence of this, but he has taken off, and I've just seen him fall from the lip and bam. Straight onto his board snaps. His board starts getting rolled, washed in. I'm like, God, is he all right? Is he all right? And I see someone start paddling towards him. So I start swimming as well. We get to him and we're helping him in and so forth. And at the end of the day, what ended up happening to him was, apart from breaking his board, broken ribs, punctured lung. Yeah, that's a pretty bad injury.
[02:19:14] Speaker B: It can kill you.
[02:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah.
And I saw one particular one.
[02:19:21] Speaker B: How did that all pan out? Did you paddle into the beach with him and all that sort of stuff?
[02:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah, we helped him back to the car, but he was fine once again.
[02:19:29] Speaker B: Back to the car from that spot, even twice as far as Mitchell's, that's like one and a half kilometers with beach walks and hill inclines. No matter which way you go. I know it sucks. It sounds soft, soft sand, angled beach, vertical climb elements, rocky bushes.
[02:19:48] Speaker A: And then there's the snakes on the walk track as well.
[02:19:50] Speaker B: Man.
[02:19:51] Speaker A: Jesus Christ, that joint's got everything.
[02:19:53] Speaker B: Yeah, that sounds like a pretty serious one. Yeah. How long ago was that, roughly?
[02:19:59] Speaker A: Jeez, four years.
[02:20:04] Speaker B: Not that.
It's not that our. In our surfing lifestyles lives, but the.
[02:20:13] Speaker A: Thing is, most of the bad wipeouts I've seen, I've never seen them as a bad wipeout. They're always quite comical because you're always taking joy from other people's sort of.
[02:20:23] Speaker B: Nothing better than watching a good wipeout. I watched a movie last Friday down. It was Jerome Forest's new edit, and we went down the board store in Dunsborough and watched it.
And, yeah, mate, he got all these help hits and all this great stuff.
And then in this quick succession, there was like five or six big wipeouts. And the reaction from the 200 crowd, that crowd, there's nothing like the reaction of a couple of big wipeouts in a row just to get the crowd going, just yelling. It's something primal in there that you don't want to see anyone get hurt. But fuck me, you love watching a good wipeout.
[02:21:10] Speaker A: How good and how far has surfing progressed now with you look at the way people train and their conditioning for those sorts of scenarios and the way they.
[02:21:21] Speaker B: Conditioning.
[02:21:21] Speaker A: No, not my conditioning either, mate. Not mine.
[02:21:24] Speaker B: Mine consists of raising my elbow all the time.
But I know what you're saying anyway.
All right, well, let's tidy it up with.
I like to ask, worst surf trip ever. But I feel like we definitely got that already out of your Portugal story. You've got a couple of notes there. Is anything you want to bring up here?
[02:21:47] Speaker A: No, the Portugal one.
Best surf trip. Know things like, yeah, what's your best surf trip ever?
[02:21:56] Speaker B: On the flip side, see, this is exactly what I'm talking about.
Everyone loves the fucking wipeout story or the wipeout reel. I'm like, I've got your worst surf trip. I almost didn't ask for your best because no one wants to hear about perfect three foot tubes for a week straight and everyone went smoothly. They all want to hear about when you got your head caved in in Portugal and tried to fight a bunch of Portugal woodlums with a fucking bunch of surfboards.
[02:22:20] Speaker A: That's why Hawai can be the best surf trip and also cover the area of worst wipeout and all that because there's so much going on, there's so much carnage, and some of the stuff that you see, you just go, know that's kind of like next level, and it's all happening so close to shore as well. Whereas you look at around here, you look at some of the waves and they're kind of fairway offshore, some of them, and you rock up to pipe and you feel the beach shaking. You just see someone pin drop out of the lip and they're like, about 40 meters from you.
[02:22:54] Speaker B: Access is easy.
[02:22:55] Speaker A: Not like this is easy.
[02:22:56] Speaker B: Last two stories of wipeouts where, mate, to see those waves, you got to walk like a kilometer of bush tracks and stuff, just to even get a look at them.
[02:23:05] Speaker A: And they have their lifesavers and all that sort of thing, their beach patrol.
[02:23:08] Speaker B: So is Hawaii your best surf trip ever, then?
[02:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah, I went around Australia years ago now and that was really cool. I love Australia. I think it's terrific country, obviously. The thing I love about Australia is the freedom we have to move wherever we know we can do whatever we want. We can pull up stumps and go, yeah, I'm going to Queensland, or at the moment it's probably the other way around.
[02:23:38] Speaker B: Without relative danger.
[02:23:39] Speaker A: Yeah. Get myself a van and I'm out of.
[02:23:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. For. Yeah, exactly.
[02:23:43] Speaker A: Maybe a panel van like yours.
[02:23:45] Speaker B: Oh, that'd be nice.
[02:23:45] Speaker A: But yeah, Australia's got so many contrasting waves from all those sandbottom, so I've had so many good waves on the sick.
[02:23:55] Speaker B: Oh, that's awesome. No, that's good. All right, well, do you have any Clive Palmers or Steve Irwins that you'd like to nominate?
[02:24:03] Speaker A: I was going to nominate myself as a Clive Palmer for my behavior in Portugal.
[02:24:08] Speaker B: Mate, I've nominated myself for Clive Palmers plenty of times, don't worry.
What about Steve Irwin? What about a double thumbs up?
Anyone or anything?
[02:24:20] Speaker A: Is this the bit where I go, I'll give a double thumbs up to my missus?
[02:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, probably.
[02:24:24] Speaker A: She's so supportive and all my family.
[02:24:27] Speaker B: Definitely went to work and let you go and take photos.
[02:24:29] Speaker A: No, we won't go there.
[02:24:30] Speaker B: We won't go there.
[02:24:31] Speaker A: Actually, we'll leave that one for something else. All right, cool.
I'll tell you what, I'm just going to give a double thumbs up to all the crew out there who still froth on surfing and who maintain that level of fitness, if I can say that. Or some sort of level where they're still out enjoying it and it means a lot to them. Yeah, staying active, I'm going to give them a double thumbs up. And the crew who get up early, chase those dawnies, they're getting my double.
[02:25:03] Speaker B: Because it gets harder as you get older, man. It doesn't get easier. It does not get easier. There's no doubt about it. You got to work at it.
[02:25:09] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good point. It's so important to stay active. But one thing just going back, I remember when I first hurt my knee that I had some comments. Oh, a footy player does their ACL. They're back playing on the ground like in twelve months time, but they're doing rehab at the club like three times a day.
[02:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah, mate.
[02:25:30] Speaker A: All right.
[02:25:31] Speaker B: Well, let's finish on the greatest question you can ever ask any surfer.
[02:25:35] Speaker A: Oh, no.
[02:25:36] Speaker B: Best tube ever.
[02:25:39] Speaker A: My best tube, yes.
[02:25:41] Speaker B: Was it the double barrel at Trig? Was it your first one? No, I was hoping it wasn't. Look, there's always probably ten. I feel me personally, I feel like there's ten that could probably go, oh, if you asked me that question, I couldn't just say, oh, look, it's definitely this one, but there's ten different ones that I could probably say, look, it's probably one of these.
[02:26:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:26:02] Speaker B: So give us something.
[02:26:04] Speaker A: Well, all right, again, this actually isn't from around here, but it was one particular day up in Scarborough and it was just really on Perth. Again, on the pump.
[02:26:14] Speaker B: Wow.
[02:26:14] Speaker A: Unbelievable. That's pretty rare.
Listeners are going to be. They'll be going, this guy's on acid.
[02:26:22] Speaker B: They're hardcore Perth service, they'll be loving it. We got a lot of listeners in Perth.
[02:26:26] Speaker A: Well, there was a period when I was up in Perth and I was doing the whole staying at home thing and that sort of thing, and I was getting out shooting quite a lot. And there was one particular winter that was just nuts. Just one. Just one. Right. That's all, just one winter. It just went mad. But this one day at Scarborough was just barreling.
And I remember this set was coming through and everyone paddled over this sort of the first way with a set. And I've just gone, oh, yeah, I'll take that. And I remember it was late in the arbo, and it was offshore. It was clean as a whistle. And I've just taken off on this thing and I've locked straight into this barrel. And I remember just looking out through the pit and I remember it hear people talking about how some waves, you don't see the exit because the wave bends or.
[02:27:22] Speaker B: I love how you got that passionate with your spirit.
You were surfing, you got in so much that you just smacked the microphone clean off the thing. That was beautiful poetry motion.
[02:27:33] Speaker A: So it was like one of those things where I saw the wave bending and I'm still locked in, but then I couldn't see the exit. And then it was kind of like, bam, there's the exit. And I didn't get spat out, but just came out clean as a whistle.
[02:27:46] Speaker B: Sick.
[02:27:47] Speaker A: And just kind of went, well, that was kind of incredible. Yeah. And I've had a couple of good ones down at a particular beach that probably won't mention the name of it, but one of those spots where if you can't get barreled, there you can't get barreled anywhere, you know what I mean? So I've had some pretty nice ones there.
[02:28:07] Speaker B: I love hearing about a really good one at Perth, to be all in all honesty, because I grew up there and I was such a shit surfer as a young fella.
And not that I'm great now, but I left Perth early to come live down here, and I know that Perth has its days.
And I look every now and then and see a photo of, like, a really good tube in Perth or something. And I don't know, it does something weird inside me where I'm like. It's almost like I want to drive up to Perth on a good day and surf one of those beachy waves and get a really good barrel there because I've actually never had it. And I grew up there, like, fluffing around on a bodyboard and rolling around in the shorebreak as a kid and trying to learn how to stand up on a bunch of closeouts. And then by the time I got anywhere near half decent, I was gone, even though I grew up there. So sort of got this sentimental attachment to it, but I've never been barreled in Perth.
And then you see these rare days that you're seeing, and it doesn't look intimidating. It's not scary, it's not down south. And I'd be like, man, I would actually love to go to Perth and get a barrel. Which sounds really weird, but when you tell a story like that, it really triggers something in me.
[02:29:21] Speaker A: Well, it's probably because it's so damn rare that they stand out.
And I could quite easily say there's other locations around here where I've scored some really nice barrels or whatever the case may be. But that would be pretty much stock standard because you'd pretty much expect to get barreled there. Yeah, because if you're not getting barreled there, you're pretty much on the shoulder.
[02:29:50] Speaker B: Exactly.
For sure, mate. Well, I reckon we should probably wrap it up now. It's been really good, mate. It's been fantastic. Thanks so much for coming and joining us. There's been some really funny stories.
There's been some truly wonderful insights into the world of surfing and the world of photography, mate, you're an interesting character.
[02:30:16] Speaker A: Oh, thanks.
[02:30:17] Speaker B: No, you are. And, mate, I really appreciate the way you go about your business.
I love that thought of you just creeping around at freaking 530 in the morning and sounded really creepy. I know. That's what I started saying. You would have made a great peeping Tom. I didn't mean it in a bad way. I meant it in such a great way, because you're synonymous with getting an obscure angle from behind the bushes on a hill or in a rocky outcrop that no one else is going to. Because a lot of people, they want to set up front and center and they don't want to miss the wave. Whereas you are like, I don't care if I miss the wave. I want to get a weird shot. Not a weird shot. I want to get a different shot. I want to get a different light, a different contrast. And you don't care about the wave of the day or the surfer of the day. You're more interested in the angle of the day, almost.
So that's what I really love about you.
[02:31:13] Speaker A: Thanks.
[02:31:14] Speaker B: And thanks for coming in and sharing all your insights. And, mate, thanks for sending me all those photos on Instagram and stuff over the years of me, like, just stinking up a fucking half baked wave on now. Favorite stretch of coast.
[02:31:28] Speaker A: You're so short. I'd actually like to thank you for getting up early and getting out there, because if you didn't, I wouldn't have been taking photos of you.
[02:31:36] Speaker B: Well, not of me, but you definitely would have been taken of something else. But no, mate, we digress. Thanks for coming up. Pete, thanks for driving up. Thanks, Hansi, thanks to everyone for tuning in. This has been a really enjoyable episode for me. And, yeah, I just love to continue to document the characters of the west australian surfing culture.
[02:31:56] Speaker A: I feel privileged to be in the.
[02:31:58] Speaker B: Position to do so. So thanks for tuning in and we'll see next time. Thanks.
[02:32:02] Speaker A: Azzy.
[02:32:05] Speaker B: Sail cracked it up and I sang along it was such a way out day I made up my mind you kept some rainforest importer the girl.
And the way it occurs to me to you, don't grab your girl and grab your damn your opinion, I'll be dress up and dreaming of.
