The beginning

One of the first things I remember is the big cubby house in the backyard at Dapto and going to Nan and Pa’s and Nan and Pop’s houses around the corner, swimming in Nan and Pa’s pool and sneaking away to get lollies off Mrs Bronco next door. Our uncle would be there sometimes and our aunty. Sometimes when we were lucky we’d get to go and watch Lisa ride her horse, I thought it was awesome. We would also go to Nan and Pop’s, they lived a bit further away and I’d try to ride my skateboard down the hill but I am hopeless. Things I don’t remember are that I had the biggest head ever recorded in Wollongong East Hospital when I was born in 1979 and that I had bad ear infections and grommets in my ears. I was also allergic to dairy; I had cereal with soy milk or juice. I grew out of it and now I can’t stand soy milk. The next house I remember was a townhouse in Woonona, it backed on to a creek which had small fish and yabbies, not that we could ever catch any. There were huge bull ants that my brother and best mate and I got eaten alive by one day, we cried. When we were young we had a love hate relationship. One day we were fighting in the backyard with sticks and our Dad was furious, we didn’t do it again, when he was looking. We had a cool white Subaru wagon and I would play with Josh who years later we would surf with and go back to visit after moving up north and Clint’s mate Greg  also who years later we would surf with and visit. I went to kindergarten and remember crying when Mum left but getting over it pretty quickly playing catch and kiss with the girls.

We then moved to Dorrigo Avenue still in Woonona, it was about a 10 minute walk to the beach where we began riding boogers. One day it was hailing really hard and Clint and I waited on the beach with our boards over our heads crying while Dad got a few more waves because he was getting some good ones on his Mal. It was then when I decided that I was never going to cry again, it didn’t help anything and men don’t cry! It wasn’t long after that that we started surfing; my first board was a foamy. We had Chooks in the back yard, one of their names was Michael Jackson and we had our blue cattle dog named Noni. Over the back fence there were Homing Pigeons and Next door there were people with big dogs and porcelain dolls. I remember when our youngest sister was being born we stayed at home with Dad eating vegemite on toast which is about the limit of his culinary skills. Aaron lived there who later moved to Dorrigo when we lived at Mullaway and we went to see them and then they bought land on the same road as us: Darkum. My friend there was Kelloggs and Clint’s was Damien. We also had family friends; the Jackson’s who we’d later see often at Emerald Beach when they camped there every year. Clint even got with the girl who was his age, Naomi. One day Clint was climbing up a cupboard and he got to the top and it fell on top of him but he was OK. Our Mum had chocolate laxatives in the fridge and I thought I’d be sneaky and eat some, I still wonder whether she left them as a temptation. Kate was a tough nut, she hardly ever cried, one day she fell off the swing and it hit her in the back of the head. I expected her to ball but she just got up and got straight back on. My other sister was a bit of sook, she’d cry at the drop of a hat but she’s a tough nut now. It was there that I started...

School

When I started school in 1985 I got a girlfriend on the first day: a cute, portly little Italian girl who I kissed. I made another friend who was apparently a bad influence: Carl the pom. I liked going to his place because his Dad mal had a VW cup and for a long time we had Kombis. We even got a new fancy transporter; I remember seeing it from school as we lived just across the road. Before that one we had a Kombi camper. Carl and I did do some stupid things but boys will be boys. We had a bravery competition one day; a lot of it was pretty lame. Jumping over things walking around on top of the fence but then we decided to jump off a 10 ft roof and grab a branch of a tree before falling to the ground. Clint and Carl pussed it but not me, I jumped but missed the branch and broke every bone in my foot. I was the bravest and stupidest; I then limped home with some help from Clint. Carl and I decided we’d burn the school down one day so we set fire to the long grass around the fences. We burnt all the grass but the school lives on. The cane was still in use when I started school, Carl and I found the bin keys one day so we locked all the padlocks in one bin and then threw the keys away. It was dumb but seemed like a good idea at the time. Some girls saw us and said they’d tell so we blamed them and they got the cane! I still played with Kellogg’s but I thought he was a bit strange when I went to his house and his dog would try to hump him and he didn’t stop it. When I left Woonona Carl and I lost contact but we still caught up a few times when we went back. One of the times we smoked grass rolled up in a newspaper and we swam in a billabong and he taught me the white pointer and white whale moves. Then we walked into quicksand on purpose and he lost his shoe and after walking around in a sewer pipe for ages Kara lost Mum’s ring. We went back with a metal detector but it was long gone. We started riding skateboards too but we weren’t much good at this stage.

I am accident prone, which may have something to do with doing stupid things. I was showing off to my cousin by riding my skateboard on my belly. It was great until I hit a rock and the board stopped and I kept going. I fell on to the tar and made myself a beard of blood, I even cut up my gums and even knocked a few teeth out. There are a lot more of these types of stories that will come later. We started going to a kids club at a church in the afternoons and on the way home in the bus once I kissed a girl, I felt so cool! As we got older in Woonona we started surfing more and going to some different beaches, we were already hooked. We had some great trips down to Bermagui to see our aunty and uncle: Roy and Jane, surf, go fishing, play with our Cousin and feed the Kangaroos. Bermagui is a beautiful place where the green farmland meets the beautiful blue sea, I was only very young but I have fond memories of the place. We also went to Callala Beach to our Nan and Pop’s holiday house. This later became our other Aunty and Uncle's house. We’d go surfing, fishing, trying to shoot birds with a slingshot and generally being ratbags with our cousins. We would keep going there after we moved away because we all got on so well and one time Clint and I scored some really good waves at Callala Bay. Callala Beach is also a beautiful place; it’s scrubbier than Bermagui but far enough south that it’s away from the hustle and bustle of Nowra and a nice quiet beach. I also caught the only fish worth eating that I’ve ever caught in that time, a flathead at Lake Illawarra. I’m not real keen on fishing that may be why; I’m also not very patient. We also went to Figtree to see nanna Scott who I can’t remember much of apart from the old school tea cosy and nanna Hazel who had some cool ancient toys that we’d scuffle over. Close by in Mt Keira were our relatives Noel and Jeanette and their four sons and the other one who I always forget his name. We had heaps of fun with them, we’d go surfing with them in Wollongong, ride our skateboards around and generally just laugh at Noel who is the biggest kid of them all. He’d go harder than anyone on a bike or skateboard and pretend to try and run cats over when he’d take us to the beach at the crack of dawn, I’m sure he was pretending? We were right into the ghost busters I won a drawing competition and got a gun that reflected ghosts onto the wall, I was killing it. My favourite was Egon Spengler, the nerdy one and when I broke my leg we had a dress up day and school and I was Egon, I liked even dorkier than usual. One day Clint and I were riding our biked at the school and he ran into a pole and cut his head open, he had a big scar on his forehead in the shape of a T so we all called him Mr T, I think he liked that. We had an abandoned industrial yard not far from home and we’d play there, sneaking into older kids hideouts and walking near plover’s nests to get them to swoop us, another one of those smart things we did. We then decided that we were...

Heading North

            When I was about 8 we moved up north, first we went to World expo in 1988 in Brisbane. It was pretty cool, checking out all the displays of different countries and big long lines. We then went up as far as the Sunny Coast looking around for places to live. On that trip we went to Kings Beach where Michelle would later have one of our best years living, this time though I got caught in a rip, Dad was surfing and didn’t see and I had to be rescued by two people. The first was a teenager who swam out to me but also got caught, he said all sorts of swear words I’d never heard before and then a guy on a board came and took us both in. Mum was very grateful and gave him some money afterwards, probably thought he should buy some soap to wash is mouth out with after I told her later what he’d said. We ended up deciding on Mullaway, which was the best decision we ever made. At first we moved into the Lorikeet Caravan Park at Corindi while Dad and Pa built the shed down the back. The caravan park was fun, we would go surfing with Dad at the beach, look for crabs and yabbies and just muck around in all the bush we had around which we weren’t really used to. Our second cousin moved there as well and we started knocking about with him. That was all fine until one day we went to the Richo Park next door and found out how to get money out of the back of the video games. We didn’t take the money but we spent most of the day playing the games and buying big bags of lollies. We thought we got away with it until his older sister dobbed us in. We weren’t even in High School yet and we had to go see the cops, you would think that would have scared us off.

Mum then started going to church, at first she would go by herself, then she started taking us kids and eventually Dad was coming too. A lot of things changed then, every Sunday we had to go and if we argued we wouldn’t be able to surf we had to go morning and night and I remember one night we went without dinner and I was so hungry I turned on the tears. We made an older friend Erin that lived in the park and went to church. He was into pretending to be an army man so we’d troop though the bush doing silly things like covering other people’s tracks with branches to try and confuse them. It probably just made them more obvious which might have annoyed the owners of the tracks even more but we were oblivious to where they might have led in those days, which were yet to come. One day we trekked though the bush to the big bank beside the highway and where lobbing rocks off towards the cars on the highway down below. I’m sure we never hit any which we’re glad about now. We had our first cigarette with Erin; an old bloke who lived across from him threw his butt out and I went and grabbed it then we smoked it. It made us all cough our guts up and gave us a shocking head spin. We swore to never do it again, if only we stuck to that. I went out with Erin’s younger sister Laura who was older than me but that didn’t last long. Nan and Pa also moved to the Caravan Park which was great and eventually Lisa and Our uncle Shane also moved up north.

A new School

            We started going to Woolgoolga Primary School and it started as a bad experience for me, I had the worst teacher I’ve ever had: Mrs Seymour, she seemed to have it in for me. I’m not saying I wasn’t a handful but there were certain times I thought she wasn’t fair, maybe this is part of the reason I eventually became a teacher myself. I have always been quite good at English; even in primary school I did Kumon maths because I struggled with it. In English though, everything just seemed to come easy, spelling in particular when I was young was a strong point. A lot of people can see the patterns in numbers easier but I think language has simple patterns that once learnt are easy to understand. We had spelling competitions and I always did very well, one day everyone else was out and I’m sure she was tiring of me so she asked me to spell new south wales, and that’s how I spelt it. She penalised me for not using the capitals which is correct but I was in yr 3 and she took great joy in proving me wrong. I also read the hobbit that year and she didn’t believe me, I was mode to write a report to the best of my abilities for that age and after that she didn’t question me anymore. We also played games in which we would have to all think of an object that started with the letter of the alphabet we happened to be landed with. This day it was fruit and vegetables, I had to think of one with D and I was lost for words, then she said Dill you Dill! Of course the class laughed, just what the new kid needs, then I was sent to the back of the room when I said isn’t Dill a herb? These things may be trivial but then she wouldn’t let me go to the toilet and I pissed my pants, I thought I was ruined for the rest of my school life. One of my bigger gashes happened in this time at the caravan park, I was walking into the van and Mum was coming out, she opened the sharp corner of the door into my leg. She felt horrible but I was stoked, I had 5 stitches! They didn’t last long though when I’d go to school and play soccer and they broke. It wasn’t a good stitch job either; maybe this was the beginning of my hesitance for going to doctors.

            The next year though I had a teacher that was a cranky old bugger but a hell of a lot better than her and thankfully because kids forget things quickly I actually managed to have 4 girlfriends at the one time and 2 of them where older than me. I thought I was the man, it was a small school though and it didn’t take long before they all found out and I wound up with none. It was somewhere around this time that our shed was finished and we moved to our beloved Darkum. It is awesome, the beach is a 5 minute walk, we have a creek 10 minutes away acres of bush behind us that then was all you could see and our roads about a km from the other houses in Mullaway so we’d get well left alone and the surf was usually empty. We began surfing a lot more and I remember my first real board was a big fluoro pink single fin stinger and that was in the time that fluoro was cool. We got our second blue cattle dog Duke but she disappeared one day and was nowhere to be found. Not long later we got our third; Lou who was one of my longest best mates after Clint and Dad, she is gone now but we had some great times. We’d take Lou down the creek and swim, canoe and jump off the dunes. As we got older we’d try to stop her coming to the beach because she’d bite our legs but sure enough an hour or so later even if we rode for 5 or 10 Km eventually we’d hear her high pitched yap on the beach. She’d chase cars and roos, she had no chance of getting roos but she got ran over by a few cars but there was just no way of stopping her. When I got older and lived down the back she’d come and watch TV with me and when I checked the surf she’d run around for a while then sit beside me, smiling at the surf( except for the time she caught a red bally black snake, I was so worried that she’d been bitten). We didn’t have to lock here up she’d go for walks, even 5 km into Woolgoolga and then come back and we never had to worry about her having a go at people or other dogs which is great, if anything she’d hide between my legs. I took her surfing once but she wasn’t real keen on that. I got my first long time girlfriend there when I was in yr 4, the girl next door. We went out for about 2 yrs which for back then was an age. We barely spoke, kissed a few times: one of them being when she was asleep at my place another being when we laid down together in the bush on the headland and I felt where her boobs would later be and elsewhere which was almost like having sex at that age. I spent a lot of time on that headland, it was about a 5 minute bike ride and a good place to check the surf, I also started going back into the bush when I was lot older. I had the start of my bucks party there too, all the men of the Woods family and some good mates, beers and a Barbie. I’d often go there when there was a big storm and marvel at the power of the waves and of course I got some awesome waves there over the years. One day I was checking Cabins and saw dolphins teaching their young to surf, it was a beautiful sunny dawn and I sat there for ages watching them fall out of the waves and play around.

Darkum

Everything seemed alright with Janine until she started to get friendly with another guy who was big and tough and loved to pick on me, I didn’t much appreciate when she’d laugh as he was making fun of me so I sent a friend to tell her the romance was over. I was told how much of a bastard I was and a couple of days later she was going out with him, young love! Through that time my best friend was Leigh, we would do stupid things like thinking we were army men and running through the bush and I would steal his lollies and shoot him with his pea shooter. He had a cool flying fox in the spare block beside his house and we did some carnage on that. Janine had a friend Nicole that he hated and I remember he made her cry at the creek which I thought was funny because I didn’t really like here either. Clint and I were still fighting a lot at this stage, one day in the caravan in front of the shed which was our kitchen we were at it and I held a knife at him. Dad came in and when we ran around the table to get away from him. He just reached over and pulled us over the top of it and said he’d bash our heads together if we did it again; I got a particular serving because it was the second but last night I’d threatened with a knife. The first was when we lived in the caravan park; I didn’t want to go to church so I held it to my throat. I had to go to church and I was in big trouble. Church wasn’t all that bad; we’d take long toilet stops and break into the squash court to jump into it over and over again. The worst time for me that we fought was actually one I won, it was at school: Clint always just seemed to want to fight me and I’m not a fighter so most of the time I’d just try to avoid him but this time he just kept at it. I ended up giving him a flogging and of course everyone gathered around and laughed, I felt terrible. We did so much together and I’d just embarrassed him in front of his and my friends, he hated me even more for a while after that. That was followed by plenty of times where he’d hit me and I’d just walk away with sore arms and shoulders because I didn’t want to but sometimes I couldn’t help. One was when I had him by the throat up against the roller door and later when I did the same thing and the clock fell down and clocked him on the head, thankfully it didn’t break but I still got in a lot trouble for that. He got me back though, when we were older again we used to play footy a lot with our mates and everyone always hated it that I ran with my bony elbows out and made it hard to tackle, particularly him. One day he got so mad that he chased me down the street, he wanted blood and I know when he’s like that it’s best to stay away, it was supposed to be fun!

            Things of course weren’t always bad with us, we also used to play a lot of footy with our older neighbour Damon and he would throw us around like rag dolls. It was worse when we played with Luke: Janine’s brother who was a lot older but the worst was Chris who seemed to enjoy hurting us, we kept going back though. Damon is a champ, he was an awesome surfer and I started getting pretty cocky and sneaking out to the beach with him before Dad got home, we weren’t allowed to surf without him yet because we weren’t strong enough swimmers although we thought we were. Dad came home early once and I could hear him screaming at me from the beach before I could see him. Not that it’s a good thing to get into trouble but that was enough to convince them that we should join the clubbies to become strong enough in the surf to go ourselves. I hated it at first; I wanted to surf not swim around with swimmers up my bum. Eventually though I began to realise that the better swimmer I was the bigger waves I could feel comfortable in and I began doing swimming training. I was hopeless compared to the swimming nerds but I’m glad I did it now; I reckon that’s got me out of a few hairy situations. I even did training for a while and got to be an ok swimmer, it didn’t help me though when we had a school swimming carnival and I had loose sluggoes and when I got to the end of the pool the teacher impolitely told me my sluggoes were still at the other end of the pool. In year 6 I had my best teacher in primary school: Mrs Puddey, although I got in a lot of trouble with Leigh she recognised that I was talented in English and Art and put me in competitions I went well in and sent me on an artists’ camp, hanging out with hippies in the bush writing poetry and drawing. She also gave me the confidence to enter a competition in a newspaper to write the most embarrassing surf and win a voucher at a surf shop. I got my mug in the paper and the prize, I bought a new wetty and hoped Mrs Seymour saw it. A lot of the other stories were about short falling off which is probably more embarrassing but also what I expected a lot of people to write. I wrote about the first time I surfed my new board: the Dahlberg which was a lot smaller than any other I’d had so it was the first one I could duck dive but also took a while to get used to. So here I was on my birthday in front of my family who are the most important and I didn’t catch one wave. It might not sound like much but it’s often the truth that is a bit ordinary but can also be the most interesting, that’s why I’m writing this story. Not to say a few embellishments here and there can hurt.  Also somewhere in that time Clint and I were mucking around on Mullaway Headland when I decided it would be a good idea to climb up one of the cliffs. Halfway up I loosened a lot of small rocks and the smart thing would have been to turn back but when I have a dumb idea I like to see it through. I got almost to the top but right up there it was too steep, I tried to get back down but the loose rocks nearly made me fall and I couldn’t find any other way, I was only about 10 metres up but it was sharp rocks at the bottom. An older bloke came up to try and help me down but he couldn’t do it so Clint had to run back and get Dad. Luckily Pa was also there working on the house so they dropped a rope from the top and both pulled me up, I waited there for nearly an hour but was so grateful to them all for helping me and I didn’t climb any cliffs for a while. I was riding skateboards a lot and getting ok at the simple things but mostly just pretending I was surfing.

Year 6

In this time Dad owned the bike shop in Woolgoolga just near the school, we’d often go there after school and help-probably more like hinder but we thought it was great and we could get a lift home along the beach track on dad’s motorbike, a few times I purposely missed the bus so I could go there but he caught onto that. Towards the end of primary school Leigh moved into Woopi and I started hanging around with Ben. We were also into pretending we were army men and going up to the rainforest near his place in Woopi which was cool and I would later spend a lot more time at, with Michelle too. I had a few girlfriends in primary school after Janine and 1 of them was Renee who I used to go up to the rainforest when at Ben’s and we’d kiss, I’d put my hands all over her but no laying down this time. Another one lasted about 5 minutes, my appetite was huge and I’d loiter around the canteen line asking for money, I asked an unpopular, larger girl and she asked ‘only if you go out with me’. I said ’Sure’, ‘You’re not just going to get the food then dump me?’ she asked. ‘I wouldn’t do that’ I replied. Sure enough I bought the food and then dumped her, I know it was an awful thing to do but life’s tough being a hungry man whore. Ben and I are friends now but the close friendship we had back then didn’t last long. I got it in my head that he was starting trouble with me and we had a big fight one of the ones in the middle of the playground where the whole school seems to egging you on. Apparently his twin brother Aaron kicked me in the back so I went nuts and strangled Ben, the trouble was he was an asthmatic so he had an attack and had to be taken to the sick bay, I was pretty worried for a while there. After that I hung around with Josh Cansdell who became my best friend and lived at the end of the road, we did a lot of surfing together. Along with surfing a lot more came lots of injuries; most small fin chops to the shins but there were a few from riding my bike to the beach also. I am always of the belief that wounds heal but boards have to be fixed so when I fell off I’d sacrifice me before my board, this resulted in a lot of bark being taken off. Others were from stupid things like jumping onto a grassy hill and landing on our bums which was fine until I found some glass and tore myself a new one. I still hung around with Leigh though, getting in trouble a lot, we even got banned from the Yr 6 fun day at the end of primary school which we weren’t happy about.

I started high school in 1993 and wasn’t there very long until we packed up and went around Australia for 18 months which was probably a good thing as it delayed the inevitable mischief that we got up to as teenagers for that time. Before we did leave we got into surfing even more, we were going every day before and after school and thought we were getting pretty good. I got a couple of older girlfriends again but it stayed at kissing for the time being, one was rich and she’d by me food all the time, perfect! I spent a fair bit of time in high school also hanging around the canteen line asking for money and surprisingly I did alright. In this time we’d go away to Mal comps that Dad was in, we started getting better at surfing and I remember my first mushy little barrel at Old Bar, I was stoked! and I wanted more. The first really good barrel I got was at Greenmount it was only for 2-3 seconds but I loved it. Back then we’d just surf and eat at those comps; it wasn’t until later that we started doing naughty things at them. I was starting to surf some big waves when they came and I was loving it, they were too few and far between though. We left to go on our trip around Australia on my 13^th birthday, for a long time I resented the whole idea, I was the one kid that didn’t want to go and we were leaving on my birthday, how was this going to affect my future pro surfing career? We headed up the Coast as far as Brisbane then went out west through Toowoomba. I did actually think it was cool going though all those different westie towns, the change in landscape and climates as you’d go up mountains and through valleys. It was something we’d never seen, places like the Stockman’s Hall of Fame in Longreach and the mine in Mt Isa and going up the mountain at night and looking around 360 degrees in the moonlight from what seemed to be the only landform and life on this strange new flat and barren planet we were on. The fact that we were in a Kombi towing a pop up camper meant that 90km was our limit, so we saw the lifeless plains and the heat haze in the distant for longer than most. We’d stop down a property road for the night and set up camp then in the morning where we were lucky we might find a dry creek bed to go and explore or the odd rocky outcrop. It was a great time, although we might have got up each other’s nose a bit it bought us all very close helping and relying on each other.