Autobiography of a Surfer
Autobiography of a Surfer
Born in Warrnambool in the early 1950s, it was only a matter of time before I took up surfing. The waves were terrible, cold, and ugly. The boards were long, heavy, and hard to maneuver. The initiation into surfing was difficult: bloody knees, sore heads, and exposure to extreme cold. And there was always the chance of being a shark’s dinner—all good fun and a respite from the boring life back up in town, especially school. Surfing brings you closer to nature than anything else I know. You become half dolphin and half monkey. Tumbling in the waves and bumping on sandy bottoms is a kind of freedom only surfers know. I started surfing at 15, and by the time I was 18, we were all traveling farther afield in search of waves. Discovering the Passage at Port Fairy, Whites Beach at Portland, and then slowly spreading our wings northward, I loved surfing and would have died inside repeatedly without it. Then things changed. At 18, I traveled over the Nullabor Plains to Perth, Western Australia, then to Sydney, down to Adelaide, up to Castlemaine, back to Warrnambool, and then to Rushworth. I liked the trees and forests of Northern Victoria and would remain conflicted for the rest of my life about the ocean and forests. I settled on the fact that I could live among the trees all day long but only surf sometimes. This tale starts in Warrnambool and ends in many other places. The moral is that we never know where we are going next, with whom, or with what. Should we stay in one place all our lives or move on? Without knowing it, I managed to move on and on. There is no way I thought it could have ever been like this, and I often wonder why I didn’t.
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Autobiography of a surfer
by Roditch
