Last year, Gold Coast surfer/model/window washer Chris 'Swag' Gudenswager added another line to his extensive rap sheet - author.

'So, you wanna be a surfer?' is a collection of stories that trace four generations of surfers, beginning with family patriarch Frank Adler, son in law Ken Gudenswager, grandson Swag, and great grandson and Gen 4 craftsman, Jye Gudenswager. The stories Swag tells are factual...mostly, embellishment being part of the storyteller's craft. Yet in just two week's time, Swag will release his second book and it's a very different beast than the first.

In 'Smooth/Radical' Swag trains his lens on just one surfer. Keith Paull was to some people the most stylish surfer of his era, to others the craziest. Swag chips away at these stereotypes and finds one of the least understood surfers in recent history.

Before 'Smooth/Radical' is released here's one more blast from Swag's first book. Originally titled '48 hours in the life of a Rabbit' it's been trimmed down a few hours. Call it an excerpt of an excerpt, and if you want to read the whole thing or order Swag's latest see the links at the end.

*****

It’s a hot Wednesday in the mid-80s. The sun is blaring down like hell and Kirra is still pumpin’ after a ten day stretch. At eight days straight, fatigue usually sets in and by this stage it’s survival of the fittest out there.

I’m not talkin’ 2016 pumping with slightly sectiony tube rides and 300 sunblocked paddlers plus six noisy jet skis performing for fifty competing photographers instantly uploading whatever action they can capture for the awaiting masses. I’m talking 1985 pumping with spirally, sand-spitting pits, broken boards and bodies all the way from the Big Groyne to The Healthy Bee sandwich shop - thirty blokes going for it big time: a rippin’ and a tearin’, hootin’ and a hollerin’ like you wouldn’t believe, all droppin’ in and payin’ out on each other big time and nobody on dry land giving two shits about what we were up to.

Swag backside at mid-80s Kirra (Rob Hutchinson)

It’s another world out there and only those who live beyond the swell have any idea what goes down. For example, the big sharks have left the aquarium unguarded and us smaller fish are feasting on what was left. Chappy, Hoppy, Dave Bradbury, Hodgy, Faulksy, Smithy, and Snail to name a few, with Michael Peterson nowhere to be seen. At that time, Peter Townend lived in America and Rabbit was touring the fledgling surf contest nations and their nightclubs, namely Japan and Israel, and I’m also out there yelling my lungs out - but all that’s about to change.

Hang on! I yell at lung-splitting volume. Look!

Jumping off the Big Groyne, the bar’s about to be lifted and Rab’s back in town and he’s coming our way! He’s greeted with a happy chorus of Yeah Bugsi! And his reply is just as enthusiastic, Yeah boys! And with that, the hootin’ and a hollerin’ resumed and all was just great in surfer’s heaven. He’s so glad to be home, I can tell, he’s jet lagged, the eyes don’t lie, but with the adrenaline that Kirra provides, he’s more than ready to cope with the demands out there.

A solid set is approaching and the peanut gallery starts yelling at Bugs to Go-Go-Go! They needn’t have worried, he’s always ready to ‘go’, and this time he’s gonna take the best wave of the set. He spreads his wings and effortlessly air-drops into the pit, aggressively squares off the bottom, hits the ignition switch on his Al Byrne six channel and drives up into the start of the overhead tunnel. He now stands upright with his patented hands-behind-the-back barrel stance, then suddenly readjusts, gets low and finds himself tight and high on the foam ball as Kirra spits sand and venom all over him.

Rabbit high and tight as Kirra funnels (Rob Hutchinson)

I think to myself, Gee, I hope he doesn’t eat his lunch on his first wave, but the fifty yards of punters hootin’ and the next fifty yards of punters clappin’, put paid to that thought and he nails it. Then he energetically paddles back out in my direction and without looking my way, sits on his board next to me and pauses, shakes all the excess water off his head like a seal and turns to me, laughs, and very calmly says, Good afternoon Mr. Swagglepuss, and I crack up. I returned his joyful primer with an understated reply, Good welcome home barrel there, old son, to which he let out a thunderously excited, Yeah mate! and asks, You got tickets for that nightclub opening tonight? I reply in the affirmative but add, As if you need a ticket to get in, mate! His reply was a wink of assurance and he tells me on the next swell, I’m meeting a glamour there, better to be safe than sorry, eh?

What time will you pick me up? I enquired of the Rabbit with the dignity he deserves. 3 o'clock and look sharp. He sarcastically grins his reply, knowing full well that by this stage I’d worked on a heap of fashion shoots and could hold my own in the ‘dress right, look sharp’ department. He then proceeds to paddle effortlessly through a pack of ten scrambling guys and picks off another wave of the day as if it came in for him alone.

As I dreamily walked back to my Point Danger surf camp at the top of Boundary Lane, I pondered the 3 o’clock kick off and thought, Bit early...? but I knew Bugs and you gotta be ready for anything at anytime, so I enter the backyard to find that my flatmates - after one day of planning and one day of labour - had carved out and seeded a beautiful garden patch measuring four metres by one metre. A thankless task, I think to myself, but half a dozen neighbours were standing around enjoying a beer, admiring the prize patch of dirt, so I could be wrong.

A camera was produced to mark the occasion, the start of a ‘before and after’ shot if you like, and approximately three seconds before the shutter is pressed, Rabbit suddenly appears and in one lightning flash he jumps through the adjacent bush, shirtless, and lands on his feet in a squat, picks up the garden hoe, poses in the digging position as if he’d been working all day in the heat on that patch of ground and with a big smile, says, Cheese! The camera clicks and everybody spits their beer out in a spray, crackin’ up at the scene, then Rab drops the hoe and comically struts over to backslaps all round. Laughter can be heard a mile away and a can of freezing cold Tooheys New gets slammed into the palm of his hand to celebrate the moment.

That became a famous photo in Boundary Lane, it took pride of place on the fridge for years, the Brier Rabbit’s Vegetable Patch we called it, claimed like a Prime Minister who hasn’t touched a tool in the shed, but magically appears to cut the ribbon in front of the workers with applause all round. Rabbit happily informs us with a grin, I can only have one beer, in two hours I’m playing a celebrity rugby league team as a curtain raiser for the big mid-week comp at Seagulls, and I’ve got free tickets - are ya comin’?

Shit, yeah! we yell in a chorus, cheers all round and off he goes.

As the sun sets over the beautiful Tweed River and Rabbit’s rag-tag support squad settle into their grandstand seats at Seagulls Stadium with hot pies, cold beers and Pat Benatar’s 'All Fired Up’ ringing in their ears, Rabbit runs onto the field with his team to cheers and boos from the rapidly growing crowd. We soon realise that what Bugs thought was going to be a bit of slap and tickle with some radio DJ’s, entertainers, and local identities, was actually a rough and tumble, fair dinkum game of league with recently retired legends of the not-so-distant past. This was an extension of their fifteen minutes of fame and they were gonna make it count. I commented to my flatmate that the thudding sound and the clash of bodies in back-bending tackles was usually the sadistic pleasure of the main game, not the curtain raiser to get media attention.

Rabbit’s typically aggressive tactic was to get into the game early, positioning himself in the centre of the field, but when a wily old front-rower picked out his skinny white legs in the defensive line, he thought all his Christmas’ had come at once. The snorting old prop ran straight and hard and Rab fearlessly put his body on the line, he was quickly reduced to roadkill and duly dispatched to the wing.

Rabbit, clearly not on the peptides (Dick Hoole)

The wing position is the closest to the crowd and they were heckling the ex-world champ mercilessly. Bugs showed his thick skin by laughing and motioning the crowd to try harder and his Boundary Lane support squad were uncomfortably squirming in their seats. I quickly pointed out that Bugs is not a Mack Truck, he’s a Ferrari and has now found his correct position on the field, so their faith was renewed. He was then thrown the pigskin and quickly went about making up for his earlier defensive indiscretion, receiving the ball twenty yards out from the try line, he put a big left foot step on his opposite number, a burst of speed has him just ahead of the cover defence and then the signature Rabbit swerve happens past their ageing fullback, and he’s over for a try!

The hecklers are now converted and cheering him as enthusiastically as they were giving it to him five minutes earlier, and as the first-graders ran onto the field for the main event, Rab returned to his seat with us in the grandstand to a hearty round of applause from the local crowd. It was their way of showing their appreciation for the spirited way their favourite surfing icon had handled himself on the paddock. Later, I'd wonder if a cluey chef was watching this game and came up with a new way to describe a great steak and seafood combo for the local restaurants - Surf and Turf. 

To my surprise, Rab downs half a well-earned beer and whispers to me, Come on, let’s go, we’ve got bigger fish to fry, so we discreetly bid our companions farewell and make our way to his trusty steed, a gleaming white Mazda RX7 known as Rex - a state-of-the-art sports car in those days.

// CHRIS 'SWAG' GUDENSWAGER

Order 'So You Want To Be A Surfer?' here
Or pre-order 'Smooth/Radical: The Keith Paull Story' here