Beyond Blue Horizon

In 2002, filmmaker Jack McCoy was on a hot streak.

Jack's pivot from indy filmmaker to creator of branded content began with Kong’s Island and The Performers but it was the beautifully-crafted Bunyip Dreaming that established a new era. Bunyip Dreaming was quickly followed by a string of similarly successful titles, plus a revolutionary tilt at competition (the Billabong Challenge and its sequels), while heralding both a new era (Sabotaj) and an old one (The Occumentary).

On top of the world, the last thing Jack was expecting as a new project took shape was to be rebuffed by his intended star.

“I went up to the Gold Coast for the Quiksilver Pro,” says Jack, “and I was planning to speak to Joel (Parkinson) about the film.”

An idea had been brewing for a while: To contrast the surfing lives of two good friends and Billabong team riders, Joel Parkinson and Dave Rastovich. One a contest machine, the other a vegetarian who meditates and doesn’t talk on Tuesdays, both of whom rip.

“I was shattered when Joel told me he couldn’t do the project,” says Jack, who found out Parko was already in the midst of making 3 Degrees with Matt Gye, featuring Coolangatta alumni Mick Fanning and Dean Morrison.

Just months earlier, Billabong had signed Andy Irons and it was suggested to Jack that Andy could play Parko’s part. Jack, however, wasn’t sold on the idea.

“I first heard about Andy and Bruce when Ben Aipa told me about them,” says Jack. “He was coaching them and he said one of them will be a world champ.”

“Bruce was good,” says Jack, “but Andy had style. I was brought up around Lopez, Cabell, Strauch - all great stylists. Andy just had it.”

Yet what Andy also had was an on button that wouldn’t switch off. “He’d go out after dinner and he wouldn’t come home until 6am,” says Jack. “Great surfer but he was a party boy; he was scattered.”

It was Jack’s wife who suggested Andy was the perfect foil to the clean-living Rasta. Also, what Jack didn’t know was that Andy had a new girlfriend who’d put a halt on his all-night partying. 

He didn’t know it at the time but Jack’s streak of good movies was about to burn white-hot.

“When you think about it now,” says Dave about Andy’s sudden inclusion in Blue Horizon, “it was almost too good to be true. He was ripping, he was the underdog to Slater - you know Australians love an underdog - so all the energy was suddenly with Andy…and Jack’s just landed him in a film project. That was classic Jack.”

Andy's warrior stance - bolt upright, no grab, hands behind his back - was a provocation in the jaws of the world's most dangerous wave (Tim McKenna)

“Though Andy wasn’t my first choice,” says Jack, “I’d always intended Dave to be in the film.”

For his part, Dave recalls working with Jack during one of Billabong's Junior Series. He was young, a grom on the fringes, yet he could sing the lyrics to every Leonard Cohen song and he was curious about surfing history in a way few grommets are.

“I’d show interest in surfers he grew up with, “says Dave. “Jack had been in the pit with all those guys, literally in the pit filming them. So we’d drive around and I’d pick his brain about surfers from the decades before me.”

“I saw the way Jack was looking at me,” remembers Dave, “I’m sure he was thinking ‘who the fuck is this kid?’”

“I knew Dave as a kid who had style,” says Jack, “but when I spent time with him I found out that he's an old soul too. He knew a lot about surfing history and he always wanted to know more.”

The difference between the two surfers was stark. One wanting to rattle the cage and take over the world, the other making sense of their place within it. They were surfing’s version of the odd couple.

Rasta icing a ride at Teahupoo on a sleek Dick Van Straalen gun. During the first big Teahupoo session they shared, Rasta rode a 6'10" with Andy laughing at his "tiny board" (Tim McKenna)

“One of the best things about surfing is that you don’t need words or language,” says Dave. “You can share a lineup with people and everyone will be psyched when, say, a person gets spat out of a deep barrel.”

“Surfers have more in common with each other than they sometimes know,” says Dave. “And I guess that’s what Jack was trying to show.”

Jack, Dave, and Andy’s first trip to Tahiti was during the Billabong Pro Tahiti. On the first morning of the waiting period a plane from Sydney carrying numerous boardbags didn’t make it so the contest couldn’t run.

“The swell had jumped overnight,” says Jack. “I was out there in the dark.” Dave and Andy weren’t far behind. The waves were ten to twelve feet, many famous photos and sequences were shot during the session including Andy’s famous sideslip under the lip.

Andy was Hawaiian, so everyone expected him to perform in big waves, while Dave’s big wave bona fides were less well-known. That’s not to say he didn’t have any. Long before it was famous, Dave would hike solo into Shipsterns then surf and camp at the base of the bluff, plus there was a Hawaiian trip each year.

“I love waves of consequence,” says Dave cheerily. “I don’t like the scene around it, which keeps me away from the big wave spots that are choked up with skis and camera, but I fucking love that space.”

“I was itching to get one that morning,” says Dave recalling the memory. “I managed to get some good ones before the sun even came up.”

“Dave was on one of the first real waves of the morning,” says Jack. “A good ten foot wave, heavy, and here comes Dave getting spat out.”

I think we all connected in the lineup that morning,” says Dave. “Andy took what was the heaviest under the lip scoop anyone had seen out there, and he saw that I wasn’t just a peace, love and mung beans-kinda guy, and that I loved all aspects of surfing, including big waves.”

“We shared many other sessions, but moments like that are real,” says Dave about that morning in Tahiti. “They create real connections between people. Like, two people don’t have to agree on every single thing but you share these amazing moments - not just in your mind but moments that are felt in your body.”

“Jack did a great job of showing that.”

Andy sideslips into the spotlight at maxing Teahupoo (Tom Servais)

In the late-nineties Dave was getting noticed in the Burleigh Heads lineup and on the junior contest circuit. He was picked up by BIllabong and suddenly thrust into the limelight, expected to understand how it all worked.

“I’ve never had as much fame as Andy,” says Dave, “but I saw enough to know that I couldn’t handle it; I wouldn’t have been able to stay in love with surfing. Surfing was the way I coped with the world so to have things heaped on top of it: a number, my latest result, did I win or lose, would’ve been too stressful.”

“I’m really lucky,” says Dave, “that I had people like Dick Van Straalen and my other buddy Rod Morgan, who was a key Gold Coast lifeguard, take me under their wing and look after me.”

“When you’re young,” continues Dave, “surfing has got so much baggage on it, which only gets worse when you bring in contests and sponsors and expectation. It’s easy to lose your coping mechanism and lose your love for surfing.”

“Andy danced on that fine line a lot,” says Dave.

Dave bristles when the word ‘soul’ comes into the conversation, particularly as a category of surfer. “What is that?” He asks derisively. “It’s just a marketing term someone came up with to sell more cheap shit made in a factory somewhere.”

“I’ve been called that [a soul surfer] but it’s just that I’m head over heels in love with surfing and I found a way to do it,” says Dave, “Andy also loved surfing and he loved competing and he put his whole soul into it.”

“He showed you…he showed everyone how he was feeling,” says Dave. “When he was winning he brought everyone with him, and when he wasn’t he showed us his vulnerable side. There was no bullshit with Andy and I just thought that was admirable.”

“At the same time, “says Dave, “I feel sad that Andy didn’t have more proactive mentors around him.

Dave's path was defined as much by his surfing as it was the equipment he rode. He forged great friendships with shapers few of his generation would've heard of and helped show that alt designs can draw high performance lines (Jason Childs)

The tagline to Blue Horizon was “Two paths, one journey”, yet one path ended on November 2nd, 2010 - the night Andy died.

“It was a wild time for me,” continues Dave, “as my Dad died right around the same time. I just remember it being a horrible trippy thing that there was death all around.”

Yet two decades on from Blue Horizon, Dave’s path continues. He’s still doing whatever it is he does - not soul surfing obviously - only now with a Patagonia sticker on his board.

Does he ever think what Andy’s second act might’ve been?

“I don’t really do the comparison thing,” admits Dave, “nor the rigid stereotype: like if you burn bright you’re going to have a short life, and if you’re moderate and choose the middle path you’ll have a long one. Things aren’t that black and white.”

“Right now, I’m standing in the bush and I'm looking at all these trees. They’re all the same species but they’re growing so differently: some are crooked, some are straight, some last a long time, some break and feed others.”

“There’s no lesson there,” says Dave, “it’s just a beautiful unpredictable realm.”

"Andy was an amazing guy and I still feel him - other people do too."

We had friends from Hawaii staying with us this last week," says Dave. "And they were talking about how all the kids - kids who weren't born when he passed away - all want to be him."

"There's triumph in Andy's story and there's tragedy too, but his spirit is still floating around those islands."

// STU NETTLE

Watch Andy Irons on the big screen during Blue Horizon's 20th Anniversary Tour

• Fri, May 9               Reading Cinema, Waurn Ponds 
• Sat, May 10            Lorne Theatre
• Wed, May 14           Avoca Theatre
• Thurs, May 15         The Ritz, Randwick
• Fri, May 16              Hayden Orpheum, Cremorne
• Sat, May 17             Gala Cinema, Wollongong
• Thurs, May 22          Balter Brewery, Currumbin
• Fri, May 23               Lennox Head Com. Centre
• Sat, May 24             Nambour Cinema, Sunny Coast