The View From Yesterday: Rivals

'Thank your enemies as they make the best teachers.'

It's the type of wisdom you'd find written on the wall of a Japanese dojo, but surfing also has its rivalries that have taken both combatants to untold heights. 

Cheyne pursuing MR to a then-record four world titles, the two Toms - Curren and Carroll - duking it out through the day-glo eighties, and Andy Irons crushing Slater's pretty little picture.

Honourable adversaries all of them, though sometimes the respect is a little strained. Such as the time Andy Meridian's role as King Of The Point was challenged by an upstart from down south. Taught him a thing or two in the process.

Also, a chance to talk about your adversary is also a chance to talk about yourself, which is an opportunity Andy never lets pass.

As a traveller, you can find yaself in all sorts of situations. Using skills you never knew you had, to solve problems you never knew you’d face.

Me, I’m a surfer first. A shaper, too. Importing and exporting rounds out the rest of my time. But over the years, I’ve had to wear many hats. Some I prepared for. Others I donned out of necessity. Or love.

Here’s the Cliff Notes of my curriculum vitae:

I worked five months as a diesel mechanic in the Patagonian foothills to repay an undisclosed debt to a local village chieftain.

I served as a political adviser to Joh Bjelke-Petersen during his ill-fated run for prime minister (a campaign I still say failed because he wouldn’t back my signature policy: dynamiting more harbours into the Great Barrier Reef.

I delivered albino triplets for the wife of a blind neurosurgeon outside Ho Chi Minh City.

I painted the Story Bridge. Twice.

And for a spell, I was a high-end hairdresser at Tugun’s iconic Hair on the Gold Coast.

I never found a job that phased me. No situation I couldn’t handle. Except for one. The only task I ever truly failed. One that sticks in my maw like an infected molar.

But like any rotten tooth, sometimes it helps to pick at it.

So here goes. Here’s the fucken story.

I’d just returned home from another triumphant lap of the world amateur surf circuit. Sun-bleached, honey-dipped, riding high on local radio fame (4GG had just mentioned my name between the latest INXS single and a jingle for a seafood restaurant in Banora Point).

I expected to step back into Burleigh like Hannibal returning to Carthage. Instead, I came home to tyranny.

Burleigh, it appeared, was under new management. The waves were still rattling down the point, the pandanus still smelled just as sweet. But something was off. The vibe was wrong. Tight. Tense. Paranoid. Like there was a Cat-6 hanging just over the horizon.

They told me his name was Rossco. No surname. Just Rossco. Like Cher. Or Ebola.

He’d drifted into town while I was off in Portugal. Or Peru. Or maybe Perth. Doesn’t matter. By the time I got back, he’d claimed my throne. My wave. My parking spot outside the bakery.

I asked around.

“Where’s he from?”

“Down the coast,” muttered a grom, head down. It was like he was ashamed to be talking to me.

“Where down the coast?”

“U-Turn Bay.” 

“U-Turn Bay isn’t a place.”

“Exactly,” the grom said, his eyes glazed with the dead conviction of the freshly indoctrinated.

What the fuck was going on?

I scoped Rossco out before our first confrontation. He must have been mid-thirties. Taut brown skin. Shivering blue eyes. A jawline carved from a Roman bust. He had the casual insouciance of a man who wore thongs to weddings.

Rossco was mid-conversation on the Point payphone, using a straw to cycle a single gold coin for infinite talk time. A hustler’s move.

I walked up. Stared at him while he babbled on. 

Finally he stopped to look at me.

“You Rossco?” I asked.

“Yer. You Andy?”

“Yep.”

“Righto then.”

He kept talking.

Can you believe it? The sheer audacity of the bastard! I knew I had a problem.

I finally convinced some of the groms to fill me in on the rest. Rossco was a shithouse drunk, they said. A woman stealer. A Blues supporter. A Labor voter. A chronic two-catter. Called that ’cos if you had one cat, you better bet he’d show up with two.

Here’s an example I caught the end of at the pub later that night:

Local: “Jeez it was pumping this arvo! I just got an eight-second tube through the Cove.”

Rossco: “Eight seconds? Pfft. I was sitting in twelves every wave yesterday, minimum. I wouldn't even bother taking off for an eight second tube., Now get me a beer, would ya?”

Etc.

Rossco was a social terrorist. Worse? He was a damned good surfer. Too good. He wasn’t lying about those twelve second tubes. He rode barrels so deep he didn’t need sunscreen. Forehand lines so smooth they made polished marble feel rough. And the local crew were in awe.

This was identity theft in the days before we had a term for it.

Normally, I’d have seen a bloke like that off with a subtle combo of stink-eye and passive-aggressive trivia about the rate of surf-related assault charges before I went on tour. 

But Rossco… Rossco was different.

Waves would appear for him out of nowhere. He’d paddle into the thing, dissect it like it was a Year 8 science project, then paddle back out nodding like he invented surfing. You’d be forgiven for thinking he had. I couldn’t even get near him, let alone get under his skin. 

One thing I've learned over the years. Skill in the water buys you a kind of moral exemption. You could key someone’s Kombi if you ride the tube clean. Flirt with a man’s missus if you could negotiate the jump off at king tide on a north swell. Robbed a servo? Sure. Just hammer that cutty on the inside section and everyone will turn a blind eye. It’s how I came to rule the point in the first place.

But Rossco surfed like Poseidon with a mullet. No wonder he had the whole joint under the heel of his bootstrap. 

So, I did what any dethroned surf monarch would do: I challenged him to a man-on-man surf-off. High tide, Saturday morning. Light south-west wind. Easterly trade swell due to hit the night before. The entire town would be watching. 

Saturday morning came as promised, along with the waves. A crowd had gathered on the shoreline. Word had got around. They were dotted along the point at inconspicuous vantage points. Under a low hanging pandanus. Behind a parking meter. 

There was no party atmosphere. There was too much at stake. Even the pelicans seemed tense. The swell had filled in as expected. A few of the local boys paid the clubbies $50 to sound the shark alarm and clear the lineup. 

We hopped across the rocks and paddled out in silence. I was wearing my lucky rashie that I’d won the Malacca Strait titles in. Faded, torn, reeking of stale wine and misplaced confidence. Rossco wore the tightest red boardshorts and no leggie. For the first time in my life, I felt the cold feeling of doubt shiver down my spine. Either that, or it was something I’d picked up from that sheila at The Patch the night before.

We traded waves on a few short ones at the top of the point, just to loosen up. I opened with a decent floater. Rossco responded with a switch-foot roundhouse. I laid down a couple of clean snaps. My experimental seven finner was working well in the mid-period trades. Maybe I could take the bastard down, I thought. 

Then came the wave. The one.

A clean set, easy six foot, lining up perfectly across the point. I was in position. I shot a glance at Rossco, who was way down the line. I had it. I was already mentally composing the local newspaper headline as I paddled into it:

THE KING OF BURLEIGH RETURNS, LONG LIVE THE KING.

Then Rossco dropped in on me. Not just dropped in - but fully burned me with the calm of a man who’d done it a hundred times before and never once regretted it. I still can’t understand the physics of it. I’d seen him conjure waves before. But this was full blown teleportation up the point and into my periphery. 

He faded his take off just enough to knock me from my feet. I went head over heels. All I could see was white and red. 

They told me later he sat in it the whole way down the point. You see only the tip of his bright pink board poking out in front of the foam ball. 

And here’s the rub. When he finally kicked out, he looked back up at me and smiled. Like we were sharing a romantic sunset. 

“Thanks for the wave, mate!”

I blacked out from rage.

Rossco won. Clean. Unarguable. This wasn’t normal comp rules. Interferences didn’t count. It was survival of the fittest. And I’d been found out. Beaten at my own game. On my home turf. It was utterly soul destroying.

I didn’t even stick around to debrief. The shame was too raw. I did what any emotionally displaced alpha male would do: jumped on the first plane to Melbourne and re-enrolled in the Footscray Academy of Advanced Hairdressing. 

I never beat Rossco. Not in the surf. Not in public opinion. But I did outlast him.

A year later, he vanished. Rumour was he got into stunt work. Or was deported back south. Or joined the pro tour. Classic two-catter move.

I returned from Melbourne a different man. Went back to shaping boards and working at the hairdressers. It wasn’t long ‘til I was back at the top of the pecking order. But it was safe to say my reign had lost a bit of its shine. I was quieter now. Less permed bouffant and more of a short back and sides. 

But legends aren’t built on unbroken rule. They’re built on points earned. On persistence. And the vague hope that no-one remembers you got smoked by a bloke who was barely even trying.

I don't know what happened to the bastard. Nor do I care to think about him. It’s a part of my life best left suppressed. Still, sometimes, I’ll see a stranger in the lineup, getting tubed off his nut with way too much ease, and think:

Rossco lives.

// ANDY MERIDIAN

More of The View From Yesterday:

Andy Does Darlo
The Interior Coast
Andy Goes Svengali
On Swell Events