GOLDEN BARS

Pure gold. That’s what sand is to surfers. Why else do we call a collection of sand a “bank”? Like we’re off to plunder sunken treasure when a mate calls about a “new bank on the simmer”.

Banks of various colours have endless shapes, sizes, and formations. On searing days in Bali or Tahiti, we sprint over the fine black iteration for fear of sizzling the soles. In other parts of the tropics, it sparkles so bright we can barely turn an eye to it. But one thing it is not: stable. So, when the elements align and Huey sends swell to roll and break over the local coastline’s congregations of sand, we surfers make the most of it. While that bank might look like a consistent “factory of fun” one day, it could be gone the next.

Although sand is a creative substance for surfers, its very existence is the result of destruction. It’s entwined in a never-ending cycle of formation and transformation: materialisation and obliteration. Watching sand trickle through an hourglass or swirl around a snow globe are a few ways humans have contained it