White Horses

My great grandfather moved to Palm Beach, New South Wales, in 1911, shortly after the area was settled. We’re the fourth generation of Roberts’ to live in this area. The original family home was destroyed by fire in the 1980s, but we’re now lucky to

My mum is from Molokai. Her parents, my kahunas, were fishermen. My uncles, aunties and other elders on Molokai were farmers. Dad grew up on Oahu, he’s half Hawaiian and half Portuguese, and there’s a little bit of English blood in there somewhere to

I moved to Culburra Beach from the western suburbs of Sydney with my parents when I was 11 and that’s when I started to surf. I’m 60 now. I started a plumbing apprenticeship and then married my wife Kerry, who now works at the Aboriginal Health Servi

I grew up on a farm on the outskirts of Cape Town, in the middle of agriculture and wine country. My dad was a vegetable farmer and my mum was a nurse. Everybody in our community played rugby. I was always terrible at it. In my teen years we moved to

We moved to Lennox Head six years ago, seeking a smaller beach community to raise our infant daughters. I joined the local All Girls Surf Riders Club for inspiration to get back into the water and as a means to make new friends. With the club came an

I came to Hawaii on a boat with my dad and mum in 1952, the same time that the first guys from California came out to the North Shore. Greg Noll, Fred Van Dyke, Flippy Hoffman, Peter Cole and those guys My parents knew some of them, so they took me u

My father is James Hart, Chief 7idansuu (Edenshaw), and my mother is Rosemary Hart, Xidwan Jaadaa (Flying Woman). My father is from Haida Gwaii, a group of remote islands off Canada’s West Coast, and my mother is from North Vancouver. They raised my

I’m from Cimaja, a small fishing village in West Java that’s about four hours from the capital of Jakarta. I come from a big family–four brothers and two sisters. We’re all still close and live near each other, right where we grew up. As a Muslim I b

We´re Latin American; family always comes first. Before money, success or fame. We lived–and still live–in Maresias, a small district on the coast of Sao Paulo where everyone knows everyone. I was originally born in Sao Paulo city, where I studied ar

I started bodysurfing at Fairhaven on the Victorian coast when I was a kid, but I spent most of my holidays visiting relatives on the northwest coast of Tasmania. Later, I met Sonya, my boys’ mum, on the Great Ocean Road. We had a house at Fairhaven

In Vanuatu, it’s not just your blood relatives that you call family. Family is a connection to your community and everyone that lives together in your area. Growing up as a child, the village looks after you. You eat together, live together and borro

I was four years old when it happened. We were at Four Mile Beach for a family day out. My mum stayed on the beach with my baby sister. I followed my dad out onto the point, a rocky outcrop that caught the swell and shaped it into waves that ran alon

Sylvan & Sea is a knife-making studio. I started it up in the dilapidated garage of an old farmhouse, down on the coast. I had a forge, a kiln and some other tools. I bought a belt sander, too. It was enough to do the job, and all that I could afford

In the 1990s my parents bought a block of land down at White Beach, a quiet coastal area on the Tasman Peninsula. Close to fun waves, our bush block was the place where we would escape the city to camp, surf and enjoy sitting around a fire at night.

Twelve, maybe 15 foot of raw groundswell arrives late in the afternoon, accompanied by a haggard, cross-shore wind being distorted around the cliffs. This swell is a mere precursor to an even larger swell forecast to arrive tomorrow. Surfers on balco

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” A. A. Milne, from Winnie-the-Pooh I've been riding boards at the longe

Amber Jones and Riley Elliott are storytellers and kind humans. Protectors of sharks and other wild, ocean-dwelling things. They move through their days with salty hair and grace; surfing world-class beachies with their mates, spearfishing for dinner

Rain was hammering the factory roof and I was soaked by the time I got to the car. The sky was a strange greyish-green, which reminded me of the rusted Chrysler Valiant I had when I was 17. A long time ago now, I thought. Bang on nine hundred bucks i

{White Horses 30} It all started with a busted point-and-shoot camera about 25 years ago. I was with my girlfriend Fiona, who is now my wife, and we were travelling down to Tasmania. I had brought a small instant camera along and was taking loads of

{White Horses 30} “Gerry Lopez shaped this board for Baddy–probably in the Wilderness house–in 1970. The two of them spent alot of time together on the East Coast that year. Here’s what Gerry has to say. ‘David and I had an absolutely wonderful time

The earliest New Zealand Maori were East Polynesians who arrived in large ocean going waka (canoes) about 800 years ago from the Hawaiki zone, thought to be the islands of northern Tahiti. It is unclear why they chose to do this; it may have been due

For generations my family has lived on the water. Mooloolaba was my grounds growing up and I was 11 when I asked to get a surfboard. No one else in the family surfed, so there I was, this little kid lugging around a big old Hayden Kenny with a deep s

I poke my head through the raised shed doors of Mat Manners Surfboards, tucked deep inside the industrial area of Margaret River. I’m surprised at the size of the place as my “Hey Matty, ya there?” echoes back at me through the rabbit warren of shapi

Want to know the Champ? Then you need to know his one-of-a-kind mama. How about we start at the beginning. Back in 1986, when Alex Florence from Ocean Grove, a Christian seaside community in New Jersey (yeah, the not-so-glam part of New York), told h