Wednesday Morning

Wednesday morning 12 August 2009 at 7:06 am

a winter wave hits a sandbar east of an extinct volcano,

while a boat full of exports traverses the brine.

One surfer with a camera sees it.

G f G

G f G on the old white Joe Larkin board as seen by a little manual telephoto on an analogue camera.

25 years later the view shorewards is basically the same.

We're still sharing a wave and a laugh and the drop ins are about even.

Thanks bro.

Autumn 1983 + Autumn 2008

Wayne Dean x Turbo Tunnel

Long time legend of log Bazzmeister exiting First Point at the 2009 Noosa Wrecks and Relics contest. Check that red turbo tunnel fin on his 9' 6" Wayne Dean log. This is the first mal I tried when Baz was luring me over from short board land. Thanks again Baz. Baz is waveless for a week or two while the medical technologists do wonders on his eye. Good luck mate.  Second photo is somebody else's turbo tunnel fin at the same contest.
Winter 2009

Slide Night

Huntington Beach pier. No auto focus. No motor drive. No bayonet mount. No tripod. Basically a recipe for visual disaster. Luckily I had my good friend Mr Kodachrome inside the little black Fujica ST801 - my first camera with auto exposure.

This one was a favourite when we ran slide nights for surfer friends - especially the goofies. A magazine page or a blog screen just  doesn't do this image justice. It's just not the same as sitting with a group of surfers looking at a projected transparency that's 10 foot across!

Winter 1978

Friends

Friends and waves. The times we shared in the brine with our friends bubble up from the memory pool decades later. From top to bottom - GG's old Ford wagon on the road to Noosa with the Joe Larkin and a Shane in the back. GG styling across Granite on the Joe Larkin. Other surfers, Mike, Scott and Jeff who we met while camping at the end of Hastings Street, before the southern money and suits closed it down.
Spring 84 or 85

The Power of Two

What happens when you cross a Mark Richards twinnie with glassed on fins with Noosa rocks?

Irrespective of whether you're on your forehand or backhand, there's something unique about hitting the lip on a twinnie that can't be replicated on a thruster or even a modern keel fish - that wrenching feeling of throwing your body in a totally different direction.

So long ago, this shot. Maybe 1980. Definitely a manual focus Nikon FE with a 20mm wide-angle while sitting on a mat trying not to get hit!

Second shot is the same place almost 30 years later. Summer 2009. Another backhand, twinnie reo - the song remains the same.

A long time ago we used to be friends

No idea where these folk are these days. That Kombi's probably bubbling along Highway One with a few logs in the back. Russell, Gina and Liona down near Lennox Head back when Sky Surfboards made funky kneeboards that married post-punk aesthetics with post-Greenough kneeboard design.
Autumn 1981

Red Eye

Late 70's dawn at Point Perry. The film emulsion on this slide is starting to deteriorate. Lucky we have all this modern digi-tech stuff to transform decaying images like this one into cyberspace.

Red Sails in the Sunset

One of the things I'm going to miss with the demise of Kodachrome 64 slide film is the way it used to capture reds and golds when you pointed the camera at the sun. My digi just doesn't match it.
Down the bottom of the Noosa River you can anchor cheaply within spitting distance of multi-million dollar mansions that are empty most of the year.
Spring Early 1980's

The Power of Three

Shaka x Shaun

Sometimes you need three fins. There's something about whacking watery wall on a short board that makes you want to chuck a shaka or two. Shaun Wilkie, late on a summer afternoon at National Park.
Summer 2009

All the leaves are brown and the sky is grey

Grey and dull here in Brinevegas today, so time to drag out a few from the not so sunny Sunny Coast Sessions. Slow day. Slow shutter.
Summer 2009

Highway Holga

Foggy mornings and light offshores - perfect conditions for the plastic fantastic Holga camera and a few slides with mates.
Spring 2009

One More Cup of Coffee

Here at the Brine there's always coffee, cameras and commuting. And when there's no surf, there's music. This shot of Bob Dylan performing around the Desire album era in Brinevegas could be added to the mutating Gone Series as the concert hall it was taken is now an inner city apartment complex.

Continuing our theme of square format film. This one is for Jack Brull of Salt Stained Eyes fame. Buddy get some music into you while you're recovering.

Spring 1978

Mrs Brine's Camera

Mrs Brine has an art deco Rolleicord TLR that was born in Germany in 1936 and came to her mother after World War 2. We use it now and again when the light, the waves and the home budget all line up. Lots of surfers are using the old analogue gear and film. But what did those cameras capture before they came into our briney paws? Here's a salute to former owners (and the folks still processing E6). 

Oz 1949 - 2009

A Quick One

I remember this was a 28mm lens using the now defunct Kodachrome 64 slide film while sitting on an air mat back in the 1970's when fins on most boards were mono.

Winter 1978

Hand Held Holga

Mrs Brine has graciously reserved some room in our refrigerator for some 120 roll film for my little plastic camera and her 70 year old TLR. We feed them a little bit of light when the Brine Budget and Nature align. Dawn patrol on the deadly treadly. B&W is Gail Austin's surfshop Goodtime in downtown Brinevegas. Gail's family are legends in this part of the planet.

Winter 2009

Joe Larkin x Nikonos

Two shots of late arvo Noosa taken 25 years apart. The Joe Larkin board in the first pic is currently being restored to rideable condition. Nikonos V film camera with flash attached - a cumbersome rig when you have that big tanker coming at you in the dusk. No motor drive. No AF. But very waterproof.

Second one is a cheat by comparison - a Hi Def video still taken with a Sony in  a"real" underwater housing ie one that I didn't make.

Who cares how you get the image - hi def, analogue, camera obscura, mobile phone. Just get it and share it. Maintain the stoke!

Bird is the Word

Last Sunday was Fathers' Day here in Brineland. Also, there was a Jazz Festival, sunshine and a couple of small sliders on the points, making for gridlock reminiscent of the Big Smoke. Consequently, I couldn't find one car park between the rivermouth and the National Park, when I went to take the quad for a paddle mid afternoon.

As I'm sitting in the gridlock, sun is shining and the jazz vibes are pulsing, all of a sudden a bird lands it's poop neatly through my open window onto my boardies. Nothing to wipe them. Can't pull over. All I can think of is the Trashmen song "Surfing Bird" which featured on Family Guy not so long ago. And that it was good luck.

I go home and come back a few hours later (in fresh boardies). I score a car park right outside the entrance to the National Park. I carry the DVS quad to the third point and despite the crowd, score some beautiful walls until it was so dark I couldn't see the waves coming around the point. I left with a huge smile. Bird is the word.

The Crouch

The Crouch as seen via a NikonosV and a Nikon FE in the 1980's.

Gone - the series

I have been working on a series of images of things and places and people now lost to time and progress, tentatively called "Gone". Starting the series is an image that I didn't take - a Kodachrome my late Dad took with his beloved Petri rangefinder camera and hand held light meter. The cheese fest is Jack Evans' Porpoise Pool at Duranbah. The emulsion is holding up well, unlike my memory of childhood summers. That's been battered by time, three near drownings and assorted chemicals.

Summer 1968

The second one is an old farm house, home to a couple of potters and a merry band of party goers. It's now a major intersection on Super Highway One in between Cooroy and Coonowrin. Somewhere in the frame is my 6' 2" Les Purcell single fin Stinger and Holden Gemini - both of which are now Gone.

Spring 1980

Apples With Human Skin

you fell asleep with an ember in your mouth

dreamt you were playing a stone trumpet

a strange lament to accompany a cold ritual

smashed souls with bullet holes threaded

          with wire

strung up between this day and the next

NATHAN SHEPHERDSON

Apples With Human Skin is the latest anthology of poems by fellow commuter Nathan Shepherdson, who lives in the shadows of Tibrogargan and Coonowrin. Being launched this weekend:

Saturday 5th September

2 - 4 pm

Heiser Gallery

90 Arthur St

Fortitude Valley

The Platform

Same guy. Same wave. We used to call this spot The Platform. Requires skill and a good set of lungs. Oh and bull sharks and trawlers idle up the river at the end of this section. keep your eyes open.  Autumn 1988

Zen x daDa

One for Stephen

One for Stephen (now get back to work, ha). A late arvo winter left at Nana Brine's, when glassed on fins were the only option and you processed your own black and whites. This is a bad scan off a nice neg, so apologies in advance to the Zone System purists out there. 6' 7" Les Purcell swallow tail thruster with double concave through the tail.

Anti-log Dog's Dialogue

The Adventure Begins