Tuesday, March 8, 2011

UM, DID ANYONE ELSE JUST SEE THAT?!?!

I have no doubt that surf and social media is going bonkers right now after the fine display of surfing at the Roxy Pro at Snapper Rocks today.   Here’s my addition to the blogosphere for www.surfgirlmag.com ...

WOW, what an unbelievable couple of hours of surfing that was to watch.  I have never ever EVER seen female surfing performed as powerfully, stylishly and athletically as I did today. Tyler Wright, Sally Fitzgibbons, Coco Ho, Silvana Lima, Laura Enever and Carissa Moore put on some show.  It was jaw-dropping, mind blowing, edge-of-your-seat stuff watching them trading 8’s and 9’s all the way through the quarters, semis and final.  I even think the men were truly inspired by it.  The Quiksilver Pro Round 5 heats which ran straight after the Roxy Pro wrapped up, were a ridiculous frenzy of crazy high scoring affairs!

I logged on to the live webcast in a computer lab at the University of Sydney this morning to catch ‘a quick bit of the quarter finals’.  Let’s just say the assignment that I was supposed to get done did not get touched, and the lectures that I was supposed to attend as the day progressed were missed!  It was impossible to tear myself away! History was being made!  That had to be the best display of competitive female surfing of all time.  The level in women’s surfing is about to jump off the Richter scale, with all these new rookies on Tour pushing the other talented girls to the max.  I was absolutely blown away by watching that today, and I am so excited to see where it goes next!

Next time I’m watching in a computer lab at Uni though, I will watch in a quiet corner somewhere.  Today I got so into it that I forgot where I was and let out a bit of a hoot at one of Sally Fitz’s waves.... got some strange looks from a couple of nerds haha!

Inspirational surfing went down today.  Jaysus, I can’t wait to hit the waves myself tomorrow and try my best to turn my lame little wiggles into some decent turns!  WHOOOOOOOP!!!!

 (The author would like to sincerely apologise for the over-use of exclamation marks in this blog, but would suggest that the awe-factor sustained by today’s events justifies it)


You can watch video highlights of all the surfing at www.roxypro.com.au if you were unfortunate enough to miss it hehe!  Warning: prepare to be amazed...

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Some ObZervations.....

So I've been living in the big schmoke of Sydney in Australia for over two months now.  It's been good!  I've been able to sneak away for a couple of trips already too, and I'm super excited about a couple of projects that I have lined up over the next couple of months. Watch this space!

My Masters of Pharmacy at the University of Sydney started a week ago, after a 6 week summer semester of Chemistry.  Getting back into the swing of study has been hard, I'm not gonna lie!  But I'm sure the challenge will do me good.  That's what I keep telling myself anyway....

The nerd-cap is back on....



A few ObZervations since I've arrived in Oz.....

  • There is an ice-cream here called Golden Gaytime.  
  • Quite a lot of Asian people carry umbrellas in the sunshine.
  • You don't even get a hint of a chill even after being in the water for 4 hours straight! You can however, get hideously sun burnt.  
  • Keep your Underground ticket, you need it on the way out. Duh (country bumkin here didn't know!)
  • There are heaps (oops, pardon my Aussie accent) of low-carb beers here.  Guilt free sippage!
  • The red wine is no match for the French reds however :-(
  • It's so easy to stay motivated to train and to do it outside.  There are fit people everywhere and cool outdoor gym areas to do workouts along amazingly scenic running routes.
  • There are also a lot of very unfit and overweight people.  I don't understand why, when it's such an amazing environment to be active and healthy in.  I mean it's not like it's cold, wet and windy where all you want to do is hide indoors by the fire drinking hot chocolate and eating stodgy comforting food!
  • The bus drivers are mental.  I reckon (oh, there's my Aussie accent again!) they must recruit ex-rally drivers or something.  If you have to stand, prepare to have your balance skills challenged!
  • There are second hand shops everywhere, it's awesome!  I got a nice little black French Connection dress for $10!
  • Our phone companies in Ireland are ripping us off.  I got a free iPhone 4 when I arrived as part of my brothers deal with his housephone & internet company.  I only pay $49 dollars a month for $400 worth of calls and texts and 2GB of internet use.  My iPhone bill at home was ridiculous in comparison!

I heart Australia.  It's such an amazing environment to live the active, surfing, outdoors lifestyle that I love to live!

Right....off to set the alarm for a dawny surf before heading into Uni for a day of Biostatistics, Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Pharmaceutical Science and a Calculus tutorial......FUN TIMES!!!

Some photies...

Say nawtin!
Where I live...taken along my running route. Lush!

I watched the Australian Open Final down at the beach...
Ah the good old outdoor lifestyle!



Tuesday, February 1, 2011


LIKE TWO FISH OUT OF WATER





My brother Mike and I have always grown up by the sea.  As competitive surfers, we have both travelled the World, always to surf destinations.  Coming from a family of surfers, most of our holidays have been by, near, or on the sea.  This is the story of a totally different experience for us both.  A long but amazing drive to the centre of Australia and a weekend spent with a local Aboriginal community.



                            

Our route from Sydney to Santa Teresa, via Alice Springs


HOW IT CAME ABOUT

My parents have recently taken on an exciting new adventure, 1500 kilometres from the ocean.  They have moved to a small, Aboriginal community called Santa Teresa, 100 km outside Alice Springs, Australia.  Dad is going to be teaching Year 7&8 primary kids and Mum is going to be coordinating and putting in place the curriculum for the school.

The task of relocating their 4WD (essential for this part of Australia) and trailer full of belongings fell to Mike and me.  Starting out from Sydney on a Thursday afternoon at 2pm, we embarked on a 2900km journey to the ‘Red Centre’ of Australia. We had to be there to pick Mum and Dad up from Alice Springs airport at 4pm on the Saturday.  Oh, and I forgot to mention that neither of us had ever driven with (let alone reversed) a trailer.  EASY...ha!


DRIVE TIME

Catching up with my brother after spending the last few years living on opposite sides of the World was a highlight.  The journey itself was really cool too.  The amount of space in this country is UNREAL! Sometimes we would go for hours without meeting another vehicle.  Other times our 4WD would shake as a ‘Road Train’ truck, which is 3 regular-sized truck lengths or 53.5 m long, zoomed past us.  We could spot them coming miles away mind you, as the roads were nearly always straight for tens of kilometres.  This leads me to mention a few tips about how to kill time on super long drives.  It is amazing how easily amused you can be by the simple things while sitting in a car for 14 hours at a time!  There were many games played, but these were my favourite:

·         ‘The Thumb Theory’
o   This is my personal favourite.  Mike is still unconvinced but I stand firm on it!  Driving past vehicles with one thumb raised up off the wheel resulted in 9 out of 10 other drivers waving back with a similar one digit wave.  A proper ‘full hand’ wave resulted in only 4 out of 10 returned waves from other drivers.  Therefore the ‘thumb raise’ is Australia’s favourite driver-driver wave. Fact!
·         ‘Guess the Odometer distance’
o   When spotting an oncoming truck/car in the distance, guess how far away it is on the odometer.  Loser must do 10 push ups in the 45 degree heat at the next rest-stop.
·         ‘The Overtaking Count’
o   On the rare opportunity of coming up behind and overtaking a Road Train, pull in at the next rest stop, let it pass and then over take again.  Repeat and keep count of how many you achieved during your daily drive time.  Push ups rule applies here too for the loser each day!

















SCENERY


You may think that so much open space wouldn’t be very scenic or impressive, but it was quite the opposite.  The novelty of it never wore off on either of us.  Every time I looked out the window at the vastness of the landscape, it blew my mind.  It was generally flat, but scattered with rolling hills and a surprising amount of vegetation.  Every couple of hundred kilometres there was a ‘cattle grid’ across the road, and then fencing stretching out as far as the eye could see in both directions.  Mike asked about this at one of the petrol stations and we learned that these fences go on for hundreds of kilometres, resulting in huge cattle stations.  People have full time jobs just to look after the fencing alone, on quads and 4WD’s, covering thousands of km a week repairing and checking it.  The cattle on these stations are often herded using helicopters because they are so spread out. Similarly, we saw a huge area of crops being sprayed by a low-flying small plane.   If you ever feel like you need some ‘space’ in your life, inland Australia is a pretty good spot for it!


Wide open spaces everywhere!!!





I saw the two most beautiful sunsets that I have ever seen on this drive too.  Deep shades of orange with purples and reds and yellows mixed through the sky.  They last for hours, as daylight slowly melts away, leaving an impressively dark night.  The only light at night time is provided by a black sky filled with hundreds of densely packed stars.  After the animals settle down for the night, it gets so quiet too.  Outback Australia is a beautiful, large and very tranquil place.

The most beautiful sun


WE GOT ONE! Haha, just kidding.
 The only wildlife we saw on the road trip was 21 dead Kangaroos on the side of the road, 6 dead lizards, and hundreds of insects at dusk around the lights of the service stations!  I guess the smart animals avoid the highway area.
By putting in 10 hours of driving on the Thursday, 15 on the Friday and 12 on the Saturday we got there, only an hour behind schedule.  We were 90 km from Alice Springs and we got a blow-out on one of the trailer tyres.  I have never been as hot as I was after changing it in the 45 degree heat.  My flip flops were sticking to the tarmac.  No joke!  Poor Mike, he did most of the heavy work though, I mostly just passed him things and took pictures!

The hottest experience of my life!



SANTA TERESA

With the big journey complete and Mum and Dad picked up from the airport, we hit the dirt track for the 100km final leg to Santa Teresa, a small community of approximately 600 Aboriginal people.  It is a ‘dry-community’, with no alcohol allowed within an 11km radius of the town.  There are often a lot of social and domestic problems associated with alcohol among Aboriginal communities and the people of Santa Teresa have chosen to make their community alcohol-free. 


The 100km dirt track road from Alice Springs to Santa Teresa

Entering Santa Teresa

Spending the weekend in Santa Teresa was a really lovely experience.  It is not a tourist environment like Uluru (Ayers Rock) and other Aboriginal areas of Australia are.  Visitors must be ‘invited’ into the community, by the people of the community.  
Dad walking around the Primary School
In the local Eastern Arrente language Santa Teresa, or “Ltyentye Apurte”, means ‘strand of beefwood trees’.  English is technically the second language.   The school is run by a Catholic organisation which employs the ‘white’ people, like my parents, to teach the 150 or so children. 


The weekend that we were there, the 15-17 year old boys and the men from the community were out in the bush doing ‘men’s business’.  In other words, they were being initiated from boyhood to manhood.  This initiation includes the passing on of the stories of the lands and how they were created.  We are not allowed to know these stories, as they are secret to the Aboriginal people.  They believe that passing them on to the boys as they become men helps to keep the land and community alive and healthy.  The initiation also includes having raised scars formed on the arms and chest, using hot ash.  A tooth is knocked out and they are circumcised.  The boys had been out in the bush for four weeks when we arrived, during which time they were considered ‘dead’.  No one in the village discusses them or uses their name while they are ‘dead’.  They were due back the Wednesday after we left, when they are re-born as Men and welcomed back by the whole community.   While we were there, they were doing something in the hills behind the village, and we were not allowed to go up there or to the northern side of the town.  The Aboriginal people have many customs, stories and traditions that are known only amongst them.  I get the impression that their relationships with white people will only ever go so far.       

The local Church
We went to Mass on the Sunday morning and then had tea in one of the Catholic Brothers house, where we met the women and some of the younger children from the community.  I got handed a gorgeous little 1 year old at the start of Mass and he sat on my knee happily playing with my bracelet throughout the sermon.   The walls were painted floor to ceiling with Aboriginal interpretations of Christian scenes.  The Mass itself was delivered by the local priest, who is Indonesian.  Even the normal Catholic mass was adapted and the prayers talked about how God created the kangaroos and the goannas of the land.  It was pretty cool, especially coming from a country where Catholic Mass and traditions are so by-the-book and rigid.  The Altar boy was a local 10 year old called Dallas.  He did a great job, but had to be prompted and guided on a number of occasions by the Priest.  It was funny and he was in no rush.  It’s a really laid back atmosphere in Santa Teresa and I liked that.    After Mass at Brother Rod’s house, one of the other new teachers gave Dallas his iPhone to look at and he knew his way around it no problem.  He even tried to buy a movie on iTunes, ’The Other Guys’.  What a wee character!
Dad, Mum, Mike and I check out Mum and Dads new backyard!!
I only had a small taste of life in Santa Teresa, as I had to head back to Sydney on the Monday morning (by plane this time!).  However, I am really looking forward to returning for a longer visit once Mum and Dad have settled into the community more.  
This trip was a new experience for me and for my brother Mike.  I loved it!  As a surfer, I can definitely be accused of having a pretty limited experience of the World and of its different cultures, despite how much I have travelled.  It was really nice to experience a new type of travel adventure and culture, outside of surfing, and I look forward to more trips like this in the future.

Now, where’s my fin key. I think I’ll try out new fins in my board for today’s surf session...





Wednesday, October 6, 2010

WHAT AN EPIC FEW WEEKS!

It really has been a special few weeks for surfers living on the Emerald Isle!  Now I know I may be biased, but I reckon Ireland is right up there with some of the best waves in the World!! We have it all...beachies, reefs, slabs, big waves spots.  I write this update with seriously surfed out arms!


In the past I have been prone to being a bit of a 'home bird' when in Ireland, sticking to my local waves around Bundoran.  In recent weeks however, I took to my wee campervan ('Renee the Renault') and hit the road.  It was so much fun cruising around Clare, Sligo and Donegal, surfing new waves, meeting new people and catching up with old friends.  This exploration period finished in Easkey, County Sligo over the weekend, with a competition in SERIOUSLY pumping waves.  The Billabong Easkey Open was the last event of the 2010 Irish Championship Tour and I was soooooo happy to win the event and secure my 3rd Irish Ladies Title.  Then I had a pint of Guinness and then I slept for 2 days!!!

Here are some captioned photos of my recent adventures (click on any of them to enlarge).............


BILLABONG EASKEY OPEN, COUNTY SLIGO OCT 2/3rd
PERFECT CONDITIONS FOR A CONTEST!!!!! Easkey Left, Saturday October 2nd 2010



Chilling in the camper between heats and staying warm.

The Judging Unit at the Billabong Easkey Open 2010

Sometimes we take for granted our knowledge of the ocean.  Silly oblivious kid about to get soaked!!
From the top of Easkey Castle....Shauna getting excited to surf in the final in PUMPING surf with just 4 of us out!
Pretty rainbow in Easkey, Co. Sligo.

Ladies Finalists at the Billabong Easkey Open
L-R Tahlia Britton, Shauna Ward, Easkey Britton, Nicole Morgan 

With my mate Shauna after being crowned Irish Ladies Champion 2010...cheesy grin!


COUNTY CLARE ROAD TRIP


AILEENS, CO CLARE...check out the size of the little humans on the big rock below for some perspective!
This is the life!

Dawn Patrol on my solo camping road trip to Clare


Silly cow!


BUNDORAN 

(the day I get home from exploration....nice!)
The Peak...starting to do her thing!
The Peak with Brendan McGloins' amazing sculpture work
View of 'Out Front' taken from my front deck.....starting to pick up swell! 

THE END.......

What a few weeks........CHEERS!!!


Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Swimming with Doogie the Dolphin on Tory Island



Labrador, Human, Dolphin....swimming together.....one word....UNREAL!!!

One of the most amazing experiences of my life was a visit to Tory Island, which is just off the northern Donegal coastline in Ireland.  I went over with my friend Shauna, and we brought our wetsuits and boards with us in case we found a little wave while we were there....a proper little surf road trip/exploration!


Well boy were we glad we brought our wetsuits! We were cycling around being all touristy on rented bikes when we spotted a Golden Labrador swimming with a Dolphin in the harbour.  I swear I thought I was dreaming and definately rubbed my eyes a few times just to make sure! The dog was swimming around in circles looking for the dolphin, who was teasing him by popping up all over the place and then disappearing again just as the dog got close.

Doogie is a wild dolphin who used to follow the passenger ferry in and out of the harbour.  Ben is the local labrador and every time Doogie comes in, he is straight in there and they swim around together for up to three hours at a time!  A couple of the local boys had been swimming with Doogie before, and while we were there a couple of american scientists were swimming with him and studying his behaviour.  You can imagine how delighted they were when Shauna and I jumped in for a couple of hours like mad eejits full of excitement!!  


The most memorable part of my swim with Doogie was watching him from under the water.  He would swim up towards the surface, tap the Bens' feet with his nose, dart off and then come back to do it all over again.  Ben the labrador was going mad with excitement, swimming in circles looking for Doogie and basically Doogie was taking the piss out of him....I laughed and laughed underwater, blowing bubbles until I ran out of breath and had to reluctantly surface!

Here are a couple of the photos we managed to snap on my waterproof digital camera.  I honestly still can't believe that this actually happened, it was a once in a life time and very random experience!  What made it even better was that we were some of the first people to swim with Doogie.  The week after, the national media got a hold of the story and the special secret was out!  I'm not even sure he comes into the harbour any more.


Doogie the Dolphin chilling on the surface right beside us!



Me getting up close and personal...amazing!





Shauna and Doogie getting up close and personal. Honestly my favourite picture that I have ever taken!
Hello there!


Doogie teasing Ben

Home time after an amazing trip....we got some funny looks from the locals carrying our surfboards!