Indonesia never sleeps. It’s 3am and I’m getting a guided tour of East Java on a dark and wet Indonesian night. Everywhere we go there are Indo crew wandering around, walking along dark streets, hanging on corners, sitting next to baskets and bags full of unidentifiable goods, waiting for friends, family, bemos and god. Every market we drive past is populated with sellers huddled around dim oil lamps chatting with each other or just sitting quietly with a patience that’s rarely witnessed in the western world. I don’t know who buys rice and beans and bananas at 3am, but there’s certainly people there ready to sell them.The reason that I’m getting this guided tour is that our bus to Gland died about an hour and a half out of Gilamanuk, the ferry port up on the in western corner of Bali It looked like a simple case of some dirty fuel. A minor problem, but enough to stop us in our tracks at 3 in the morning. I was pretty much in a coma after just moving house the day before in Australia and then flying into Denpasar only hours earlier. So when the driver Alex finally flagged down a bemo to take us onward, I was a pretty groggy westerner who noticed, but was too tired to make a fuss, that my boards were flimsily tied to the roof with one single strand of what looked like electrical cable, before wedging myself in between the other passengers of our new mode of transport as we headed off into the night towards the ferry to Java.
I was hoping that our passengers were just heading to Banguwangy and that we would be dropping them off before shooting down to Grajagang village. But, as we drove straight thru Banguwangy without stopping I realised this wasn’t going to happen and all I could do was wonder was how far off track we were going to go before heading down to Gland. After a couple of detours up remote one laned rural roads there was enough space on the bench in the back for me to resume my horizontal coma position. After a couple more stops we finally set down the last couple of passengers and headed off down to Gland. By this time it was starting to get light and I had revived sufficiently to groggily sit up and enjoy my continuing tour of the various towns, rivers and bridges of East Java.
By the time we finally reach the river mouth at Grajagan village the boat crew had figured we weren’t going to show and had already gone home. But there’s plenty of other activity here. It’s high tide and the local boats have returned from another nights fishing. It appears to have been a good nights fishing as there are people everywhere carrying buckets of fish, loading them into styrofoam eskies and tipping them into buckets of ice. The place is bustling with activity. Alex, the driver of the original bemo hustles off to find out what’s happened to the boat crew. I’m pretty used to waiting out mornings at this river mouth and flash that I’ve been doing it for 25 years now!....waiting for the sun to come up, waiting for the tide to come in, waiting for supplies and boards to get loaded up. I head to a warung to see if I can find something to eat that’s not going to irritate my spider bite come staph infection that I’ve been battling for the last month.
It’s not long before Alex returns with the boat crew and we quickly load up and head out of the rivermouth and across the bay to Plunkung. As we fly across the bay I slip on the headphones and crank up the i-shuffle to muffle out the roar of the boat’s twin outboard motors. You can’t read the tracks on an i-shuffle so I’ve got no idea of what I’m going to hear. When the familiar wail of Santana’s guitar comes blaring thru the headphones a big smile spreads across my face…perfect music for flying across a glassy bay in a speedboat heading to one of the world’s best waves.
As we fly along a familiar feeling fills my body… a feeling of being alive, a feeling of coming home…it happens to me a often in remote places…especially remote places with fantastic surf.
…Running Wind wonders what he’s really doing all the times that he’s not in these sort of places….what is he choosing….life away from these places feels like a suffocation, some kind of feeble half truth…..a pretence at trying to be normal and feeling satisfied with it, that this is his life and he’s OK with it….that this is just how life is….the mind goes on and on justifying it all while his heart patiently and quietly waits…
Tom Carroll can be really funny. After dinner he has us gasping for air and holding our sides as he recounts some of is earlier travel adventures. At the end we’re begging him to stop. I haven’t laughed so hard for years! We haven’t seen each other for years and one of the first things he tells me is that he still rides a gun that I made him 10 years ago. I feel pretty honoured. Tom can choose from the best shapers in the world and the fact that that he still chooses to ride a gun I built him 10 years ago means a lot to me. We catch up sharing our experiences of the various difficulties of trying to keep marriages going while raising children and fulfilling our passion for surfing at the same time. It feels good to connect. We’ve spent many years of surfing and travelling together. From the early days of surfing together as grommets on the Aussie amateur circuit through to the Hawaii campaigns and pro tour of the late 70’s and early 80’s.
Tom is a very technically aware surfer. I overhear him discussing with Joel Fitzgerald in the bungalow next to mine aspects of surfboard design that very few people understand. A little later on I check out a couple of very interesting 4 fin boards that he’s very excited about. At first I’m completely baffled by the fin placements, but later on in the day the penny drops. I realise that the approach he’s taking is to split the central rear fin of the standard thruster set up into two fins that are moved away from the stringer and closer to the rail. I hope he rides here them at some stage so I can see how they perform.
It’s low tide in the middle of the day and a couple of peaks winding off down near the launching pad look worthwhile investigating. Joel gets drawn to the waves up at Money Trees while Tom , Parrish and I hang at mini launching pads. The tides real low and some of the hollow ones run very shallow. I’m still finding my feet and bringing out the 6’0” twin keel fish for my first surf is probably a bit ambitious. It feels great off the bottom and flies through the sections, but a little shaky coming off the top and trying to bring it back down on the squarer ones. Due to an ongoing spiderbite that I’ve been trying to heal in time for this trip I haven’t surfed for about 6 of weeks and I’m a complete wobbling kook on my first couple of waves. Jason’s probably thinking that I’ve completely lost it and I begin to wonder myself. But by the third wave I get a couple of decent turns in and my confidence starts to return. At the same time I make a mental note to reserve the fish for higher tides when there’s more bottom to the wave. The wounds on my leg are starting to burn so I head in and hang out with Jason up on the dry reef. Both Tom and Parrish slip into a couple of chambers while Joel starts to get a few up at Money Trees. When we check the photos that night it’s obvious that Joel has outsurfed everybody with some tight slashes and one particularly outstanding off the lip. A very gutsy move when you consider how shallow the reef was today.
We’ve got something going on with the turtles. Just before coming here I had a close Koori friend of mine paint the bottom of Nemo, my orange fish. Anthony’s being making and painting killer didges for a while, but is now shifting into doing more painting and I’ve been blown away with the quality of his work. About a week before I left he showed up with a series of turtle paintings. I really liked them, the turtles were exceptional, really well done. But when I dropped my board off to him I left it up to him about what to paint. I was imagining a couple of snakes and a lizard on the desert coloured board. So when we went around to pick it up I was surprised and stoked to see the three turtles on the bottom of the board! He explained to me they represented the journey that Tom, Joel and I were about to make. So when Tom rocks up wearing a turtle necklace and a turtle tattoo under his arm, the synchronicity is impossible to ignore.I ask Tom about the turtles and he tells me a story of being caught in a really heavy situation in the impact zone at Waimea Bay. He had reached a point where he was getting seriously pounded and was seriously starting to feel like he couldn’t hold on through another wave. He had just fought his way to the surface again to get another couple of precious breaths before the next mountain of boiling whitewater mowed him down. As he was sucking down gulps of air and getting ready to dive under again, a huge turtle popped up right next to him and eyeballed him. As Tom looked at the turtle and the turtle looked at him, he felt like the turtle was saying to him “it’s alright mate! You’re going to be OK!” Tom said it was the reassurance from the turtle was what got him through the situation. Later on he discussed the experience with some of the Hawaiians. They explained to him that for them, the turtle represented the life force as well as being a guardian of the ocean. And so, a couple of years later while in Tahiti, where the Tahitians explained that the turtle also represented very similar meanings for the Tahitians, Tom took the opportunity to get a turtle tattoo inside his left upper arm. Personally always felt the eagle to be my guiding spirit creature, a king in it’s domain, that can move with great speed and strength, soaring high above everything with the ability to see far and wide. But I like the idea of taking on the energy of the turtle, a guardian of the ocean with the ability to move gently and peacefully with great wisdom and patience.
…the pain of his wound burns relentlessly….but he knows this is good…..for without it he would not be reminded of what needs to be done, and he knows how easy it is to stray from the path….
The surf’s a little bigger the next day and there’s a couple of fun ones after lunch out at money trees. But the bliss of surfing with just a handful of surfers at Gland gets thrown by the attitude of a couple of surfers. There’s only 4 or 5 of us surfing out at the Moneytrees take off bowl and while there’s not a heap of waves, there’s enough to go around. But a couple of the surfers continually paddle back out and sit inside of the rest of us taking the next set of waves as if the rest of us didn’t exist. I just don’t get it! What are they thinking? I’m tempted to say something but I’m not in the mood for being confrontational so I just move over deeper after they catch another wave. When they paddle back out to sit inside of us again they are now too far inside. They don’t realise what I’ve done until the next set comes and are unable to catch it because they’re too deep. My revenge is sweet as I glide into one of the set waves that they’re now too deep for. But even as I enjoy my revenge I feel a sadness. I would much rather not have to deal with surfers who have this sort of attitude. Paddling back out and sitting directly inside of someone and then claiming the rights to the next wave is an attitude that creates a lot of tension and aggression in the line up. It’s highly disrespectful to the other surfers in the water and is an attitude that comes from surfing against people rather than surfing with other people .
The swells come up a little more today. Even though it’s only a couple of feet bigger, the amount of water in the wave has doubled and there are some waves of consequence. At least one board gets broken and I saw another guy swimming in after his leash didn’t hold up. Later on another guy strolls by with his back fin missing and one of his side fins pushed halfway into the bottom of his board after surfing up onto the dry reef. There’s a couple of wild drops to be had as the tide drops out and it starts doubling up at the money trees take off bowl. But it’s a funny day with a real long time between the bigger sets and not a lot of tubes to be had. Still for most of the day there’s not many guys in the water and the conditions are very clean.
Joel Fitz gets the wave of the day. Joel is a really good surfer. So far, every day he has put in the best performance, caught the best waves and ridden the best barrels. His surfing is smooth, fast and powerful. Today I saw him get a 100yd barrel. I was way down the line and could that everyone was too far inside. As I started lining the wave up I saw someone take off and noticed it was Joel. The wave was fast and he pulled in straight away. But he was miles away and I continued to line up the wave for myself. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed he was still going as section after section poured over him. He was starting to cover some distance and getting closer and closer to me. I started paying less attention to lining up the wave and more attention on Joel. The wave just kept pouring over him as he kept travelling. Pretty soon I’m hooting my lungs out and watching him go flying underneath me. He got axed just past me and as he comes up I’m just hooting my head off! For a moment I realised that I probably could’ve taken the wave and been threading the sections further down the line, but how do you shut someone down who’s just travelled a 100 metres in the barrel? Unfortunately there are people out there who can do it but I’m certainly not one of them.
The surf has dropped again today. I head out on the fish for a couple of waves. I’m pretty shaky at first but when I pick of a reasonable size set, the fish takes off and I start to find my feet. The board has performed well at Lennox up to 8ft and it starts to feel pretty good here, although a deeper concave and an edgier rail to provide better control through the turns wouldn’t go astray here. Something to work on when I go back home. It’s pretty fast and sectioning today with not many barrels to be had. I get one especially fast wave that sections in front of me and as I go out and around the section the fish takes off, flying around the section and shooting back up onto the face with ease. I get a real buzz from this as this is no way a 3 finned, thruster style board would have pulled that off!
…he liked the tranquillity here, the stillness sprinkled with the call off the birds up high in the lush green foliage of the tall trees….every morning at first light he would go down to the water’s edge and pray...he prayed for the stillness of mind he knew that he needed to be able to hear the guiding words of great spirit ….and he prayed for the great spirit to guide him, to give him the strength, the patience and the courage to do what was right…for his mind and his body, for his family, his brothers and sisters, for mother earth and all her creatures….and he prayed for those who did not understand…
The next morning the swell’s a lot stronger and we all get smashed! Joel breaks his board and gets bounced across the reef on his arse. Tom wrenches his shoulder and I step on a landmine. I was coming down thru the end of Moneytrees towards Speedys and backdoored a nice looking bowl. As soon as I pulled in I knew exactly where I was and immediately wished I hadn’t pulled in. I’ve been smashed trying to backdoor this section before. This one piece of reef just goes nuts! It gets too hollow, running off way too fast. It eats me alive every time. I held on to the last minute and tried falling backwards off my board into the explosion. This technique can work well and I’ve used it many times, but not today. As I went up and over the falls, my board came flying back into my chest and I found myself furiously trying to push the fins away from me before I got impaled on them. I finally get my board away from me before I hit the bottom, but not before it gives me one good whack in the ribcage. Then I start getting tumbled across the reef underwater and something, my board I think, hits me real hard on the inside of my left foot. When I come to the surface I’m hurting! My left wrist and elbow are both bleeding from where I got cart wheeled across the reef and my left foot and ribcage are really hurting. But my boards in one piece so I clamber back on and paddle back out.
It turns out be a frustrating session. Right through the high tide it’s a long time between sets and often only one good wave in a set. But when they do come they’re good and some epic waves peel through. But this only makes it more frustrating for the 40 odd surfers in the water. Still everyone pretty much behaves themselves and there’s very few drop ins. But the set waves take their toll today and I see at least 4 boards get popped. As usual Joel gets the longest, deepest barrels. Tomorrow it’s supposed to get bigger.
As predicted, it’s bigger today and there’s some cranking waves. Joel gets seriously hammered down at Speedys. Unlike yesterday, today the wind is from the south and without the east wind Gland is not opening up as well as it could. It was while Joel was trying to avoid a collapsing section that the lip landed right on him knocking him nearly senseless. Although it didn’t injure any particular part of his body, the impact was enough to pretty much finish his session and by the time he’d recovered from the collision, he figured he had enough anyway and came in.
Parrish and Mustafa get some good waves today, taking some bombs at the Launching Pad and pulling into some serious barrels down thru Speedys. But it’s far from perfect Speedys and the boys take a hammering on plenty of waves. I take the opportunity to test out my new 7’6” and play around up at Money Trees. There were some big beautiful waves up at Money Trees today and it’s fun running them down on the 7’6”. If the wind had been east today we would have had some big beautiful barrels up at Money Trees but with south wind we have to settle for glassy, silky faces and racy sections.
…he could feel that the journey was coming to an end and he knew he would be returning home soon… he was grateful for the journey…to taste the wild again…to be a hunter and to connect with the raw power of this remote place…it had given him the clarity that he needed…a vision to bring home… to his wife and his children…to be a father and a husband…to he could see that his guidance and protection for them was the greatest gift he now had to offer Great Spirit,,, to raise his children well and to nurture his wife… and while he knew that he would always return to these places that he loved, he understood that his warrior days were over and that it was now time to become something greater…
Our verandah is a mess…it’s had a real going over! There’s bins tipped over, packets ripped open, things strewn across the floor. The monkeys must have spotted a quiet moment and snuck down from their trees. Probably explains the BB rifle the boys carry around… probably without it, the monkeys would be tearing this place apart. There’s plenty of them here, swinging and jumping around in the trees around the camp. Every morning in the little temple just outside of my hut, the monkeys come down and raid the offerings that have been placed.
There were beautiful glassy waves down at Speedy’s today. Lot of people though! Not really enough waves to go around. I position myself for the longer bowl at Speedys but get really frustrated with crew coming from too far over. They get a good run but are always too deep on the ones that I’m looking for. But still I keep getting tricked thinking that they are going to make it and giving them the benefit of the doubt only to turn around and see their heads popping up just where the long fast section starts. I get a couple but with so few rides I can’t get tuned in enough to really start lining it up how I want to. I end up feeling pretty disappointed and after getting snaked a couple of times I remember why I used to love coming to these places when they were pretty much unknown and empty. On days like today I feel like I’d rather not be here than have to suffer through the frustration of not being able to get the waves I want.
…he finishes every day with a ritual of silence as the suns sets…he meditates, praying for the understanding that he’s desperately seeking…day after day he wonders why Great Spirit will not reveal it to him…or why is he unable hear the words of wisdom that he needs….finally they come, the answers that he needs….he almost laughs when he recognises them…so simple, so basic….simple truths that he already knew so very well but had been overlooking…it was almost as if he had been looking too hard…the answer had always been there…already inside of him all along…
Shin lives in the bungalow across from mine and I stop by for a chat. He’s here for 4 months. Shin grew up in Osaka, but became disillusioned with modern Japanese culture and developed a preference for tropical reef surf. He eventually found himself living on a remote island near Okinawa in the chain of islands that extend southwards from the main islands of Japan and is now producing a natural salt from this island, which he sells throughout Japan. We discuss the insanity of the money driven culture of modern society where too many values, particularly success, status and happiness are measured by material wealth. He tells me that 95% of the Japanese people he talks to are disillusioned and not happy with the direction modern society is heading. Like us in the West they are very concerned but feel powerless to do anything about it. We agree that the modern governments no longer represent the people who elect them and are not really concerned with the general well being of the people as a whole. How they are subservient to the financial requirements of the tiny minority who control most of the wealth. We reflect that the happiness of this elite minority is paid for by the suffering of the majority who are furiously pursing the tiny portion of the world’s wealth that’s left available to them.
Shin shares with me some of the practises and values of traditional Japan culture that were much more focused on spiritual values that have been lost in the modern consumer driven Japanese society. He tells me of one interesting traditional practise where people would gather in small huts around a hemp flower fire, passively inhaling the cannabis fumes as a means of relaxing, focusing and being more sensitive to what needed to be spoken. This would be used for making agreements and sorting out differences between people as well as observing various cycles of nature. But this, like many other practises, was shut down when Japan opened its doors to the outside world.
he observes himself holding on tightly to what he believes is important, what he thinks he deserves, to what he believes will pay off…and yet when he finally and truly lets go, relief floods through him and an opening is made for joy to return….and when something arrives to fill the space that has been made, he wonder why did he struggle and suffer for so long…
The swell’s just a touch smaller than yesterday but the crew has thinned out big time. Tom and a lot of the more serious surfers left yesterday while Parrish, Gobleg and Luke left today. Even so, I wait for most people to have their morning surf and go out just after midday as the high tide starts dropping out. There’s still a couple of reasonable sets at Speedys and I head straight for it. There’s only one person out, Andy from Victoria and we laugh and hoot each other as it pulses a steady stream of head to double head high sets for the next 40 minutes. We miss some really good waves by being too deep sometimes, too far out at others and occasionally get caught inside. But it doesn’t matter, there are only two of us out and we catch plenty of good waves. It’s a real fun relaxed session and Andy and I are grinning from ear to ear. I get one long one that links section after section and although not that big of a wave, it probably ends up being my longest tube ride of the trip. The tide drops out pretty quick and we both opt to head in while we can still paddle the lagoon.
It feels very peaceful this afternoon. There’s only a couple of surfers left in the water and not many left in the camp. We’ve got lucky, catching Gland with hardly anyone around. It’s real special when it’s like this. When there’s lots of surfers around their presence tends to overpower the feeling of this place. But now that it’s quiet, the magic of Gland becomes more obvious. The afternoon sun bounces golden light off the draining lagoon, lighting up the clearings at the edge of the forest where we gather to check the surf and observe the setting sun. The breeze rustles gently through the trees as the birds call to each other. As I squint into the sparkling ocean I can just make out a couple of surfers bobbing in between the winding offshore peeling walls. I head up the track to the camp as the forest gently hums away. A tiny squirrel scurries across the track in front of me. Later as the light fades, the racoons will be foraging around the camp as the insects get their nightly hum going. All is peaceful at Grajagan this afternoon.
It’s our last day today and already I can taste the first inklings of not being here any longer. No more peaceful strolls along the paths underneath the vibrant, thick green foliage that soars above them. No more gazing out across the wide expanse of the lagoon at the long winding waves peeling down the reef. No more marvelling at the unfailing offshores that blow in everyday and the endless feathering lips they create. I gaze out across the vast bay to the massive cliffs that rise up out of it on the far side. The midday sparkles on the water create a vast glittering, shimmering field upon which a couple of traditional Javanese fishing boats quietly bob. It doesn’t matter that the surf is tiny today. Just to be here is a fortunate privilege. I realise how much I love this place...it is truly magnificent! This afternoon will be last sunset. I hope the giant volcanoes to the north will rise above the clouds for one last glimpse of them…
I was speaking to Puma who runs Bobby’s camp here. Puma is a gem. An endless supply of good vibes. Always smiling, always asking how you are and always being very genuine about it. He spends 9 months of the year here. He misses his family back in Bali but says he feels like he goes a bit nuts when he goes back to Bali…so many people, so much noise…so much traffic. He says Grajagan is his life… not a bad life…
…as he sits quietly in the shade of the tree he feels his breath gently rising and falling like the ocean swells…as he surrenders deeper and deeper he can feel the rhythm of his heart rising and falling just like the ocean swells also…he prays for the patience, strength and courage to practise the knowledge that he has been reminded of…he knows from experience that this is often not easy when he goes back…dealing with a world that has no interest in the timing, movement and needs of the heart… he can feel the fear in his heart from this knowing and the mind desperately trying to start up….to find a solution…but he knows that the mind cannot do this…it is a job for the heart and he stays within his heart…. reassuring it….letting the gentle, yet strong, fullness of trust flood in and dissolve the tight thin bands of fear… the trust is warm and soft and he lets it fill his heart… jumping from the cliff top edge of control…freefalling into the vast weightless void of surrender…
Jim Banks
