new surf dialogue

Waipare Homestead. Home sweet as home.

We’ve been staying at the Waipare Homestead for two weeks now. The house, tucked off the beach amongst Norfolk pine, Moreton Figs and copious kawa-kawa was built in the 1880’s out of Kauri wood – almost head to toe. Scrubbs bought this place two decades ago and he and his wife Louia have been hosting WWOOFers for 16 years. Within minutes I was deep into conversations on Miki Dora, Michael Peterson, and my Re-Thinking the Endless Summer theories. Scrubbs has been surfing since the early 1960’s and Louia, having grown up on the Mahia Peninsula – home to well known and well guarded waves, as well as being a Miki Dora hideout during the 1970’s, is a connoisseur of surf culture herself.

“Your doing you thesis on surf culture! Surf culture!” she exclaimed and giggled when I told them the purpose of my side of this New Zealand experience. “So you’re a bum! A good for nothing! Ha Ha! Come and help me dig a trench around Honey Lee’s tent outside. We need to keep her shit high and dry, right bro?”

The rain kept coming too. By morning, the roads where washed out all over the area. Some rising 6 meters or more above their normal flow lines. A giant plum tree went down near the orchard that first night, and by the following afternoon, Christine and I, along with the two other WWOOFers – one from Florida who had been here for two months, and another from Germany who had spent time here four years ago and had just dropped by the previous day to say hello –  were out in the intermittent downpours with chainsaws and branch wompers, hacking away at the felled debris.

The girls – Louia, her two daughters Honey Lee and Juliet, and Cassie, the Floridian WWOOFer all left for the AC/DC concert in Auckland a few days after Christine and I arrived. The two of us, along with Scrubbs, would spend the next several days locked into the dribbling beach break peaks out the back door and into conversations over the incredible history and perceptions that surfing has and has given to us. The mind altering lifestyle that becomes you, submerged in the ocean’s life lessons. Philosophy  and politics and the madness of the human condition and spirit were passed around the dinner table each night. We hooted and hollered at our own surf movie screenings held in the living room. A viewing of The Endless Summer brought many of my idea’s back into perspective, and we cringed and cracked up at Bruce Brown’s horribly off-color imperialist colonial comments about the “primitive” African’s that Mike Hynson and Robert August encountered during their search for the perfect wave. Thomas Campbell’s film ‘Sprout’ blew Scrubbs away with the embracing of boards long and short with abstract concaves, convexes and varied numbers of fins and his generally brilliant artistic representation of surf culture. We also worked around the yard, helping get the grounds ready for the next wedding being help here in a few weeks.

After a fun morning session the night after viewing Sprout, Scrubbs stoke meter about to burst, Christine and I had

Scrubbs, Crista and me. K. Beach

 laced up our boots and were heading out to attack the Plum tree after the three of us had just finished a potatoe and egg brunch. “I reckon the waves are still looking pretty good; probably time for another session.” He had just been down to the water to survey the scene. I started to say, “oh yeah? Christine and I were about to get on that tree again…” and was quickly cut off by a moment of hysteria from Scrubbs, “Fuck work man, the waves are better than this morning! Lets have another session! That other shit isn’t going anywhere! Priorities man!” So, when in Rome… Scrubbs also stoked us out with all his life long local knowledge of the area’s surf breaks. We took a ride up the hill for a surf check one morning, and based off the visual clues we could acquire from a vista where miles and miles of coast could be observed, he directed us to the right spot at the right time, and I finally scored some decent surf in New Zealand.

A few of our days this past week were also spent on a friend of Scrubbs vineyard, helping them prepare the vines for the nets to keep off the birds. The berries are filling with sugar, and we enjoyed the change of pace and hands on experience with the local wine culture. However, we are really in tune with the fact that New Zealand is in no way the ‘100% Pure’ landscape that the tourism board sells to the world. “That’s a fucking scam isn’t it,” Scrubbs quickly replied when asked about the slogan, and then raising concerns and giving examples of how polluted New Zealand has become. Choppers saturate the local squash and corn fields with chemicals on a regular basis; one of them swooping across the neighbor’s fields while we plucked new growth off the vines, causing both Christine and I to worry and wonder. “We were rained on with those little white pellets just the other day from a copter,” Louia mentioned during one of our conversations, “Fucking bastards.” One afternoon in Gisborne, we caught part of a documentary on the chemical 1080, which was playing on a sidewalked television outside a hippy store, which is used locally and a scary topic for biologists and environmentalists from around the world. The forestry practices have long been destroying the landscape too, and the cattle and sheep industry polluting the ground water supplies, with signs up in all the campgrounds and holiday parks warning people to boil their water before drinking.

Yesterday, we continued to plug away at the Plum tree, Christine going for an afternoon swim with Honey Lee and Juliet, me reading the through the stack of books on surf history and local folklore that Scrubbs had dug up for us. The sun has dried up the downpours and the road is waiting. Scrubbs and I hongi’ed and contact info was passed along to us. Surf bro’s done south that would love to show us around. Off toward the South Island. Off to track down Miki’s ghost.

P.S.

Consequently, I have a theory on Miki Dora’s reincarnation. Being the consummate recluse, staunch deplorer of crowds, surf mainstream-dom, and lover of this particular region of New Zealands North Island; I just might be on to something in believing that he has come back to us in the form of Moko – the people famed people friendly dolphin that has been cruising the Gisborne coastline for several years now. Possible retribution for the scams he pulled to live the search of finding those perfect empty waves. Could be worse…  Just a thought…