The endless cause
Memories of an Australian childhood bring home why surfing and activism should always go hand-in-hand.
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As a grommet growing up in an early-nineties Melbourne, Australia, to me surfing and activism always held hands. But as I get older and see the surf industry boom, I also notice an insurgence of four-wheel driving, surf brand–clad mega consumers chucking their ciggy butts on the beach and I cant help but wonder: is the connection between surfing and our responsibility to take care of the ocean as strong as it should be?
As an eight year old, in tow of my parents and brother, it wasn’t unusual to wade knee-deep through mangroves before paddling out to a protest with a bunch of people from the Surfriders club. These shenanigans were somewhat confusing to me as they often happened at the BHP steel works. I remember thinking: Why are we paddling when there aren’t any waves? Why are they screaming at us? And why is water so ugly and smelly?
Retrospectively it makes sense: BHP were pumping crap into the ocean and releasing toxic fumes into the air. Among other potential disasters, if one of the transport tankers sank, the local penguin and seal populations would be decimated. This pissed people off so something was done in protest. This was the beautiful breed of no-bullshit activism that keeps many of Australia’s coastal gems intact.
At twelve, I graduated from surfing the lazy reef breaks on the Westernport side of the Peninsula and moved on to the quick sand bar breaks of Gunnamatta Ocean beach. It’s here at Gunnamatta where I truly learnt what it meant to ‘look after the place’.
Like everyone else that swam or surfed there, I came to know the First Reef break at Gunnamatta as the 'shit pipe'. In a similar setup to Bondi Beach in Sydney, 42% of the city of Melbourne’s domestic and industrial waste is pumped via a 57km pipeline to the ocean that rests only 20 metres from the shoreline. On days when the current is strong and the wind onshore, thick greyish foam gathers in the rock pools. As grommets competing in inter-school surfing competitions, we'd fill in time by playing 'water sumos', with losers being tossed into the unidentifiable floaties and stink pools at the shore.
The toxic outfall plume at Gunnamatta Beach
Finding the situation unacceptable, local activists began the Clean Ocean Foundation and began cataloguing the collective earaches, sore eyes and throat infections on medical report forms, gathering evidence to mount a case to get the pipe shut down and a water treatment plant developed. These folks continue to put pressure on the state government to upgrade a water treatment facility meaning that most of the water from the city could be recycled and re-used – Australia, is after all in the middle of one of its worst droughts.
In recent years there has been a commitment to close down the pipe, yet the concern remains: can we trust the word of politicians, particularly now given funds are tighter than ever and the project is a difficult one?
So until the pipe is actually closed, the Clean Ocean Foundation remains. The group’s existence proves that in some parts, surfing and activism is inextricably linked and there is an overwhelming need to protect the ocean which holds us up, calms us down and gives us somewhere nice to play. Can you imagine if everyone who has ever picked up a board, worn a surf brand or subscribed to an element of 'the lifestyle' took it upon themselves to look after the ocean? I can, and it’s a world without a ciggy butt or shit pipe in sight.
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The endless cause (text) by Jess Miller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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