Hii Yeee,
I know I just sent a story yesterday, but I’ve got to get these few off before we leave for our next adventure…see if you can guess what it is? I’ll tell you in a few days if you can’t.
After surfing at Trial Harbor it is becoming quickly apparent that west coast Tazzie locals are absurdly friendly and generous. Not just in that everyone says G-day but in that out surfing, its just me and a local guy and he says, “surf like a pig man, take every wave you can, I’ve already surfed this morning, I’ll just pick off the ones you don’t go for.” Now who on earth has ever heard a surfer say that, wouzers, like another planet.
Our visit to Granville harbor proved no exception. Upon acquainting ourselves with the town and surrounding area and being sufficiently sure there weren’t any good waves we were missing out on we decided to go for a bit of a snorkel, see if we could find any abalone in the bay. (For anyone who’s never heard of abalone, it is a shellfish that the Japanese market pays 100 dollars a kilo for, tasty stuff.) It’s the middle of the day and the heats got us pretty lethargic, so much so that all our snorkeling gear is strewn about and we’re just loungin in the van, out of the sun, trying to motivate to pull our wetsuits on. Just happens we’re parked close to the local boat ramp and over walk a curious looking fellow, obviously he’s a fisherman or at least part fisherman as he’s just hopped out of his boat but he doesn’t look like the stereotypical Aussie fisherman, around 100kg he’s wearing rubber booties, real short shorts torn up to the waist on one side, a black skull covered biker t-shirt that reads, ‘let those who ride decide’ and a black felt cowboy had, and by the way he walks he looks more like he’s just stepped out of a rodeo than a boat, “surfed any waves around Granville yet?” is the first thing out of his mouth, mind you it is snorkeling gear all over the ground not surf gear. Maybe he’s a mind reading, motorcycle, rodeo, fisher man with really short shorts, I think.
“Na,” we answered, “couldn’t really figure out where the breaks were.”
“Ah we got heaps a waves round here, right there” pointing to the middle of the bay “ gets really good, holds up to 30 feet, nice spot to practice on big waves cuz you can sit wide and just pick off the ones you want, but a couse the swell is to small right now.”
Looked like our renaissance man was a big wave surfer too.
“Going out diving?” “Yah we’re gunna look for some abs” “right over there in the middle of the bay you’ll find plenty a dinner plate sized uns,” he says forming his hands into a large circle.
Mind you we’ve hardly ever seen abs half that size.
“Lots of crayfish too, just got to know how to look for em, dig around in the seaweed you know.”
That was enough to get us fired up to pull our wetsuits on and plop into the water, free dinner.
Then…something that stifeled our enthusiasm a bit, we asked him what he’d been fishing for off the boat? “O mostly crayfish and we set nets for small fish too, but we got a great white shark tangled up in the net two days ago, 13 feet long, probably just a juvenal, it was already dead when we tried to pull it in, had to drag it to shore and have a backhoe lift it out of the water it was so heavy. Its jaw was so big I fit my entire head and shoulders inside.
13 feet long, that’s like stacking my twin on my head and getting him to raise his arms!!!! Holy *$&%*$(#*#&#*@)@)*&%&$ #&*#(%$)$%)$*#&#^@^@%#$&, maybe we didn’t want to go snorkeling after all.
“Ooo… so it was far off shore I hope,” gasped Rachael.
“O no, not at all, just right over there” he pointed. “Any who I’m off.”
We sat there a while thinking about the shark and trying to decide how badly we really need a free dinner, we did have plenty of rice and baked beans. Then he appeared again, “ahh you guys will probably never find any crayfish, its impossible unless you know what your doing, here you can have this one my uncle and I just pulled in.” he said, plunking a big live cray into our wetsuit box. “If your sticking around this afternoon I can take you up the coast for a surf if you like.” “Sure” we replied.
Staying in only knee-deep water and only a few seconds flipper from the shore we successfully retrieved some abs.
Hoping into Andrews truck it was a wild track out to the surf break, 4 wheel low, churning sand, over dunes, through mud pits and over huge jagged rocks. While in the truck we learned Andrew was 27, left school at age 11, worked on ab boats, fishing boats, driven tour boats, was a plastered and currently worked in a nickel mine, he owned 2 houses, his own truck, boat, Harley, was a competitive bull rider (which explained the hat, but still not the short shorts) and was getting married in two months. Probably the most friendly person we’ve ever met traveling, who just gives strangers an 80 dollar crayfish and takes them surfing.
Arriving at the surf spot, while pulling our wetsuits on Andrew asked, “you guys got a mobile (ie. cell phone).” “Na, we didn’t bring ours cuz its Optus which doesn’t work anywhere in Tazzie.”
“Doesn’t matter if it doesn’t have bars, you can use any phone to call the shark attack emergency line, you’ve heard of that?”
“Your joking right?” says Rachael.
“O no, not at all, its 112 or 122 I can never remember, call it from anywhere and they’ll send a helicopter, ahh doesn’t matter,” he said as he jogged off towards the beach.
What the hell?? We seriously contemplated not going out but what we’re we gunna do sit around twiddling our thumbs and watch him catch waves all alone. I think not!! Against our better judgment we went out anyways.
Waves were pretty good and no one was nipped, successful on all accounts.
The Abs and cray were delicious!
Love from the UnderSide,
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