A chat with Wayne & Jarrah Lynch

By Andy Summons. First published in Paper Sea Quarterly Vol. 1 Iss. 1.

A note from the author – this is the first interview I ever did and you’ll see how dead set I was to completely remove my narrative voice from the piece lest it dilute the rare and wise words from one of Australia’s greatest surfers. It’s a stylistic decision I somewhat regret, but I do enjoy the collection of stories, insights and opinions Wayne and Jarrah shared with me over a cup green tea in their living room on Victoria’s surf coast. I was so nervous on the way to this interview I stopped off at a beach and had a bodysurf to untangle some of my nerves.

Wayne: ‘Victoria was a surfing wilderness. It wasn’t ever on the map at all. The road past Lorne didn’t even exist. A lot of the people who have grown up here or spent a lot of time round Lorne have seen that change, whereas the Gold Coast has always been the Goldy. A lot of those other places haven’t had that extreme change like Victoria. I mean I could take you for a drive and say ‘well I know the first three guys to surf that spot or that spot’. Now there are 50 guys out there that will drop in on you and tell you to fuck off when you’ve been there for 40, 50 years. 

There’s a really weird psychology in Victoria that has something to do with the drastic transition. No one really feels comfortable, even the locals, it’s all grab n go, fuck you mate, and paddle inside. 

I think it’s fucked. I can hardly believe it. The relentless exploitation behind the surf industry blows me away. How much money is enough? How much do they need? What do they need it all for? Where are they going? I’m not anti-profit, everybody has to live, I’m realistic about that. Just because I’ve never made a profit doesn’t mean I disagree with it but I look at surfing in those early years and we truly had something so special. 

We lived in such a unique time. We had everything we actually needed, then the surf companies started up and went and fucking sold it, just to end up like the society we originally walked away from. They sold the uniqueness of surfing as a commodity to be traded just like any other item that can be bought off a shelf. Now, surf companies marginalise people or ideas that might be a bit political or challenge their hegemony. 

Money didn’t come into surfing till the 70s. In those early years we’d rock up to comps because we all had an interest in competing with one another but it was nothing like the events now. The world titles were only once a year then so we had a massive amount of time where the mindset was just about the experience of surfing and how we could develop and push what was possible. 

Surfing was an explorative and creative process. If you had to compete and you were experimenting with something that wasn’t applicable to that contest criteria, it kinda rolled you pretty quick. It was an odd contrast between developing your surfing and adhering to the rigid criteria of competitions. 

Competitions weren’t the driving factor of our surfing. Sometimes the criteria really worked against what I was doing with my surfing, so it started to cause a split between me and the industry. I felt almost schizophrenic about my surfing - you couldn’t have this really creative and experimental way of surfing, then suddenly try and conform to a rigid structure, it just became too hard. 

A decision had to be made eventually, you either went the competition way or the explorative way. There’s a fundamental difference in the psychology between competing and explorative surfing. I was much more interested in that explorative level, including looking for new breaks and incorporating surfing into my life in a fundamental way so that it became a way of life. 

At the same time as this dichotomy split in surfing, we had a government in Australia that were so sycophantic that Prime Minister Menzies pleaded with the Americans to let us get involved in the Vietnam War. People like myself, and there were many of us, took a stand and said no to the war. 

At eighteen you could be drawn in the draft but we weren’t allowed to vote until we were twenty-one. I didn’t put my papers in but my birthday came up in the ballot and I was conscripted to war. I refused to go, and for that I was pursued as a criminal. We weren’t considered old enough to vote but we were considered old enough to kill or be killed for this country. It was a disgrace and we were treated like scum for protesting that. 

Society was polarised by the war and we were hunted. The people who supported the war were very active and vocal with their persecution of youth and surfing. Surfing was seen as subversive and we were looked at as somehow undermining the very structure of society. Although there were a lot of people who were supportive – they weren’t in power. I had to grow up fast because I suddenly realised that my own society was against me.’

I was well known in Victoria at that time and being a surfer made me a high profile symbolic target for the government. The factions of society that didn’t like surfers would say, ‘oh that Lynch mongrel’s dodging the draft”. I had to learn how to disappear. I had to learn how to be invisible. 

It was a wilderness along the southern coast. As soon as you went the other side of Lorne the road became a narrow dirt track. If it rained heavy I couldn’t get along the road, the wheels would spin, I would have to turn round and come home. Down south there was no tourism, there were no police there was no one except farmers and people from Colac sometimes fishing on the beach. The wilderness made it easy to disappear. I was only on the run from the government for two and a half years. My parents were very supportive. 

When I came home my Mum and Dad would hide the car in the garage. I’d spend a bit of time at home, maybe shape a board in the workshop I had under the house. I kept a little veggie garden next door, which I worked either early or late in the day. I’d rip out veggies and go back down the coast. 

The Labour Party was very supportive of me dodging the draft too. Jim Cairns (a Labor Politician) contacted my Mum and said if I needed money or needed to be hidden he could help. I was invited to go to rallies and talk but there was never any pressure to do that. It was Jim Cairns who really developed the anti-Vietnam, anti-conscription momentum. They had secret organisational networks that supported everyone. I knew guys that used to float all over Australia thanks to that support network. 

Before the war, in Lorne, the cops used to come down and try to get me out of the water for other reasons. They just didn’t like surfers so they’d come down and harass us for no good reason. I was forever getting carted up to the cop shop. I’d sit there and go, ‘whaddya want?’. They’d just be arseholes and bully me a while then let me go. 

I used to wag school all the time too. One day the teachers actually came down with the cops and they were waving me in from the surf and I was sitting out there throwing them to bird shouting ‘go and get fucked!’. The next day Mum wrote a note saying “I’m sorry for Wayne’s absence from school, he was really sick in the morning” and they couldn’t do a thing about it. 

The relentless vilification of surfers made me mistrust the power structures of our politicians and government and the fabric of our society. I could never trust it again, ever. I look to youth to make changes. I’d love them to be able to go out and really start to think about issues and observe for themselves what’s really going on behind the news, not only in surfing but society too. Things like nuclear power et cetera. If you can’t have a social conscience individually and collectively the shits gonna hit the fan and there’s gonna be an enormous amount of suffering at some point. People like Rupert Murdoch have so much power and they wield it without any conscious. I’m sure to hear from one of Rupert’s people shortly for that rant. 

Part of the difference between my generation and Jarrah’s is that they simply haven’t had something as significant and divisive as the war in Vietnam and conscription forced upon them. Younger generations haven’t had such an urgent call to jump to attention and sharpen their views. There was another factor back in the golden era of surfing that I haven’t heard mentioned much and that’s the economy. We could live so cheaply. High quality fruit and veggies were prolific, all the farmhouses and places in towns had veggie gardens and fruit trees and people swapped and traded bag of apples for a bag of apricots. 

That economic moment in Australian history was conducive for the surfer’s way of living. If you didn’t want much except your car, your wetty, a surfboard and shelter, you could really live an incredible life. That chance meeting of social and economic factors is unlikely to occur ever again. 

So there was more to the so-called golden era of surf, than most people acknowledge. A lot of factors were at play, it wasn’t all about the shortboard revolution, we had the time, there weren’t the crowds of today and there was an enormous opportunity to create a life however you wanted it to be. I used to sit on the beach for hours and watch flawless surf day after day and there was no need to be out there, it was just there to be appreciated. The mentality is different now, there’s a different relationship to it all. It’s more like ‘oh shit it’ll be crowded in half an hour, better get out there, shit its five o’clock here they come’. 

The relationship between life and surfing was really different. I can’t adjust to how it is now because the freedom of my youth is ingrained in me. I don’t surf that much anymore. I wait for a moment at a certain break at a certain time when I know it won’t be crowded. It means I don’t ride the best surf as often as I used to, but I’m happy to ride whatever without the hustle and bustle and competitiveness. 

For a few years I did a lot of sailing. Until the bank decided they wanted their money back - bastards. Sailing got me out and about and away from the crowds. Sailing offered me what surfing did in those early years. Once I put the sails up I was gone, I left it all behind. 

Paddling out in a crowded situation is hopeless for me. I don’t get the waves, I become frustrated, I get disappointed with the whole situation. Everything must change, it’s inevitable and you’ve just gotta adapt, that’s common sense but surfing is special, it’s different to everything else. To reduce it to a competitive grovel, trying to outwit people and getting caught up in the whole one-up-man-ship psychology – I just can’t do that and surf at the same time. By the time I get a wave I’m scattered. For a lot of guys that’s all they’ve know, they function like that and they can deal with it. Jarrah struggles with it and he’s a young guy in a new world and a lot of young guys do struggle with it too. 

There’s a rhythm you can pick up with the ocean and if your concentration isn’t solely devoted to that rhythm the whole way you surf is really different. When you get older you learn to change and adapt and be more accepting. I’ve done a lot of surfing, I’m nearly 60 and to go out and wanna keep surfing and surfing is selfish. I’ve had my time, I’m happy just pottering about. It’s the same in anything, it becomes greedy if you try to hold onto it too long. Life’s all about a balance and that balance shifts through the years. There are a lot of other things in life that are very important outside surfing, like trying not to die too quick. A lifestyle based around happiness is everything. 

A larger percentage of our generation wanted to shape and learn to design their own boards because it offered such a different relationship to your surfing, a much deeper one I think. When I was young, being a surfer-shaper more than wanting to be a world champion was more important. The surfer-shaper was the person who drove the whole evolution in terms of experience. It didn’t come from world champions it came from surfer-shapers. Like Simon Anderson putting another fin on the board. I think it’s good for kids to muck around with their boards, out in the garage, its super important to gain that experience and insight and that relationship to your surfing. 

The shaping aspect of surfing is missing in a lot of places. The pros now are on tour full on so they don’t have as much time to sit down and experiment and ride all sorts of obscure designs. They constantly need boards they’re comfortable with so that they can perform at exceptionally high standard at every contest. Unless young guys, who can really surf, take up shaping and experimenting, it’s not a good outlook. 

Good surfing is very subjective. For me it’s about really basic, powerful, traditional surfing. That strong off-the-bottom carving up the face, arcing turns, using your rail as well as fins through turns. That doesn’t exclude any of what the pros do now. Some of the aerials they do are great- I love it. I’m not anti those sorts of things. Some airs are ridiculous but some are sensational. 

At the moment the pros boards are very short. I think Kelly Slater’s boards are too short. His surfing has changed since he got on those really short boards. He’s surfing brilliantly of course, he’s adapting with the times but there’s an aesthetic that’s not there that was a while ago. Maybe it’ll change when they get on some bigger boards later, ya know? Good power- surfing, is what we always called it, that’s good surfing to me.’

Jarrah: ‘Improving your surfing comes from just being in the ocean, it comes from that whole surfing experience. It’s a great way to find piece of mind. Commercially surfing is heading towards Target and Kmart but I imagine, and hope, that there will always be people more deeply involved in surfing than that superficial, commercial aspect. The ocean offers such a sense of freedom and pleasure – it’s fun. I love the feeling, I love being around it. Surfing opens your eyes in quite a few different ways. It allows you to see the world from a different perspective, especially when you’re surfing down south [in Victoria] and you look in and there’s a huge mountain range running down to the beach. 

Surfing has given me a deep understanding of the ocean. I’ve learnt about weather patterns and maps, and that knowledge helps me find good waves. Surfing has given me a way to be healthy, it’s given me great joy as an outlet for creativity, both surfing and shaping, and a way to connect with my father and friends. It’s even given me a job. 

It can be hard being a surfer too, especially growing up with Wayne here. He grew up in an era where he could sit on the beach for hours with no one around and watch the surf. Whereas if I see waves I’m in my wetty in half a second and I hover down to the water, praying no one else has seen it. I’ll have my hour, have a ball and come in. Surfing has become so popular it’s hard to have a surf alone or with just me and dad, away from muppets who have no idea about proper surfing etiquette. 

I think Dad really had the best time period for surfing. To be able to surf all day and come in late, have a fire on the beach and sleep there that night is something we missed out on. I really like the fact that if you had the desire or need, you could disappear down the coast and surf on your own. 

I started out surfing on a big thick foam thing from Coles or something. It went sick, a chunk of foam wrapped in plastic. The first real board I had dad shaped for me. It was a 6’8”, thick and big so I could stand up. Then Dad drowned me six times and I didn’t like surfing any more. After a while, around year seven, my mates were starting to get into surfing so I thought I’d give it another crack, away from Dad. He made me another board and the obsession grew from there. 

I was riding thrusters the whole time then I made my first board when I was sixteen. I had to find something else, Dad’s boards were that bad. Nah, it was actually for work experience. I ended up shaping, spraying and glassing a single fin, which I still have. I surfed it for ages because I’d shaped it, so I was frothing at the bit. I got back onto thrusters for a while. I shaped a little dumpster diver thing for a mate but I’ve stolen that back for smaller days. I find Alaias fascinating because that’s how surfing began going back to when the Hawaiians were surfing big planks go better and faster. I always have a 6’0” Alaia in the car, my normal 6’4” thruster and if it’s small I’ll throw my fish in that Dave Palmer shaped. They’re the essential three, then it’s just layers upon that. 

Most people who think Alaias are a passing fad don’t understand them or probably can’t ride them. You need to be extraordinarily persistent with them. They’re just a piece of wood, a lot more goes into them than that but paddling them is a chore. You’re pretty much swimming but they catch waves quite easily even though the tail sinks so low. Riding Alaias is a bit similar to snowboarding in that you’re only going off your rail. 

Its great to ride different shapes and boards because you get into a comfortable feeling with having pretty much anything under your feet and that transfer makes your surfing feel even better. You can go, ‘okay I’m going back to that board I know that I need to have my feet wider or move my feet up the board to find that sweet spot there’. I enjoy learning new things with surfing. There’s no wave the same, no board the same even if you shape it with the same dimensions its going to come out differently. 

I try and shape as much as I can. The last board I shaped came from a blank I found that had been run over. I chopped the tail off, sanded it down and gave it to a mate, who glassed it and he got a board out of it. I still haven’t done the full start to finish shaping and glassing properly. 

Creating the equipment for something you love doing is a valuable thing. It gives you more opportunities and freedom to develop your surfing, which is basically what Dad did. Shaping gives you total creative freedom and enables you to be self-sufficient. It makes you truly think about how you surf the board on any wave and allows you to manipulate the board to suit. It’s good to be able to make something with your hands, whether its shaping or any other art form, it’s a positive thing. Big powerful surfing’s probably my definition of good surfing, especially to watch. Bottom turns, especially around here, are non-existent. A lot of guys my age, doing local comps and stuff have no bottom turn. They do big turns at the top, they do sick turns but there’s nothing coming up to them, they’re just gutless. I really like that powerful, critical surfing. Big turns right in the pocket and heaps of speed, with speed you can do anything. 

I guess the only thing I can’t really get used to, surfing around Victoria, is the ever increasing number of surfers and the competitive attitude and hassle in the water. That’s not the way I grew up surfing with my dad and friends and it’s upsetting that it has become the norm now. If you don’t mind a little drive there are quite a few diverse options available without the crowds and the attitude. If you let it, that competitive attitude can ruin a surf and it just doesn’t need to be that way.’