From: NJT
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: The Moon Camp – over & out
Date: 7 Sep 1996
The stringer on the Banks board is 1/4 inch thick, fairly fat for such a skinny gun. The thing is bulletproof, having survived both Qantas and my mistakes. Its nice to see it again, all my luggage arrived yesterday, a day later than I.
The only thing I worried about was possibly losing Jim: 7’2″ x 18.5″ x 2 3/8″ (with the most impressive pink and red DEC PDP-11 grip) On its tail Jim Banks has signed “Capricorn” which is the tropic you pass over to reach the Moon.
While I can’t say I caught more waves on the Banks, I swear the reef interludes were gentler as I pulled him better than he towed me. “You’re not supposed to judge a board by the wipeouts,” the locals advised me, but really the Banks let me play over my head and live, a good forgiving board (less of it to whack me uptop).
On the fifth day, full moon, deep tide, I blew the go-out and got washed into a cave behind an encrusted sharp rock. After escape and reconsideration I went out again and got knocked into same cave. My last day, good reef tattoos already in place, blood and black-n-blues and that general I’m-happy-my-board-is- still-in-one-piece phase made me quit, swearing I’d come back and buy a cave soon, I could only reckon the Reef was God’s way of keeping the crowd down.
The next day I drove south. I got sick in Carnarvon on a local sea food lunch in a rich creme sauce at the Harbour View Cafe, carefully attended to by bush flies. After a week of miso and veggies, you’d be sick too. I was nearly seduced by the facade of civilization at the Billabong Roadhouse. The owners remembered and drank with me. It was one more beer or a two hour drive in the dark to Kalbarri; I left.
Kalbarri is a bitching little resort town with a huge seafood (euuuk) and resort industry. That means they prefer not to have Fang camping in the carparks I reckon. However I go into the most expensive restaurant on the wharf in my camping baggies and a Norwest tee shirt with a bit of miso down the front and the waitress gives me an ocean view table. Well, I did grovel about how starving I was. Then I crept passed the Kalbarri Municipal Police Station and pulled into the lot at Jake’s Point very close to the camouflage of bush, and slept a good 9 hours with the same moon in my face, warm air, 16 degrees, lush.
At dawn the Point was so nasty the boys were hiding in their cars and yelling “Girls in Tutus” at each other. The ones out surfing were routinely coming out on the reef and redefining re-entries. It was ugly for a Friday. My knees were much too farked up to even hassle these guys. Besides I’d learned a wonderful Western Australian surf tradition which basically dictates you should never paddle out unless you can improve the situation…or until the sun rises… whichever comes first.
I drove back to Perth and the next day to Margaret River. I don’t even want to talk about Margs. — Fang
