July 1974 - Storm Issue

A purple haze treatment lends a psychedelic feel to the cover as a surfer carves through the lip of a shimmering, maroon wall. 

The ‘Storm Issue’ refers to a heavy system that battered Sydney on 25th May 1974. Tiles were ripped off, windows blown in; dead fish and lobsters washed up on the northern beaches, while on the south-side restaurants were tossed into the sea. Ron Ware wonders when councils might force those living on the coastal fringes to demolish their homes. 

Bondi’s Brad Mayes talks about growing-up with his legendary dad, Jack Bluey Mayes, surfing for Windansea and getting involved with Wilderness surfboards.            

The fictional tale, Varuna, melds surfing with eastern spiritualism and ends with the characters chanting Hare Krishna before night-surfing beneath a full-mon. 

Albe Thomas’s report on Paul Witzig’s new, film ‘Rolling Home’ also wanders into esoteric territory. The film roams from cattle station to coastline and Thomas writes, “It’s a tangential development from surf movies, an attempt to bring the surfing consciousness to bear on wider things, to relate more intimately to life in Australia and express the new attitudes that are arising Down Under.”