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What's up for grabs
at G-Land
Bill Boyum was several hundred feet above the ground when he
discovered it. In 1973, on his way from Bali to Surabaya, he
decided to take a peep out the window of the light aircraft in
which he was travelling right at the moment it was passing over
break so perfect that it would just as aptly be named SFW
(Surfers’ Wet Dream) as G–Land.
Not that Boyum had any idea that the lines of white foam that
aroused his surfer spirit were later to become known as
G–Land, a name that has since taken on mantra–like status in
international surfing scene. Nor did his bird’s–eye view reveal
the village toward which the swell seems to throng – and after
which the break was later named – Gradjagan. But it was
enough that he could see the ruffled white hem of a turqouise
ocean and the vast, forboding jungle which it came to meet, for
this imbued Boyum with the thrill of a challenge. On returning to
earth he set his sights on penetrating the jungle and, armed
with a surfboard, did not turn back until he had broken through
to the virgin surf that lay beyond it.
Boyum had trudged round the
jungle for two days before he
reached the lip of the Indian
Ocean where it meets East
Java’s southermost point at
Plengkung National Park. And
with only three days supply of
water he was forced to retrace
his steps inland as soon as he hit the sand. But as truncated
as his sojourn was, he succeeded in marking out a path that
was to be trodden by many a surfer in the years to come,
particularly after he established the G–Land surf camp. But
Boyum’s dogged fixation traversing impossible terrain to reach
the awesome break is hardly novel to those who know anything
of the surf scene. Surfers frequently perform life–threatening
acts for the sake of tasting an unreal tube. What is
extraordinary, however, is that this out–of–the–way place is now
the location for the sport’s most raved– about contest. For it is
here that the world’s top 44 surfers plus four ‘wildcard’
competitors meet every year to compete for the biggest prize
money in the history of surfing. They come to compete in one of
the World Championship Tour’s (WCT) four Grade Two (the
highest-rating category) events - the annual Quiksilver Pro.
It took someone like Quiksilver International to listen to the
surfers a couple of years ago when we were just screaming out
for good waves.” Thus opened Luke Egan’s 1997 victory speech,
which he delivered to a sparse audience from a makeshift
podium on the sand. What Egan was referring to was the
turn–around in the WCT since it welcomed the Quiksilver Pro,
its only spectator–less event, in 1995. Prior to that this
13–contest tour, where a tiny elite of 44 surfers thrash it out for
the world title, consisted entirely of what were mockingly
referred to as ‘carpark events’. Over-determined by sponsors’
promotional interests, it was a circuit where event locations
were not selected for the quality of the break but for spectator
capacity. So as it forced them to tour the world’s most
undesirable breaks, the elite of surfing was beginning to wonder
why anyone would strive for the WCT. Then Quiksilver
announced that they were to bring a world-class event to
G-Land and the Top 44’s frayed wills began to mend and their
dulled ambitions re-sharpened. Not to suggest that surfers
received the news without hesitation, as it raised the obvious
question: how was the multinational sponsor to stage such a
prestigious event without wreaking havoc on the pristine jungle
and adjacent coral reef for which G-Land had become so
adored?
In 1995, Plengkung National Park remained almost as Bill
Boyum had found it over twenty years previously. Six months
before Quiksilver was to stage its first event at G-Land, the
reserve remained impenetrable by motor vehicle. But when the
international office of the sports clothing company put the
proposal for the Quiksilver Pro to the Indonesian government, it
was offered the chance to change all that, as Tony Wales, then
Quiksilver International’s General Manager, remembers: “At first
local tourism officials jumped at the idea, seeing in it an
opportunity to develop the area as a tourist attraction of massive
proportions, with five-star hotels and so on.” But Quiksilver,
claims Wales, were determined to leave the camp exactly as it
was, to preserve the reef and jungle and, by extension, in the
interests of the future of surfing. This did not mean expecting
administrators and competitors to endure uncomfortable
conditions while participating in a grueling international sports
event, for the camp is complete with a satellite-linked TV in its
central restaurant and bar area, hot water and electricity. It did,
however, mean being vigilant about keeping those who attended
to a minimum, in order not to pressure the camp to extend
beyond its existing capacity for 120 guests. And the only way
to achieve this was by taking the plunge and staging the WCT’s
first spectator-less contest.
Above:
1. What Bill Boyum saw.
2. Tim Curren at 1997's Quiksilver Pro.
All this corporate cleanliness begs
the question: why is Quik-silver so
eager to be an environmental
goody-goody? Did the company
genuinely forsake fast profit for the
sake of the greater, greener good?
Or is it simply that green also
happens to be the colour of the surf
dollar? “Any large-scale
development such as what was
being proposed would have
destroyed the reef and promptly
eliminated one of the world’s top
breaks from the surf map,” explains
Wales, who asserts that such a prospect made it easy for
Quiksilver to steer away from the five-star resort option. Indeed,
the mandate Quiksilver had been offered by a criticism-weary
Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP)- the body
responsible for the WCT’s then pitiful series of breaks and thus
under heavy attack from professional surfers - was to develop “a
new product at an exotic location pitched at television coverage
rather than crowds on the beach.” That mandate, as well as the
long-term commercial value of ‘exotic’ surf camps such as that
at G-Land, made it easy for Quiksilver to avoid bitter boardroom
wrangles over whether the company was to travel the low-key,
environmentally friendly or flashy, luxury resort path. According
to Wales: “Surfing holidays aren’t about setting off in a combie
van to explore the unknown coast any more. The coast is well
and truly colonized and over-populated nowadays. The surfing
holiday of today is in the tropical surf camps such as at
Sumatra’s Mentawai Island, Fiji’s Tavarua, and Java’s G-Land. If
we squander the natural surroundings of these camps, we leave
surfing without a future.”
Perhaps the trade– off for
foregoing the offer of helping
transform Plengkung
National Park into a
five–star resort was that
Quiksilver assist the
Indonesian government in its
environmental diplomacy. According to Quiksilver’s official
G–Land website: “The Plengkung National Park has been
preserved in its natural state by the Indonesian government.”
Notably, Quiksilver has also proven keen to take part in
environmental campaigns of its own choosing, such as 1997’s
International Year of the Reef. Prior to last year’s event, the
sponsor extended special invitations to journalists, film–makers
and photographers to document the so–called ‘rain forest of the
sea’ at G–Land and promote its preservation in the interests of
surfing. This year, Quiksilver are to participate in a similar way
in the International Year of the Ocean.
Certainly only the surf scene could bear an event in this mode.
Any other sport would by now have erected facilities of Olympic
scale – stadiums, giant video screens villages, hotels – for the
Quiksilver Pro breaks just about every record in the book. By
the end of 1997 it had been rated the contest with the most 10s
scored and the highest–scoring heat of all time, and it is also
un-precedented in stipulating a minimal four–foot swell before
the competition kicks off. Voted as the most–favored contest in
Australian Surfing Life’s 1997 poll of the Top 44, G–Land
ultimately tests their skills at barrel–riding on one of the fastest
left–handers in the world, and the Quiksilver Pro affords them
with the opportunity to spend twelve days on it each May.
As the smash–hit video of last year’s event reveals, absent
there are all the less than sportive unpleasantries, guarded
jealousies, bodyguards and drug tests, etc. so common to other
sporting events of similar prestige. Produced by veteran
Australian surfer Tom Carroll, this best–selling documentary
shows the cream of the surfing hierarchy, unruffled by the fans
that accost them at the WCT’s other events, fraternizing in an
atmosphere as laid back as the groups of ‘Joe Bloggs’ surfers
that fill its tree–huts for the greater part of the year. Here, Carroll
and his brother (“Nick Carroll, PhD in Surfology”) spend their
evenings picking over the reef and marveling at the alienesque
life therein. Quiksilver Pro title–holder Luke Egan and World
Title-holder Kelly Slater snuggle into the sand and confer quietly
about the affect of board length and width on ability to ride the
foam–ball. And the only stadium is provided by the sea itself,
from which contestant– spectators, afloat their boards, create a
brouhaha of cheering, jeering and arm– waving as they observe
heat after heat from out the back.
If the news that the WCT was coming to G–Land returned a
bubbly enthusiasm to the circuit, it left administrators at
Quiksilver International with a throbbing migraine of which the
accessibility problem was just the beginning. It wasn’t only a
matter of getting competitors, administrators and press into the
camp, which is separated from the nearest road by 16
kilometers of thick jungle - they could be brought in by boat
from Gradjagan as surfers had been doing for the last two
decades. But for an event that favored fast press coverage over
hoards of spectators, how were daily news updates, or for that
matter injured surfers, to be ferried out in a hurry?
Everyday before 3pm, unedited tapes of the day’s events
followed a route something like this: having been unloaded and
wrapped in several layers of plastic to make them watertight,
they were rushed by inflatable speed boat to Gradjagan,
whisked by motorbike to Banyuwangi, lugged to Gilimanuk by
ferry, bus-ed to Denpasar, taxi-ed to the airport, flown to
Jakarta, taxi-ed to the Reuters office where they were quick–
edited and up–linked Hong Kong, then re–edited and sent
around the world. Such was the so–called Pony Express, the
voyage traveled every day by documents of each of the event’s
heats so that they could be telecast nightly on CNN. And when
Derek Ho severely injured his leg in a practice session prior to
the commencement of the event, he was not airlifted out
because the event had been left helicopter–less by the
Indonesian general elections with which it coincided. Rather, he
followed the same Pony Express marked out for the
Reuters–bound video tapes, and not until three days later was
he safe and sound in a Hawaiian hospital.
G–Land’s broad reef which, when nudged by the deep swell of
the Indian Ocean creates the legendary G–Land break, was
another source of stress for administrators of the event. So vast
is the reef platform that surfers on the break are almost invisible
from the beach. For judging purpose then, a tower had to be
built on the reef , to which a complete set of office equipment
had to be shipped and electricity supplied by an underwater
cable.
This year the event will no longer be helicopter– less, a direct
satellite link– up will eliminate the need for the aforementioned
Pony Express, and participants are to be shipped in directly
from Jimbaran Bay in Bali from where a commercial power-boat
now makes regular return voyages to G–Land. On-the-spot
quick-edits and direct up–links will allow competitors – from the
exotic comfort of their jungle hideaway, and fans – from the
mundane comfort of the bamboo sofas / community halls /
favourite surf cafe in various far– flung parts of the globe – to
catch the day’s heats on CNN or Australia TV that night. As
always, pressure will be on top seeds to maintain their ratings:
Slater, who kicked off the season in March by clinching the
Gold Coast’s Billabong Pro, and Mark Ochilupo, who made a
gob– smacking come–back last year after a gossip – ridden four
year break from the circuit, and who recently wrestled No. 1
rating from Slater after winning Torquay’s Rip Curl Pro in April.
But lower– seeded competitors such as Californians Shea and
Cory Lopez and Tim Curren and Byron Bay’s Danny Wills also
promise to spice up the Quiksilver Pro, as do the four wildcards.
Bali–based Rizal Tanjung is to compete for the third year as the
Indonesian Surfing Association’s wildcard entry. He will be
joined by veterans Tom Carrol and Gary Elkerton, as well as
Derek Ho who, forced out of the WCT by the severe leg injury he
sustained at G–Land last year, has been awarded wildcard
entry into every event on the WCT’s 1998 circuit by the ASP.
So, if you didn’t happen to bump into these and other surf
luminaries at All Star Surf Cafe’s pre–Quiksilver Pro party on
May 26, try inadvertently hanging around Bali’s best breaks and
surf bars after June 9. You might just happen upon a surf hero
on holiday.
Above:
1. 1997 title-holder, Luke Egan.
2. The Quiksilver Pro reef tower.
by Emma Baulch
Photos courtesy of Quiksilver
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