AIREYS FESTIVAL OF WORDS

The hardest working man at Hip & Shoulder Books has put together a short clip from the Aireys Festival of Words and uploaded it to You Tube.

ME AND MINE ONLINE

I’ve stepped beyond my blog and made Billy Bragg’s great leap forwards, across cyberspace, and… onto other people’s blogs!

Well, that’s not completely correct. Three Thousand isn’t a blog. It’s a weekly online guide to all things good in Melbourne, like film, music, design, books and art. Deep Water was the featured “read” in issue #218 and Max Olijnyk’s review was one of the best yet, describing Deep Water as “good with a whisky in the bath”:

“In anything worth doing, there are the godlike people who were simply born to do it. These are the poster boys, the winners, the ones girls have a crush on. Bless 'em. Then there are dudes like Brendan McAloon…”

The Three Thousand review also coincided with an appearance at the Aireys Festival of Words alongside fellow travel writer Patrick O’Neil, author of Sideways: Travels with Kafka, Hunter S & Kerouac. There was quite a crowd and it all went relatively smoothly… Patrick and I waxed lyrical on travel, read some passages from our respective publications, answered a couple of curly questions from the assembled throng, and signed some books. While I didn’t exactly shine in the spotlight, I didn’t completely butcher my first real foray into public speaking. So I was surprised when I bobbed up on Lady Chameleon’s fashion blog, and she said she was “impressed”, describing yours truly as “barefoot, weathered, determined and intelligent”, which caused my wife much mirth. “You weren’t barefoot,” she guffawed. “It was cold and raining.” I tried to explain that I had been barefoot at various stages during the day, somewhere between bed and the bathroom, and for a few miserable hours groveling in the shorebreak at Fairhaven…. Yes, I’d definitely been barefoot. However I thought I looked more disheveled than weathered, while the jury remains out on determined and intelligent.

But back to Lady C, who found Deep Water “fantastic” and “exciting”:

“In true surfer style it relaxingly introduces you to surfing, leads you through its history and takes you out the back... The perfect gift to inspire your man to follow his dreams.”

Thanks to Mr Olijynk and Lady C, and stay tuned for a web clip from the Aireys Festival of Words (and many thanks to the organisers of said festival, particularly Nicole and Marty Maher).

WHO LISTENS TO THE RADIO?

...that's what Jon von Goes wants to know.

Over the past six months I have been spending some time with local surfboard shaper Maurice Cole, whittling away at an in-depth feature article for Surfing World magazine. Maurice is one of Australian surfing's great characters. While I don't want to give too much away (you'll have to wait for the finished product), he has an amazing life story and has added a few colourful chapters in the past 12 months, including a "miracle" recovery from prostate cancer. We were talking yesterday about his website. Fresh from California, Maurice had posted an interview he did in the States with Down The Line digital radio. So I thought it high time I uploaded some audio of my own (the earth moves slowly but the ox is patient).

Over the past few weeks Deep Water has hit the radio airwaves. Firstly via a glowing review on ABC Radio by award-winning Melbourne writer Paddy O'Reilly:

“Really well written…an enjoyable read. I don’t know anything about surf, I’m not particularly interested in surf, I’ve never stood up on a surfboard but I was still fascinated by this journey that he takes. He’s a natural writer and he does weave into every chapter some history, either of surfing or of the place that he has gone to."

Listen to the full review here.

Then last Sunday afternoon I made a guest appearance on Melbourne independent radio station Triple R, joining Jon von Goes (pictured above) on his popular JVG Radio Method show. As fate would have it, my appearance coincided with an incredible day of waves on the Surf Coast. While I was reading extracts from Deep Water amid JVG's fine selection of surf music, my old mate Mick Ray was firmly slotted at Winki Pop.

NIPPLEGATE v.2.0

Frank convinced me it was the perfect publicity shot but I have a sneaking suspicion he was taking the piss. Well the chickens came home to roost today when the above shot was plastered across page 24 of The Geelong Advertiser. The phone ran hot, and not all of the comments were complimentary. They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and the accompanying article by Noel Murphy certainly made up for the “wardrobe malfunction”. “McAloon plumbs the drive behind the nomadic surf addict… the romance, the giants, the characters, the behind-the-scenes image-and-myth builders of surfing,” Murphy wrote. “He’s catalogued his travels amid observations and musings drawn from such disparate sources as James Cook, Charles Darwin and Bruce Chatwin. Even Ireland’s legendary Finn MacCool enters the fray.”

The Geelong Addy are out of the blocks with the first newspaper article about Deep Water, but Australasian Surf Business (ASB) magazine has beaten them to the punch with the first review. ASB ran a review in issue #30 (June/July), describing Deep Water as “beautifully crafted yarn-spinning”. “McAloon also shows himself to be an avid reader of surfing lore and literature, quoting everyone from Jack Finlay to Daniel Duane, Bunker Spreckels and even Alain de Botton, as he takes a good-humoured tilt at the impossible task – a wide-angle portrait of surfing and everyone in it.”

But possibly the strangest by-product of Nipplegate v.2.0 was an unsolicited approach from Ralph magazine (and I thought I looked flat-chested!) asking me to compile a list of “the 10 best unknown international surf breaks”. Cactus, Port Campbell, Kauai… I decided that maybe that there was such a thing as bad publicity.

JOE RODDY RIDES AGAIN

SurferMag.com has posted a story by Taylor Soppe about "Ireland's first surfer" Joe Roddy returning to the water on a replica of his original board as part of T-Bay Surf Club's annual Legends dinner dance in Tramore, County Waterford. It's a pretty remarkable addendum to a story I originally heard on my first visit to Ireland in 2006 and retold in Deep Water - that in 1949 the then 14-year-old made a paddleboard from an American woodwork manual using discarded tea chests and took to the waves at Dundalk in County Louth, becoming the first man to surf in Ireland. When he came ashore Roddy recalled "the whites of their eyes and their gobs wide open", which probably wasn't too far from the reaction when the third generation lighthouse keeper took to the waves at Tramore in June this year, some 57 years since he'd last been on a surfboard!

Roddy's first ride caused barely a ripple back in 1949, consigned to historical footnotes - I originally thought it nothing more than Guinness-induced blarney, almost too good to be true - and surfing didn't really gain any traction in Ireland until the 1960's, by which time Joe had turned his attention to developing his own scuba equipment. So it's fantastic that this historic and poetically Irish surfing moment is finally being celebrated.

THE CAMPAIGN BEGINS

A few weeks ago I spent a cold & wet Victorian afternoon chasing the shorebreak at Jan Juc with local photographer Drew Ryan, trying to capture a moment of magic for the Deep Water ad campaign. Drew and I floated books through the dumping shorey at Juc to get 'the shot', while Jon Frank and Drew's daughter Tanna stood on the steps laughing at us prancing around in our wetsuits, dodging the foaming clean-up sets smashing into the cliff. We lost two books to King Neptune and although Drew conjured some esoteric beauty (see below), we settled on the first photo he took. A Melbourne Bitter or six later and Frank was teaching himself InDesign. A few tips from his design savvy sister and hey presto, we had an ad! Check it out in the latest issue of Surfing World magazine (issue# 295), which also features Frankology with Sally Fitzgibbons, another cover shot by the hardest working surf photographer in the world (Andrew 'Shorty' Buckley) and an interesting yarn about Torquay by Jock Serong. And while you're locked into cyberspace check out Drew's web site: www.drewryanphotography.com.au/

The campaign has kicked off... watch out for more media hits coming to a magazine, web site, newspaper, radio soon!

THE GURUS APPROVE

With Deep Water poised to arrive in retail stores around Australia over the next month, two of my most admired writers have been singing its praises. Acclaimed newspaper columnist cum author Martin Flanagan and lyrical local surf writer Jack Finlay have both given the book their nod of approval.

Jack, and in particular his 1992 book Caught Inside, was a big influence on Deep Water. Jack wrote a series of evocative surf stories for Surfing World magazine during the late 70’s and early 80’s, including Road Song and Seasons. While I was but a pup when Jack was weaving his magic, pushing the boundaries of surf writing, his collection of stories (Caught Inside) was a massive influence on my writing. To such a degree that the opening chapter title of Deep Water is called ‘The Low Road to Xanadu’ in reference to an article Jack initially wrote for Surfing World issue #168, circa 1978, which was subsequently published in Caught Inside and is now available in his fantastic book Wind on the Water (HarperCollins, 2006). So I was thrilled to the back teeth when Jack contacted me last week because he thought I “might be pleased to know” that he had “purchased a copy of Deep Water and have enjoyed reading it very much”. “The average punter has little idea of the risks, both psychological and financial, involved in putting this type of stuff out there, so Well Done!” Thank-you Jack.

Martin Flanagan is another kettle of fish. Martin writes a column for the Sport section for The Age newspaper. However, his musings extend far beyond the sporting sphere, examining Australian culture and more often than not, the relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. Martin has written 10 books, including The Call, a dazzling re-imagination of the life of Thomas Wentworth Wills, an Australian Icarus who helped give birth to Australian Rules football (among other things). I met Martin last year when a short film I made with my brother Damien (King Wilf & The Pumas) was a finalist at the Melbourne International Film Festival. Martin was a fan of the film and has since become a fan of Deep Water. “Each story is like a wave, ridden with respect and verbal agility,” he wrote. Thank-you Martin.

            To be honest I’ve been overwhelmed by the positive feedback to the book. Deep Water is a deeply personal journey, so I was a little anxious about how it would be received. That people have connected with my story has been incredibly humbling. As Jack told me: “I guess in the end, if it's anything at all, life is a growth towards wisdom!”