Well worth the road trip. Photo: Ming Nomchong.
Rolling the last 50 meters into the car park, the dreams of empty waves reeling down the lonely, rocky, subtropical headland still had lustful traction in my road-weary mind. I had dreamt of this place since the early ’80s. It wasn’t a particularly iconic wave. More an iconic place. The images I remember in rusty old magazines were still clouding my vision as I negotiated a car park so I was not seeing the swirling holiday masses around me, only pandanus trees on the point, a lonely log rider or two sharing pristine lines of swell with pods of golden, sparkly dolphins and wild unicorn stallion grazing on the grassy knoll.
I was driving north from Tasmania to Northern NSW for the 25th Byron Bay Blues Fest. Yeah, alright smartasses, I did take a break on the boat, I mean “ship” ( don’t call it a boat as it hurts their feelings) across the Bass Strait to Melbourne. Bypassing the Great Ocean Road where everyone else seemed to be going for the Bells Beach Classic, I headed up the guts of the continent.
The day before I arrived at this “dreamy” headland, I drove about 1200 km. I retired inland overnight, somehow managing to dodge a great heaving vomit from a dodgy prawn curry from a equally dodgy small town takeaway that I knew could’ve caused me trouble as it sauntered its way down my throat.
As I lay on the double bed (I was instructed to not lay on any other beds or I would pay more), I apologized to all the lovely, lonely ladies I liked on Tinder because all day as I drove, bored, through country towns, now at 9 pm, they were wondering why I was 500, 600, 800 km away from them when I was, once, for a brief period of time, the new kid in town and seemingly just down the road. I felt like a bored old tart, but somehow, in a sick and twisted kind of way, it was giving me some sort of self-esteem back in the love department that I had lost several weeks earlier when the one that I thought was “the one” ended it.
I arrived in Byron Bay the day after the blood red moon, and after meeting up with my dear old friend Rus, and sharing our first ever waves together (20 years and we had never surfed together!), we discussed style over substance after being served beer by a disinterested bearded girly man. We chatted about the way a beard is worn like a fashion accessory now and nobody ever seems to have earned his or her whiskers anymore. Rus was my ticket in to the festival and later he handed over my pass and wristband. “Worker” it read. “WTF, I am on holiday man!”…”No, you’re helping me,” he replied.
The next day, we surfed a beach that was littered with left and right handers and beautiful people, before heading into the waking beast that was to be the Blues Fest. Wandering around inside, four hours before gates opening, looking for the right people for Rus’s gig to happen, I had pangs of doubt from my uninitiated backstage mind as to how the hell this blues behemoth thing would happen.
Bodies darting this way and that, fast walks of urgency but seemingly without worry, a strange mix confident chaos, it was like peering in an ant’s nest. I always like to figure how things could work, how things come together but this hi-tech tent city monster was unfathomable. Later, meeting the Festival Director, the resplendent Emperor of this Blues Tent Kingdom, Peter, and seeing the relative calm on his face, I realized what was going on. Everyone knew exactly what they were doing, they were all experts in their individual fields from the sound guys to the traffic wardens and it would all come together when the time was right. Ok, when do the bars open?
What followed for the next five days was truly wonderful. The music was awesome, sometimes reaching heights of transcendence that made you scream like when Buddy Guy lets it rip for the first few notes of his set or when Larry Graham, the father of slap bass, holds his bass guitar above his head as it feeds back from the moon and leaves an etching in your mind of what a funk god is supposed to be. And during all this, the worker ants effortlessly pull it all together with an air of laid-back friendliness and inclusion of gratitude towards anybody who even remotely looks like they are a willing helper. I know people get paid, but the event seemed to run on love. A passion for pulling off an extravaganza that spread joy and happiness to, they say, 100,000 over five days.
Amid all this, I got to surf a few more times and even managed a couple of log rides at the notorious Pass that seemed to be pretty good at waist to head high and I guess the other 150 to 200 people agreed. I guess, when you think about it, it wasn’t the best weekend for a surf trip to the ancient caldera paradise but hell, I was here for the blues!
Waking up after Dave Mathews’ grinding set, where the earth actually moved from a few thousand stomping feet, was a highlight. Seeing the late Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band was a special moment and I can even say watching The Grandmothers of Invention, Frank Zappers rejigged old band, despite playing to perfection their very technical “jazzwatchamacallit,” clear the tent within twenty minutes without them batting an eyelid was a marvelous experience. It was hard for the bluesmen and women to listen to and I tried to sit it out, but I too had to go away and wash my brain. Thank god for Larry G’s Funk, as he slapped me back into shape.
Jack Johnson, John Mayer, KC and the Sunshine Band, Charlie Musselwhite, Joss Stone, WAR, Gary Clarke Jr, Jeff Beck, The Wailers, The Doobie Brothers, Aaron Neville, The John Butler Trio, The Cambodian Space Project, C.W. Stone King, Terrance Simeon and the Zydeco Experience. The list goes and on and on and then it was all over. The festival manager after, at the impromptu after-party, was telling Rus and I that she was happy they didn’t get (insert big, BIG name superstar here) and I agreed with her. The vibe of the 25th Blues Fest was all-inclusive and everybody felt special. That is, I believe, the sign of great festival.
And I wouldn’t have known this at all as I pulled into that car-park of broken dreams six days before and watched a surf circus of Ben Hur proportions almost make me want to turn back south and head home. I lost count at 150 surfers. The headland was not what I had thought it was and I was disgusted and depressed at how surfing could have become so popular in such short time. Short time, yikes, I had to correct myself as I accidentally found myself watching 17-year-old bikini-clad girls that I could have fathered and realized it wasn’t a short time at all. I am nearly as old as Howard Bloody Cunningham, I just realized, and decades have skipped since I first saw this place in a crumpled, old Tracks Magazine.
Bah! Humbug! Fiddlesticks!
I did turn back south that day. I found a sand-bottom pointbreak with five guys and girls out just 10 km away from the circus. A pod of dolphins played and hunted around us in the crystal clear water with waist to head high right handers shared among us and it was heaven. When it was over, I turned back north, relinquished of expectations, and let the rest just happen.
