An Australian folk hero… of sorts. Photo: Jed Smith
Subject: Jamie “Froggy” Gore, Bra Boy, Folk Hero, ASP Bouncer, and Desert Point Tube Splitter
Age: You ask him.
You might remember Froggy as the beast of a man who took on a gang of Lebanese youths armed with poles and shanks in the days following the 2005 Cronulla riots. As the legend goes, Froggy was finishing off a schooner in the Maroubra Bay Hotel when the madness broke out. He set down his glass, went outside to see what was going on, and was confronted by the gang of youths smashing up cars and shop windows along Marine Parade. They saw Froggy, but instead of backing down, Froggy charged them. He got a broken jaw and a few stab wounds for his troubles, but the incident (captured in the Bra Boys film) also turned him into an Australian folk hero of sorts.
Long before all that, however, Froggy was just an ordinary salt-dog like the rest of us, and when we bumped into him recently he was at the beginning of an old surfing favorite of his: the midnight Desert Point run.
At 6’2”, weighing around 100 kilos, with legs like a zebra and a torso made out of bricks, he cuts an imposing figure. That is until he sidles up to you with a big grin, a handshake and a “g’day mate.” He’s old school Australiana to the core, and tonight, with his hammock strung up between two poles at the back of the ferry — “the Indo’s look at me and they’re thinking: how’s this bloke?” he laughs — and a brutal two and a half hour pre-dawn scooter ride ahead of him, he’s in his element.
“I love the adventure of it, that’s the best bit. Ninety percent fun and ten percent torture at the end,” he grins, referring to the final pot-holed road over the hill to Deserts.
Froggy first came to Indonesia in the mid-nineties with the Abberton brothers, Jai and Koby, and has been back every year since. In that time his strong sense of adventure has led him all over the archipelago including some pretty hair-brained missions. Like the time he rode a scooter from Kuta to Sumbawa — a distance of three islands, two ferries (four if you’re counting the way back) and two whole days stuck in the hunch-backed pose of a Vario saddle. He scored mindless six to eight foot Scar Reef for his troubles, but as he prepared for the return journey, Froggy was confronted with some bad news. “The natives had gotten a bit restless,” he chuckles.
Specifically, a local chieftain had been publicly beheaded by his constituents after he was found to have been embezzling kickbacks from a mining company that he was meant to be passing on. The villagers rejoiced in three days of riotous celebration to commemorate the event; cars were overturned, 44 gallon drums set alight in the middle of the road, and Froggy, hunched over his rental-scooter, drove through the middle of it all. “Mate, I was shitting myself. They’re grabbing ya, trying to pull you over, touching you as you drove past. I was like, fuck, am I gonna make it back?” he recalls.
Adventures like this are financed by Froggy’s gig as a part time security guard with the ASP. He does the Quik Pro, Gold Coast and Bells every year, along with whatever other events he chooses, and was originally in Bali to work on the Oakley Pro Keramas. In the decade or so he’s been working with the world’s best he’s made some pretty high profile friendships as well as seen some pretty weird shit. Like the time he was forced to apprehend one of Parko’s obsesses groupies: a man.
“I guess he just had a little thing for him,” Froggy cracks up laughing.
When we eventually do arrive at Deserts it’s pumping, but it’s also a complete zoo. There is more than a whiff of implied violence being cast about the lineup by chest-beating brutes from Hawaii, Australia and Brazil, but Froggy refuses to buy into it. He patiently waits his turn — sometimes up to an hour for a wave — and when he’s run over by a Balinese kid whom he knows he doesn’t get angry but merely sits slumped over his board groaning like a war hero whose taken a fatal gut-shot. Surfing is no place for intimidation and violence, says Froggy. It’s where he comes to have fun.
“It kills the vibe, you know. It goes against everything that surfing is about. You’re here to enjoy the ocean. To physically fight to get a wave is against everything that surfing stands for,” he says. – Jed Smith
