There is no one who surfs giant, Western Australian barrels quite like Jack Robinson. He knows the spots, too — like the one you see above, which is not a wave for the faint of heart. It’s an hour-and-a-half from the nearest town, which isn’t even exactly a town. More of an outpost, really, just a smattering of buildings that flies by on the way to somewhere else, full of rough-around-the-edges fishermen.
“It’s a fisherman town,” Robinson told Alexei Obolensky for Volcom. My dad used to work there as a fisherman so every time we’d stop there when I was a kid it’d be pretty full on. I’d be waiting for him in the car at the gas station because I was petrified by the old locals living there. I was this little scared kid that was waiting in the car with a bowl haircut and a baseball bat at the time.”
Although the wave isn’t close to much else, it’s close to Robinson’s heart. He’s been going there for years, cutting his teeth on waves not fit for Average Joes, and when it’s on, he’s out there.
“This trip was pretty much two sessions,” Robinson explained. “I surfed six or seven hours. Then I broke one board, came in, went back out and then I surfed the next day for a few hours. But yeah, it all happened pretty quick because there wasn’t many crews out. That long day was pretty much Indo perfection all day.”
There’s a reason there wasn’t much of a crowd, and it should be obvious to the casual viewer. The wave is simply not one that most surfers would take a sniff at.
“When it’s big, that wave is just an animal,” he said. “It’s wild. It’s got all these steps in the faces that you’ve got to navigate when you’re in it. When it’s small it can get pretty playful, but when it’s bigger it just tries to kill you, I swear.”
