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Rubber Ducky Blues

While all eyes were on Bells there was a whole other show going on in Byron Bay.

While Easter time for surfing is focused around the Bells contest, in Byron Bay it marks the annual Blues & Roots Festival with this year boasting its 25th happening. It’s a pilgrimage undertaken by all sorts of folk–the die-hard older couples who have also been together as long as the festival. They cruise around with armchairs and laminated line-up guides happily watching everything from the edge of the tent. Then there’s the families out and about, the teens who have just legged it over the fence, the hippies, the trippies, the skegs, the bogans from Queensland, the Sydney-siders, the Melbourne-ites and all the international travelers who happen to be floating around Byron the same time as the festival. Then there are people like me. I grew up in Byron and now living in Sydney (a.k.a The Squid) it always seems fitting to go home this time of year and get amongst the action and my word, what a bunch of fucking action that went down.

I jumped in my mate’s car on Wednesday, also a born and bred Byronian and as I write this it’s been exactly a week of amazement, hilarity, challenges, confrontations, dancing and bewilderment since we left Sydney. The journey up alone was a worthy experience for a long weekend. We surfed a pumping 4-5 foot beachie with 20 idiots surfing in the corner getting amongst the close outs leaving the far more peaky bank down the beach left un-ridden and solely for our enjoyment. In Sydney, if someone even paddles for a wave down the beach you’d see sheep come flocking to the peak from everywhere as if it were Jesus himself. The first session was already worth escaping the smog. You see, my mate and I spend a whole lot of time wondering why the fuck we left Byron in the first place and coming home just re-enforces the question to ring even louder in our heads.

That night we rolled into Angourie quite late and heckled Rod Dahlberg’s daughter for a spare couch to crash on but she knew better then to let two hedgy dudes who’d been sitting in a car for 8 hours into the house. So we jumped in a bush with our board bags sporting all things warm. But it wasn’t enough as the autumn chill was freezing under a very bright and full moon. You could watch lines roll through the point and build over the hours of paranoid tossing and turning on our board bags. We woke up totally cooked from a long day prior with no sleep and got a few out the point but not having the best session, we opted to cut it early and then continued north. Arriving into the shire my brother and another local lord who had flown home from Karratha in West Oz took us to the best banks and we had another challenging surf. All this and Blues hadn’t even started. Before I knew it the cans of beer were on ice at the back of a friends house and the drunken foolery began. Although that first beer tasted like pure heaven it wasn’t easy to keep up to speed with the rest of the crew on the first day. It’s not easy either coming home to a small town where everyone knows what your up to and everyone wants to make a joke of your “hipster” or “squirrel” antics moving to the big smoke. Working at a surf mag, playing in a band and studying are all excellent ammo to give it to a once long time local and one exhausted human from the drive up. Plus all you want to do is get into the festival spirit and all your Mum wants you to do is hang out with her and yarn the same gossip you heard the last time you were up. But that’s just how it is, you give and get given.

There’s nothing quite like a great music festival. Everyone is high on life, talented humans are blessing you with organized sounds you swear are from outer space, there’s amazing food available everywhere, there’s beautiful women all around letting their hair down and you’re usually surrounded by your good friends kicking up dust dancing your heart out or standing in awe at a performance. Now drink a shitload of beer and add other enhancements to that concoction and your in for something very, very special. And that’s how every night was for 5 days – a hypnotic dance off filled with laughter and weirdness and cooked brains that later washed on into town with everyone getting split up and somehow getting back to Byron in the wee hours of the morning in one piece. One thing is for sure is that most surfers know how to have a great time day or night. But the best thing about being a surfer during this madness is that if the surfs good your up regardless of your state, and that’s how I got the new nickname “rubber ducky.”

Saturday morning I came too and was in a car on my way to surf quite solid Lennox down the beach. My mate got an absolute ripper of a right in front of me. A 6 foot beast that barrelled for 6 seconds before he stroked in and got completely slotted for a further 50 meters. Being far from sober to say the least watching this moment was incredible and made me want to out do him. Huey disagreed with a commanding no in the form of an 8-ft whitewash chucked straight on my head. I should of went in then as Huey was definitely telling me to wash on up the beach and stick to dancing this weekend but I couldn’t walk away from the sight of empty 6 footers barreling down the bank. I then proceeded to seriously struggle to get back out the back for half an hour. Eventually my stubbornness got me back out and after all this I took off on one gem but it ran off and sucked me over the falls. The next three waves smoked me and my leg-rope came off. I started to panic but luckily my board was floating a mere 20-metres away. I turned and started swimming as fast as I could thinking I could get there based on my hazy judgment between the next wave coming and my board bobbing in the whitewash.  The frothy wave was rearing up fast at my back but I was only just a few strokes away from my saviour so I thought I was in the clear. I latched onto my board and tried with all my strength to cling on. The board ripped out from my exhausted arms. I started freaking out. This wasn’t the most hairy situation I’ve had in the water but I was completely zapped of all of my energy. I looked around with pure panic to see something that was of a mirage – a rubber ducky boat with two lifesavers patrolling the gutter closer towards the beach. I yelled out and somehow they heard and were there in a heartbeat to drag my sorry arse to the beach. I told them about my night previous and they suggested I get some rest. I also stupidly told my mate about where I had been the last hour upon arriving to him cruising in the car park eating a pie and he had no sympathy whatsoever, with a simply reply to my tale saying “You’re fucking washed up.”

And yeah to my defence of course I am washed up, it’s Easter weekend, half the town of Byron is severely hung over every morning over this 5 day experience, bar a fair few locals who head for the hills every time Blues Fest rolls around. It was the dumbest thing I’ve done pushing myself to exhaustion on that Saturday morning. But after being barrelled all weekend and ending up on stage with the closing act Watussi on one of the smaller stages on the last day of the festival dancing around with a makeshift shaker made from a drink bottle full of the dirt I was dancing on all weekend with thousands cheering me on well, I knew I’d had enjoyed the weekend for all it’s worth.

– Colbey

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