About the Book
The story of Australian surfer Darren Longbottom’s epic rescue from a remote surf break in Indonesia
Darren ‘Daz’ Longbottom was born to surf. The son of surfing pioneer and board-maker Rossco, and older brother to legendary big-wave specialist Dylan, Daz paddled out with world champions from a young age. He was one of the overexcited ‘access all areas’ grommets behind the rope when the World Tour rolled into Australia.
After the Longbottom brothers’ first surf experiences in Cronulla, where they belonged in the waves alongside the very best in surfing, Dylan went on the road as a ‘free surfer’, while Daz pursued a career in the surf industry, learning all aspects of the trade and setting up a successful business. But Daz’s passion for waves would very nearly cost him his life, and would test his resilience and determination in unimaginable ways.
When Daz said goodbye to his wife and baby daughter to go on a surf trip with friends to the remote Mentawai Islands off Indonesia, it was the fulfilment of a long-held ambition. But he could never have foreseen just how difficult the road home would be, or how his life would be changed so profoundly.
Beyond the Break is the tale of a freak accident, a terrifying rescue and the long and painful journey home. This is a story of coming to terms with the life-changing consequences of riding a single wave.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Foreword
1. Moment of impact
2. It began in Cronulla
3. What’s Plan C?
4. The move south
5. Is this the cavalry?
6. Into the darkness
7. Alone in the jungle
8. White-knuckle ride
9. Under the knife in Singapore
10. Every breath you take
11. Is this the real thing?
12. Singapore routines
13. I feel like going home
14. On home shores
15. A rude awakening
16. The longest weekend
17. The new regime
18. The level
19. Wheels in motion
20. Little brother
21. A new view
22. North Shore routines
23. Hopes and expectations
24. Cookie
25. Soul-destroying
26. Back to the water
27. New skills
28. Dark times
29. On the move
30. Benefit night
31. Breaking out
32. Alternatives
33. Back to the ocean
34. Stuck mid-table
35. Moorong
36. The fall out
37. Wedding night
38. Time to go
Epilogue
Images
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Imprint
To my one and only,
My daughter Bowie.
‘Failure is not falling down; failure is not getting back up.’
Foreword
Surfing’s an adventure. Every surfer knows this; you know it from the moment you ride your first wave. The wave prompts a swift inner dialogue: This is an adventure. But is it my adventure?
At that moment you say yes or no, and in the 1970s and ’80s thousands of young Australians said yes. To what, they weren’t quite sure. But somehow the world gave them precious time and space to reinvent, then expand, the surfing adventure in ways that made sense, at least to them, if not always to anyone else. For some, the adventure focussed on competition; for others it became about the craft of surfboard-building. Still other young Australians followed their noses around the world, abandoning the old Kangaroo Route for exotica like Jeffreys Bay in South Africa, or Sunset Beach in Hawaii, or the Basque coasts of France and northern Spain. A few used illicit means to fund their adventures, methods that probably should have landed them in jail – or did.
But one way or another, as the ’90s ticked past into a new century and the young Aussies of the ’70s settled into early middle age, almost all of them found a way to keep the adventure rolling with a trip to the island chains off western Sumatra, Indonesia.
Darren Longbottom found himself at this spot in May 2008. Right there, in a surf zone generally regarded by the core surf community as a kind of Heaven. These islands – Enggano, Nias, the Telos and the Mentawais – lie along the inside rim of the Java Trench, facing south-west, square on to the long groundswells of the southern Indian Ocean. Their half-eroded lava reef coastlines slope into the Indian’s ultra-warm equatorial waters at angles perfectly designed to form those groundswells into peeling pitch-perfect waves. Barely known to outsiders until the early ’90s, when surf charters began running in the area, it’s a place where all those young-at-heart Aussies’ surfing dreams could come true.
It’s also a place of serious risk. Even a good surfer – and Daz was a damn good surfer – will find a way to be torn up on the reefs’ coral crusts, or worse. I have a lifelong scar from a brief discussion with a piece of reef called the Surgeon’s Table, inside a surf spot known as Lance’s Right, and I’m far from the only one. Indeed the horrendous injury rate among travelling surfers was for a long time one of surfing’s little secrets, one of those awkward facts which didn’t fit the Adventure Heaven narrative, and which nobody really wanted to hear.
Until Daz made it impossible for anyone to ignore.
Daz will argue he’s been lucky in many ways. Lucky he had a smart boat captain in Johnny McGroder. Lucky there was a helicopter available. Lucky he made it to Singapore otherwise unscathed. Lucky his C2 vertebra, the one that stops your breathing if it slips, wasn’t the one that fractured. Lucky in Aimee and Bowie, and in his many friends and family. There’ll be a lot of surfers and non-surfers who’ll understand all of this, and who will think briefly, ‘There but for the grace of Huey …’ But I think Darren was above all lucky to be himself. The resilience to bear up against such an injury and to make headway beyond it – this was already in him, in his Longbottom blood, though it took a shattering circumstance to call upon this resilience. Daz said yes to the adventure, and it hurt him beyond reckoning, but he kept saying yes anyway. I hope you enjoy his story.
Nick Carroll
May 2018
1
Moment of impact
Blue water. Blue water and silence … And then, BOOM!
It was as if someone had turned on the television with the volume set at its highest level, a flood of visions from my life flickering by at lightning speed, stuffing thirty-five years into a few seconds. It is a heavy, heavy feeling. My wife, Aimee, and my daughter, Bowie … back further … our old house in Cronulla … Christmas at my grandparents’ riding skaties with Dylan and Danny … pulling stupid faces at every soccer team photo. And now, not alive, just drifting in a vacuum.
A huge surge of energy came without warning and hit me like an electric shock. I took my first breath after what felt like an eternity. I was awake and in water, bobbing like a cork. The shock was the burst of adrenaline, pulling me back from the edge of nothing. I struggled to work out what was happening, before I was back under water and sinking. Why was I sinking? Why couldn’t I get back to the surface? I was swimming, for God’s sake, and I’m a good swimmer, kicking as hard as I could, willing myself, telling myself to surface.
What’s happening? Swim, you idiot, get back to the surface.
My head finally broke through into the air, and I felt that enormous surge of energy again, another shock, as I took another breath.
My thou
ghts were still muddled, but this time I saw something in the corner of my vision. Grab it! Just grab it! I wedged the floating object under my armpit so that I wouldn’t go under again. Now I had time to try to gather my thoughts and analyse what was happening. I was in the clearest water imaginable, under a sky that almost blended into the blue of the ocean. I realised that what I had grabbed was my surfboard – or what was left of it – but I still couldn’t piece together what was happening. Even with the adrenaline running through my system I was beginning to feel completely exhausted, almost empty. What I did know was that I was in a load of trouble, and I let out a cry, ‘HELP ME, HELP ME!’
Stew pulled up on the jet-ski, and pieces of my memory started to come back together. We had been doing tow-ins, using a jet-ski to whip us into waves earlier and faster. There were a bunch of us taking turns. Stew was shooting out the back of the waves on the jet-ski when he saw my broken board in the water and thought he’d check to see if I was okay.
As he pulled up, he looked puzzled. He didn’t know if this was a joke, given my reputation as a joker. Any of my closest friends would have just laughed at the sight – me hanging onto half a board, hardly moving, as if mortally wounded. Luckily Stew realised the enormity of the situation and jumped off the ski into the water to help me. I was still shouting, ‘Help me!’
But Stew couldn’t hear me – no-one could. I was beginning to drift away again, everything so vivid one moment … then nothing.
Stew yelled out to the others – Prezzo, Greenie, Big Nathe and Crusty – who raced in to help. Greenie was the first to arrive; he’d seen Stew jump off the ski and was already paddling hard, thinking something was wrong with the ski, only to find I was all messed up.
We’d been surfing some random ‘bombie’ waves outside of a break called Thunders, a remote location in the Mentawais, fourteen hours by boat from Sumatra in Indonesia. The conditions were perfect: sunny, not a breath of wind, consistent swell with waves three to six feet high, palm trees in the distance. We were close to the reef, a mixture of volcanic rock and coral, so it’s all razor sharp, and the water was only six feet deep.
The last thing I remember was pulling off the wave and flying through the air …
Now we were in the impact zone with the dry reef ten metres behind us. Unbelievably, the water had gone dead flat. Another wave would have rolled us all and pushed us, along with the jet-ski, onto the reef with no escape, but the surface of the ocean was like a lake. It was eerie.
Whether I passed out through exhaustion or fainted, I couldn’t tell. Maybe knowing someone was there caused the adrenaline to dissipate. I drifted into a dreamlike state; I could hear but I couldn’t see. I thought I was talking, but I had no idea what I was saying.
The jet-ski had a rescue sled on the back – a foam platform, like a massive bodyboard. The boys were struggling to get me onto the sled; I was like a dead weight. I heard someone say, ‘We’ve got to get out of here before a wave comes!’ Greenie got me in a bear hug – I still don’t know how he did it because I’m twice his size – and he threw me on my back onto the sled.
But, still, the ocean was flat.
Greenie then jumped on top to secure me and yelled, ‘Let’s, go. GO!’
We set off for the boat, but we had all been surfing and both Greenie and I still had leg-ropes attached to our boards. Given the urgency, we had forgotten about them, but with the first thrust of the jet-ski the boards acted like an anchor and pulled us both off the back.
Big Nathe was still in the water, and Greenie yelled out for him to throw me back onto the sled while he took our leggies off and stayed with our boards. Nathe got me on in one heave and jumped on top of me as Greenie had.
Stew sped away again and backed off just as quickly once we got out of the impact zone.
As the ski jolted to a halt, I made a shocking discovery. In the ten minutes that had passed, adrenaline running through my body, visions flashing before my eyes and my brain trying to gather my thoughts, I still hadn’t grasped the severity of what had happened.
I was on my back, Nathe still on top, stabilising me, when we abruptly came to a halt and I saw my left leg fly, with momentum, up past my eyes, almost reaching my shoulder. In that split second my focus narrowed in on that vision and I snapped back to reality, realising what I had just seen. I shouted, ‘I can’t feel my leg … I can’t feel anything!’
Big Nathe repeated my words to the rest of the boys.
Whether it was the rush of finally putting together what was happening or my brain going into recovery mode, I fell silent as we raced towards the boat.
I had just experienced an enormous moment in my life. It was Saturday, 20 May 2008, and we were in one of the most remote parts of Indonesia, and breaking my neck was just the start of an incredible journey, a journey where whatever could go wrong, did go wrong …
2
It began in Cronulla
I was born into surfing. It’s my first memory, but my dad was already drawn to the ocean before my birth.
Dad grew up in the Sutherland Shire like any other kid, going to school and playing lots of sport. The Longbottom name was well known in the New South Wales cricketing world. Both his father and uncle were great players, so it was always going to run in the family, and he continued the tradition. (I remember Dad taking me to the cricket trials when I was young. We pulled up, all ready, but I backed out at the very last minute and we drove home. It probably broke Dad’s heart that day, but he never said anything).
Soccer was also a big part of his life, but surfing was just a thing he did with his brother Brian when they got time away from the family. They would sneak off and make their way to the beach.
After school, Dad headed into accountancy. Then, in 1963, in the middle of the longboard era, he met Norm Casey, who was just starting up his own company, Casey Surfboards, one of the first in New South Wales. Dad was immediately interested in learning all about surfboard manufacturing. He played around with it for a while before he and Peter opened up a shop, with Dad using his accounting skills to help run the business. It was a brave decision to throw in his accountancy job to go and build surfboards. His parents were horrified: ‘What the hell are you doing?’
In those days, surfing was labelled by most people as a drug-taking, outsider, dropout culture. The surf industry was just starting before people were even aware it was an industry. There wasn’t a professional tour either, but it was coming. It certainly wasn’t seen as a successful career path. There were no shops, just factories with a couple of boards on a rack out front.
But the love of the sport steered him into it, and it wasn’t long before he moved from the accounts side of things back into the factory to learn the art of fibreglassing, with the likes of Bob Weeks and Nigel Dwyer shaping.
The year 1965 came along, and so did Norm Clarke, who bought out Casey Surfboards, renaming it Clarke Surfboards, and turned it into one of the big manufacturers in New South Wales. Peter also bought Barron Surfboards and started Carabine Surfboards in Wollongong. So Dad was surfing and working with guys like Bobby Brown, Keith Paul, Frank Latta and Terry ‘Snake’ Bishop.
It wasn’t until the late ’70s, when a professional tour of sorts had just started, that the big brands we know today began to emerge. Around 1978, Quiksilver and Rip Curl gained momentum, and when they really blew up in the mid- ’80s, the business world thought, Hang on, there’s some money to be made here and took the industry more seriously. The counter-culture was set.
But 1973 was the start of a golden age for surfing, with surfboards modernising, more people in the water and whispers of more contests. Boardrider clubs formed in different areas; Dad was involved with the early Cronulla club and Windansea Boardriders, where Bob McTavish and Nat Young were starting to evolve the surfboard. Then Dad moved to Gordon & Smith (G&S) in Cronulla and started glassing there. I was only one at the time, but this was going to leave a big imprint on the rest of my life.
By the middle of
the following year, Dad had bought into G&S and things really started hotting up, drawing other names into the fold like Alan Blyth, Snake, Peter Glasson and Steve Griffiths.
Over the next several years, surfboards continued to evolve and a pro tour was introduced. Suddenly a wealth of surfers went through the factory as G&S, originally from America, became the leading brand in New South Wales, maybe even in Australia.
Back in those days, most of the best surfers in the world actually made their own boards – guys like Robert Conneeley (who invented the ‘bonzer’ board shape and was subsequently nicknamed Bonzer Bob), Michael Peterson (who at the time was untouchable in the water, even with his mental health issues), the great Mark Richards (who would go on to be one of the greatest surfers ever with four world titles) and the super stylish Peter Townend from Queensland (who became the first world surfing champion in 1976). PT would end up being one of my all-time heroes.
Around 1974 there was a real buzz growing around surfing contests, and the first Surfabout was held at North Narrabeen on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The Bells Easter Classic in Victoria had been run the year before, along with a few contests in Hawaii. Surfabout was the biggest, richest contest being held, so it pulled in the best surfers from around the world. The crew that worked the contest – judges, admin, etc. – was made up of guys within the industry, with most coming from the Northern Beaches or the Cronulla area. Dad was invited to help; he was judging and tabulating in the early days. The unstoppable MP would go on to win that first contest and, even though I was only a baby and was completely unaware, I was there for the start of pro surfing.
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 1