The ocean is constantly moving, constantly changing. I’ve always felt that to be a good surfer, you need to be able to read the conditions first. You’ve got to be able to get out beyond the break and know where to sit, where to position yourself and when to start paddling. You’re out there testing yourself against all the elements.
When I was surfing, I liked to think about destroying the wave – carving the face and hitting the lip. I loved sending spray everywhere. Most surfers love getting barrelled, because that’s widely regarded as the best thing in surfing. That’s what my brother has always liked. He’d hunt out barrels, whereas I liked the big, open-faced, carving waves, or just staying tight in the pocket. It’s almost like you’re snow-boarding down a mountain really fast and feeling out the powder. That’s why I love places like Sunset Beach and Haleiwa in Hawaii, or somewhere like Bells Beach. Being inside a barrel is unbelievable, but my real love is for a different type of surfing.
Everyone has their own style and outlook.
The location will dictate how you surf it. If you’re surfing a softer beach break, like at the Farm, you know you’re not going to get a barrel because the wave is slower and more sloped, so there’s no point looking for them. It’s the same as if you’re surfing one of the reef breaks around my home that barrel a lot. You know you’re not going to get many top-to-bottom vertical turns in.
So, with each surf you know the type of lines you’ll be riding. Up until my accident, I always wanted to improve my surfing. I knew what I liked to focus on and what I wanted to leave out. I’m a creature of habit. That was my approach to my surfing: I’d rather keep doing the things I love to do, and work on doing them better.
When Dyl came to see me that first week I was mostly in bed, but I’d get up and we’d cruise around the ward. We talked a lot but never had the conversation that was in my head, wondering whether my accident would change his outlook on the way he surfs. That was probably because I knew full well that the answer was no.
Another event that might have changed his approach was something that happened a couple of years before my accident.
Dylan had just come back from surfing twenty-foot Teahupo’o in Tahiti, one of the most dangerous waves in the world. At that time he was living in Queensland, and his plane had no sooner landed than he was out at his local break, Snapper Rocks, where everyone surfs – and I mean everyone! You can have hundreds of people out there, all hungry for a wave.
Snapper Rocks or a place like Bondi have some of the hardest waves in the world because it’s really crowded, and you’ve got these inexperienced guys mixed in who paddle out and don’t know what’s going on.
It’s a tough one, but there are just so many people out there who shouldn’t be. Everyone is on a big, pointy spear; if you can’t control it, your board becomes a weapon. Combine that with everyone eager for a wave, and it usually ends in chaos.
So Dyl had caught a wave and was flying down the line as the wave peeled off. (If you’re at full speed you’re probably doing about thirty kilometres an hour.) One of the guys paddling out in front panicked and bailed, flinging his board away to get under the wave. But he flung it straight at Dyl and the board clocked him in the mouth, ripping his bottom jaw in half. It concussed Dyl to the point where, when he came up, he was in such a confused state that he started paddling in the wrong direction, not knowing where he was. Luckily somebody saw him; there was blood everywhere. They managed to get Dyl to the beach, and he was taken straight to the hospital. The X-rays revealed that the board had split his bottom jaw from his teeth all the way down to his chin, full separation.
They say the jawbone is one of the hardest bones to break, and it was ripped apart. He had to get it stuck together and wired up, and he spent loads of time in the hospital. After that he was out of the water for three or four months to get his jaw right, sipping food through a straw.
I wrote a long essay to a surf magazine, saying the kook – a reckless, inexperienced surfer – situation was getting out of control. I used an F1 analogy: you wouldn’t put someone on their P plates behind the wheel of a Formula One car and on the track with professional drivers. I was angry because a kook had done it to my brother. He hadn’t done it to himself.
I’ve always believed that those type of people shouldn’t be out there. Go and learn somewhere else instead of dropping in on one of the world’s best waves. I’ve had that in the back of my head because that’s the way I was taught. You learn in one place and you progress to others – same as in any other sport.
But the accident didn’t stop Dylan.
It’s ironic that he had just come back from surfing twenty-foot waves in Tahiti, only to smash his face apart in two-foot, waist-high Snapper Rocks. It goes to show how the simplest things in life can still catch you out. Some people might talk about fate, and how you can’t do anything about it when it’s ‘your time’. I don’t believe in fate or karma. I’m a firm believer that life is made up of random events and moments. Shit just happens.
Dylan has had those experiences when something can go wrong at any place, at any time. If he can break his jaw that badly and still go out there, breaking my neck wasn’t going to change him. He’s just wired that way. He’s a nut job.
After a week visiting, Dylan bailed back to Queensland. I understand that everyone’s got their own life to lead, so I didn’t really expect him or anyone to come and be with me for long periods. He has his own job – a couple of surfboard factories on the go – and he was still travelling and getting paid to freesurf.
I never got to the point where I wanted to make my own boards, mainly because I didn’t like getting my hands dirty, I think. I always had it in my head that I would work on the sales or distribution side of things.
I knew everything about making surfboards, because I’d been around them all my life. I’d watched Dad glassing and the guys shaping, sanding and spraying artwork. I actually started off with more experience making boards than Dyl. He used to sweep the factory when he was a grommet, but when he was young he started a bricklaying apprenticeship. That’s what he worked as until the surfing took over and he became a full-time professional.
It was in the late ’90s when Dylan began playing around with board design and shaping became an interest. As time went on, he shaped for another big-name board maker in Sydney while still freesurfing. When he moved to Queensland, he started as an understudy of Jason Stevenson, one of the best surfboard shapers in the world. As he worked in with JS, learning and doing his own thing at the same time, his name got bigger and bigger in the shaping world.
It was after my injury that he decided to go for it on his own. And, along with being this big-wave legend, he got more and more recognised as what they call a ‘surfer–shaper’, which is like being a player–coach in football. Back in the ’70s, everyone was pretty much a surfer–shaper, making their own boards. I was stocking Dyl’s boards in my shop, as well as riding them myself. Finally, Dylan decided to go into business on his own.
I said at the time, ‘You’re crazy. Just stay with JS – he’s recognised as the best.’ What did I know about the surfing industry? I’d only worked in it for years. ‘You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Learn as much as you can at JS. That’s what I would try to do – learn as much as I can off the older guys in the industry.’
But it was the same as him paddling for every single wave: he didn’t have that switch to tell him to pull back. He just said, ‘I’m going for it.’
And he proved me wrong. Dyl always lands on his feet.
21
A new view
I quickly fell into the routine of physio and OT, but by the end of the first week I was ratshit. The weekend came and everything in the hospital shut down because all the OTs and physios were off. The nurses were still there, but there was pretty much nothing to do, so everyone floated around the ward. It was downtime and the visiting hours were shelved. Aimee had the roster going; there was always someone from the family with m
e. I was in the powerchair for the weekend, so I could get by a lot easier and not have to rely on people pushing me, because at that time they still didn’t have me in the manual chair outside.
Sparkesy came up from Kiama to see me in my new surroundings.
Sparkes: The Royal North Shore didn’t look good at first. It gave the impression of being a run-down hospital, not that I paid as much attention to that as Dazza. I was really nervous when I walked in because this was the firs time I would be around other people in the same situation as him – all the patients in Singapore had other problems.
I was worried. I thought everyone would be depressed and sad, so I was surprised when I went in. You would be introduced to other patients and they’d be all smiles – ‘Hey, how you going?’ – as they wheeled around.
I remember speaking to one guy who was lying in bed and had no movement at all, and we just chatted. I was thinking, These guys are all so upbeat! I expected everyone to be lying there, saying nothing, doing nothing. It was a bit of a shock – a good shock, though.
I’d read up a lot about spinal cord injury before that first visit, but it was by actually being in hospital and seeing the different levels for myself that I became more aware.
During that first week, I heard all these stories from guys on the ward about how there were shops ‘underneath’. I was confused by this. ‘What do you mean there are shops? It’s a hospital.’ They explained that there was a Gloria Jean’s Coffees and a Subway, and various other shops, around a big food court.
I still didn’t get it. ‘You mean outside the hospital, right?’ But it was all inside the hospital. It was just another example of how little I knew about hospital life. I’d assumed that the whole building would be wards, X-ray rooms and operating theatres.
So, on that second weekend in North Shore, the staff got me up and I explored the hospital with my family. We went down to the ground floor and had lunch outside of the ward for the first time. Everyone got coffee and tea, and we sat at a table in what felt like a normal shopping mall at first. But, when I looked around, there were people walking along with drip-stands on wheels and others in wheelchairs, some in hospital gowns. No bare bums, though.
It all seemed so odd, like my mind was running away from me. I imagined I was in a normal shopping centre, but I was surrounded by zombies shuffling around or drifting past in wheelchairs. It might have been my need to get away from this scene, but I suddenly realised I hadn’t been outside in four or five weeks, so once we’d finished I said, ‘Let’s go.’
There were some courtyards by the front doors, so I wheeled out in the powerchair. A burst of sunshine hit me on my face, and I got this enormous surge of energy, having been cooped up inside for so long. In that moment, I quickly discovered just how much the sun would become a deep love. I had always spent hours and hours outdoors, surfing and playing soccer, but I’d taken the sun for granted. Now that my mobility was gone, my body wasn’t generating heat and I realised exactly how important sunlight was going to be to me going forward.
Everyone immediately headed for a bench under a shady tree, but I knew straightaway where I needed to be. ‘No, no. I want to sit over there in the sun.’ And with that, I started a new routine: everyone sweating their guts out just so I could try to maintain my warmth.
My world opened up a bit that weekend, exploring the hospital and meeting other people as they cruised around.
As I watched them, I started to think, Is that what I look like? There were no big mirrors, so I was looking out at everything from my own point of view. I saw so many people in wheelchairs, and they all looked totally different. I wondered where I sat on the scale of mobility, constantly asking, ‘Do I look like that guy? Do I move like that guy?’ It was only later that I began to realise there are lots of different wheelchairs with a range of alternative set-ups, and that people can be in wheelchairs for reasons apart from spinal cord injury. But during that first time off the ward I just assumed everyone in a wheelchair was paralysed like me. It was a world I’d been oblivious to.
This wasn’t the world I had lived in up to that point. I had dropped into it with no experience or understanding of how anything worked, so I was taking in all this information rapidly and trying to process everything. The more I saw, the more it hit me that I didn’t know where I sat in all this.
The upside of that weekend was that I got to go outside and feel the warmth of the sun soak into me, and I got to do this with Bowie, while surrounded by family and friends. I’d only been up and about for a few hours each day, but it felt like enough. I was drained. I was still getting out of bed late in the morning and going back to bed at around five in the afternoon, so it was quite a short day. Aimee usually stayed with me in the afternoons from five until eight o’clock. During those first weeks, I’d expected to be getting more into rehab and that the physical activity would tire me out, but it was the mental side of things that I found tiring. I was learning all the processes I needed to go through every day, while also seeing new worlds open up and learning where I could and couldn’t go.
I was trying to absorb and analyse the information that the physios were telling me, in addition to what was coming from the doctors and the nurses, while always wanting to answer the question: ‘Where to next?’ Although I was exhausted, it was a good exhaustion, coming from lots of conversations and tackling things I could physically achieve.
Having been used to getting up at the crack of dawn to surf before working a full day, it was funny just how quickly the ‘hospital day’ became the new normal. Some days I would be up for three hours, and then the next day I would stay up for five hours and think it was a massive feat: ‘Do you realise what I just did? I stayed up till four o’clock in the afternoon!’
I guess everybody has those moments when they think they can put some sort of positive spin on whatever adversity they are facing, just to get through it. Even though I was getting slammed with negative information the whole time, somehow I was able to find the bright side and move on to the next challenge.
Whatever situation I am in, I will always try to find a way to move forward. I like problem solving. The only way my brain can do this is through constant observation. I have never been the sort of guy who could sit down and read a textbook; I just have to do the thing, whatever it might be, and work it out practically.
By watching and learning from the other guys in wheelchairs, I could work out what I wanted to be able to do. Then I could plan how to get there. I spent that whole week studying other people in wheelchairs, and I started marking where I aspired to be at certain points of time. The following week was when it began getting a little harder.
22
North Shore routines
The pattern of daily life had become clear.
I would get up, make my way to the gym, and then make sure I saw Bowie and had my morning cuddles. Because I knew I couldn’t pick her up and give her a great big bear hug, when she was sat at the right level or was on my lap, that was my cuddle time. It slowed down some of my rehab sessions, because I didn’t want to give it up. But for me to get on with things I needed someone to carry her away and keep her distracted.
By the end of the first week I had a bit of an idea of what to expect from physio and OT. Me being me, once I had my routine established I started making calls about what should happen, like I knew what was going on. When the second week started, the timetable was put up with more of the same exercises, but even after such a short time I began to feel a difference. My balance might have still been a way off, but my strength was improving, along with my general health. When they moved me from the powerchair into the manual chair, I had a seatbelt that went around my chest and the backrest to keep me in so that I couldn’t fall out.
I was still working on the plinth every day, doing more weights, but then Jenny decided it was time to sit me up unassisted, which was very, very hard. When I was on the plinth, I usually lay flat on my back, lifting weights and doing different e
xercises for my upper arms, shoulders and chest. But now she slid me to the edge of the plinth so that my feet were hanging over the side with my legs in a sitting position. The plinth was lowered until my feet were flat on the floor, to act as an anchor, then Jenny and another physio grabbed both of my hands and pulled me upright, while another person knelt on the plinth behind me. I was quite shocked, because I hadn’t sat up without the support of a bed or a wheelchair before, and when she pulled me up the first thing I noticed was just how wobbly I felt. I was all over the joint, like plating up a pile of jelly. It was a bizarre feeling. Even though they didn’t let go of me, so I was never going to crash back down, they had me in a loose enough grip that I naturally tried to balance myself.
That familiar feeling of sitting on a surfboard out in the water quickly returned. Once I made that connection, I wasn’t freaked out about falling, and I wasn’t struggling to stay upright. It instantly made me want to push on.
I explained the comparison to the physios, and they were curious because they had never heard that before. They loved being given challenges instead of the more mundane routines, so they were really pleased when I said, ‘Man, I want to work on this more!’
I tried sitting, leaning forward with my arms braced for support, but my triceps were still too weak. I couldn’t keep myself upright for long before I started to feel dizzy, so they would lay me down again. The focus turned to building those muscles. I decided not to tell any of my family what we were working on.
I made my way to the gym the following day, and as soon as I arrived the physios organised to get me on the plinth again, sitting upright. I had that same dizzy feeling at first, and my arms tired quickly, so I rested for a bit. While I was lying there, the physios talked about techniques and then suggested that I should have my hands twisted in more so that I could lock out my elbows. It was the first trick I learned where I could get the same result as I used to by doing things a different way.
Owen and Eleanor Make Things Up Page 16