Source: Sydney Morning Herald
On a surfing safari aboard Indies Trader in the remote province of West Papua, Michael Gordon joins villagers on uncharted breaks.
They take fright when they see us and we soon discover why. There are half a dozen children bobbing up and down in the line-up, a couple of hundred metres from their village. The waves are small and hollow, breaking fast over the coral reef, so we throw a couple of longboards in the tinnie and head towards them. The children split.
It is Tony ''Doris'' Eltherington who lures them back, waving his arms, grinning and holding up one of the boards. But it's Paul Neilsen who gets them hooting. Wearing a bright-red rashie and surfing on one of those soft malibus that are ideal for learners (also bright red), he strokes into a wave and surfs it for 70 metres or more, all the way to the beach.
After the excited screams subside, we are joined by 10 or so of the kids in the line-up, all of them naked and all with wooden bodyboards they handcrafted themselves. Soon enough, they tell us they have never seen stand-up surfers before. Ever. Yet they surf their own break, their own way, every day, irrespective of the conditions.
Doris was a pro surfer in the 1970s. The nickname came from the mane of long, blond hair he had back in the day. He's been exploring the waves of Indonesia ever since he stopped competing but describes our session with the hard-core kids of West Papua as one of the best surfing days of his life. ''Those children discovered the spirit of surfing,'' he says, ''and they did it naturally, all on their own.
''Their boards had everything you could imagine: keel-fin bottoms, concave decks, the whole spectrum of surfboard history going back to the Duke [Kahanamoku], all unbeknown to them. They had no boardies, no gear but they've really got the stoke of surfing. They've got what it's all about.''
The encounter comes towards the end of a blissful boat odyssey that spans 1000 kilometres in two weeks, during which we do not see another white man.
It begins at Sorong in the west, directly north of Darwin, and ends in Biak in the east. We have two main aims - to find breaks that have never been surfed and to witness the splendour of the world's richest coral reef ecosystems - and both pursuits are punctuated by kayaking, memorable seafood meals and encounters with friendly villagers unaccustomed to visitors.
I've been on a surfing boat trip in the Mentawai islands off Sumatra and that was a lifetime highlight - but this is something else again. This is a group of seasoned surfers with their partners on the Indies Trader IV, the most upmarket charter boat in Indonesia, exploring one of surfing's - and tourism's - last frontiers.
Aside from having eight airconditioned, double-berth staterooms with en suite bathrooms, the boat has a helipad and every toy an ocean-lover could imagine: two tinnies, a launch, stand-up paddle boards, bodyboards, surfboards, scuba gear, jet-skis, fishing rods and more.
Our host is Alan Green, or ''Greeny'', who founded the global surf company Quiksilver in 1970, made a fortune and now spends much of his spare time indulging his passions for surfing, exploring, skiing and horse racing. He still rides a short board but can't abide crowds.
''In the old days I think they called you a pagan if you worshipped nature but that's what I'm about,'' he says. ''It's a subtle type of enjoyment and, at my age [63], it really suits me. You take everything in: the nuances, the small changes, the surprises.''
Although he had been on plenty of surf boat trips in the 1980s and '90s, it wasn't until 2001 that he turned to discovery and the bigger picture. In three consecutive years he hired a boat for four months and decided Indonesia was his favourite destination.
''Open an atlas on a table and run your eye along the equator, which is where you get the most benign weather,'' he says. ''Indonesia is just a kaleidoscope of blue and green and brown. It's all islands and that's what really appeals to me. It's so alive.''
In 2004, Greeny bought the Indies Trader IV, the flagship of a fleet operated by surf-charter pioneer Martin Daly. Since then, Greeny has spent about six weeks a year on the boat; the rest of the time it is available to charter trips like ours..
