Smorgasboarder_16_March-2013

“Surfing lead me to exploring the Australian coast, which lead me to
living in Avalon, which lead me to an architectural career designing
houses on the coast all around Australia, all totally unplanned, of
course, and through no great management on my behalf.”
It’s uncanny how the planets can sometimes align - for everything
to fall into place just when you need it most. And so it was for Peter
Downes who grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. He recalls
the highlight of his earlier years to be when the family packed up the
car and headed for Seven Mile Beach - just south of Gerroa in the
Shoalhaven Shire, about two hours south of the Sydney CBD - to camp
for the summer holidays. Around the age of fifteen, his family moved
to Currarong, down near Jervis Bay and this is where Peter first caught
the surfing bug.
“It was a good place to learn because the waves there are generally
pretty small and there was no one else around. I learnt on a 9’6” Ron
surfboard.”
His passion for the surf never waned. When he left home the lure
of the sea was ever present, so Peter moved to Manly, on Sydney’s
Northern Beaches.
“I went to Uni, started an engineering degree part-time and during the
day I worked as a draftsman. I realised I was pretty good at it, so after
a while I dropped out of Uni and just focused on drafting.
“It was the ‘70s and it was a great time for the mining industry.
I ended up working as a draftsman, and then a site manager in
interesting parts of Australia right through the ‘70s and early ‘80s. I
used to design the material handling side of things from ship loaders
to stacker reclaimers.”
One job saw Peter based at Cape Cuvier, south of the Tropic of
Capricorn, north of Carnarvon. He recalls his deployment fondly.
“I went up there to supervise the construction of a ship loader. I took
the job because just up the coast was Red Bluff, which was a secret in
those days. A surfboard manufacturer in Perth had told me about it. I
used to go up there on the weekend and surf with maybe two or three
other guys in the water.
“The water up there is just full of life. You could not put an extra fish
in there without taking one out. Red Bluff is an amazing surf spot. In
summer it’s dead flat. In winter it’s huge. I never saw it under 16ft. That
was as big as I surfed it, but it is quite an easy wave, relatively friendly
for its size. You paddle out in deep water and around into the wave.
It’s not real sucky - you skate along the top of it. When it gets bigger, it
gets more hollow and gnarly.
“I got my best barrel ever there. I can still picture it, with the sun
shining through the top of the wave prismatically from the barrel. I had
just got there after some rain and the whole desert was covered with
flowers. When you were sitting out the back looking towards land you
could see this sea of flowers and smell the perfume. It was a really
spacey experience.”
mar/apr 2013 | SMORGASBOARDER 85