“We were just chilling, sitting in the boat…then you just see the whole horizon go dark.”
Luke O’Connell
For Luke O’Connell, that dark horizon was exactly what he was searching for when he flew to Fiji for a self-termed ‘strike mission’ earlier this year. A real estate agent by trade, selling houses wasn’t on the agenda when he flew across the Pacific. Luke is also a Rip Curl Ulladulla sponsored surfer, and it was that sponsorship which led to his quick sojourn to one of the most famous waves in the world.
I caught up with Luke for a chat on all things politics. Just kidding, we talked about surfing, namely Cloudbreak, breaking boards and surfing with the pros.
For a look at an edit from Luke’s trip, check out his video, titled ‘Grass’, on the Southern Man YouTube channel:
On the trek to Fiji
While Fiji’s just a hop, skip and a jump from Australia’s east coast, Cloudbreak itself, believe it or not, isn’t right on the doorstep of the airport.
I’ve never been to Fiji, so talk me through what it’s like over there. You’ve got the main island [Viti Levu] and then Tavarua’s just a little island off to the west with Cloudbreak just off that. Is it easy to get to or is it pretty inaccessible?
From Australia it’s pretty easy. You just drive to Sydney or Canberra, they’re doing direct flights from Canberra now which is pretty crazy.
Luke O’Connell
Direct to Fiji?
Yeah. Yep. So you just drive two hours, jump on the plane, jump off the plane, get the boys to pick you up from the airport and then drive us to our accommodation which is about 20 or 30 minutes away.
Luke O’Connell
They’re very welcoming, the people over there, it’s insane. They’re the nicest people in the world. Even if there’s no surf, you’re just very welcomed. They’re very giving people, they’re always saying hello, so it’s just a pleasure to go there really.
Luke O’Connell
So they’ll pick you up, take you to your apartment for a sleep, then the next morning you’ll get up and have a 30-minute drive then a 10-minute dirt track right to the ocean. The villagers around the corner drive the boats around and pick us up from a little keyhole and take us ten minutes out to Cloudy. So easy.
Luke O’Connell
So you stay on the main island of Fiji?
Yeah not on Tavarua – that costs about a thousand bucks a night USD. Pretty crazy.
Luke O’Connell
Obviously you work too, so is it hard to get time off and go on surf trips?
Nah, my boss is really good. He goes, “As long as you make it back”. Cause those trips, they don’t take that long. I work four days a week so if I just work an extra day for the next month I pay him back, so it’s actually a really good set up that I’ve got going here.
Luke O’Connell
On planning the trip
Sounds like a good boss! And just as well, because there isn’t always a whole lot of time to get organised.
Did you have any idea which dates you’d go or were you watching the swell and just headed over when it was looking good?
I had a look at the charts and it was looking pretty crazy. I think it was like 1.4 [metres] at 20 seconds and I was like, that’s legit swell. There was a swell at the start of the year that I had a look at – I didn’t end up going – but it was like 1.1 at 20 seconds and it was a solid 10-15 foot. That’s what we were hoping to wake up to, but when we rocked up it didn’t really come.
Luke O’Connell
We had another look and it still hadn’t really come, but then on the second day we were just chilling, sitting in the boat, relaxing and watching the waves. It was like two foot, and then you just see the whole horizon just go dark and you’re like, “Oh okay, I know what this looks like”. There were 12, 14, 15 waves of like eight foot and you could just drive a bus through these barrels.
Luke O’Connell
That’s normally how that place works. When the swell’s supposed to come there’ll be all the people who shouldn’t be out there and suddenly there’ll be a scary big set that we kind of wanted to come for. That set when I first rocked up on the second day was like, “Okay that’s what I’m kind of expecting for this swell,” so then we just sort of started freaking out. We were like, “Alright, we’re out there”. We paddled out and there were all these people who couldn’t surf who just all end up in the channel by the time we’re jumping off the boat, and they’re freaking out.
Luke O’Connell
On surfing with the pros
But while that abrupt change in conditions caught a few people off guard, there were plenty of others who were a little more equipped to deal with it.
The shit thing about it is all the pros were staying on Tavarua – Bobby Martinez, Koa Smith, Koa Rothman, Matt Meola – all of these guys. There were eight or nine pros – Billy Kemper was there too – so they all just gravitated to the top.
Luke O’Connell
We figured out during the day that it was literally those big sets and then an hour wait and there was barely anything in between. And then there’d be a 12-wave set and it would just be draining the whole time. But by the time an hour passed, they had a bigger pack than us, it was kind of us and them wanting the sets, so they just kind of gravitated up past us.
Luke O’Connell
What’s it like trying to compete with guys like Billy Kemper? Is it pretty full on?
Well out there I’m looking for the same waves he is, he’s just a bigger personality that everyone knows. I don’t really like surfing with those guys. They don’t really have much respect for the people around them I don’t reckon.
Luke O’Connell
Has it been like that previously when you’ve been to Fiji? Every time there’s a swell will those guys be there?
It’s been getting worse. I think there was a low-key crew [previously]. I chased a swell when I was 14 with my dad and that was the only time there were pros out there. There was Mick [Fanning], and then Dingo was there too – his name’s Dean Morrison – but Dingo lives there, I think, or at least has a house of some sort, so he’s pretty well-known there. But other than that not really, it’s pretty sweet.
Luke O’Connell
On the privatisation of Cloudbreak
Sweet as it may be, Cloudbreak wasn’t always so accessible to the general public. After the Western world cottoned on to its existence in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, the wave became privatised, reserved for those staying at the closest resorts. That exclusivity ended at the hands of the Fijian government in 2010, but there are some whispers about its potential return.
I heard that they’re trying to maybe make it private again over there, so I was trying to make the most of it as much as I could.
Luke O’Connell
Back in the day, I think it might have been like ten years ago – maybe longer because I’ve been going for nearly ten years – let’s just say 15 years ago, you used to only be able to surf it if you stayed on Tavarua, which is pretty annoying. I’ve got lots of friends from over there who make money off Cloudbreak in particular, and they were pretty happy that the restrictions got lifted back in the day.
Luke O’Connell
But now there’s talk of that changing. There was a camp that I used to stay in at Rendezvous, which is probably the closest land camp on the mainland to Cloudbreak, and that got bought out by Tavarua. That means that we’ve stopped staying there, so we’re staying further away. Now they’ve talked about making a cost, I guess, to surf the break unless you stay on Tavarua and go from there. There might be a tax for people like myself, and for good friends that I have who run their businesses around the waves, there might be a cost which is gonna get implemented. But I don’t know how they’re gonna regulate it, so who knows?
Luke O’Connell
How do you feel about that?
It is what it is. I’m a tourist so I can’t really have much say. What can you do? Maybe I’ll be one of those old dudes who will be like, “I had those good old days of Cloudbreak where we didn’t have to pay” but yeah, I dunno. I eventually wanted to, maybe next year, go do surf guiding on the island. So either one of those resorts [on Tavarua] would be good – but we’ll see what happens.
Luke O’Connell
On passport issues
Speaking of being a tourist, while the trip across the Pacific was for the most part relatively easy, it wasn’t all smooth sailing for the whole crew. Luke’s man behind the camera, Barli, very nearly didn’t make it on the trip at all, with a last-minute passport issue almost forcing him to stay home.
I’ve been trying my luck, never know if you don’t ask sort of thing, with a couple of the local sponsors, and they’ve been really supportive, we’ll just say that. I ride for Rip Curl, but Rip Curl Ulladulla especially have been really helpful with getting me on these little trips which I’ve been fortunate to go on. Not many people in Australia get to do that, when you get backed by a brand. So I was like, “Oh yeah there looks like a swell, let’s just try to bring our own filmer and try to make it happen”. So I asked the question and Kent at Southern Man as well as Martyn and Dani up there, they gave us some coin to get him there and see what he could do.
Luke O’Connell
Then we realised Barli’s passport wasn’t in date, so we had to sort that out. We had to write a letter from Rip Curl Ulladulla saying we need Barli for this business trip, and then Barli drove to Canberra two days before – we left on the Sunday and he sorted it out on the Thursday and Friday. So he drove to Canberra really early and waited and then got his emergency passport. And then we were all good.
Luke O’Connell
If he couldn’t have got it would you have anyone else who could do it or would that just mess up the trip completely?
Oh look, it wouldn’t have been the end of the world cause I had to pay my way anyway, so I was just kind of making it happen for the sponsors and trying to get some content for myself and them, so nah. It would have been annoying but it wouldn’t have messed up the trip, nah, you can’t complain when you’re going overseas and you’re having a good time with your mates anyway.
Luke O’Connell
But while Barli managed to sort his passport in the nick of time, things didn’t go quite so well when he got on the other side of the camera.
Do you take a lot of different boards over, or do you pretty much know what you’re gonna get?
Just cause of the type of surfing I do, the glass job on my surfboards means that they’re not that durable. With the surfing I do and the waves that I’m chasing I’d normally snap a couple. So, the only board I snapped on that trip actually, my filmer Barli went for a surf out after me on our last day and he snapped it, so he was pretty rattled.
Luke O’Connell
On future trips
Despite that hiccup, the trip still yielded some pretty content, as the video above can attest. So where’s next for Luke?
Do you get to go on many of those sort of trips for Rip Curl or is pretty few and far between?
I don’t really do much for the brands in the sense of going places, but I’m always keen to. It’s just whether they want to put some money into team riders and make some cool stuff.
Luke O’Connell
Will it be you making suggestions of where to go?
Well that’s ideal, but it’s also, say for example, Rip Curl goes, “Hey we want you to come to New Zealand next week and shoot some product,” I’ll drop everything and go, you know what I mean? But in this day and age the bigger brands don’t really have much money to spend on their team riders to try to get some content for their brands. All the brands are kind of tied up with what they can and can’t spend and who they can and can’t give some budget to to make some stuff, but that’s fine.
Luke O’Connell
Do you have anywhere on the horizon that you want to go to or that they’re thinking of sending you?
Nowhere that they’re sending me but I’d like to go to Chopes [Teahupo’o, Tahiti], maybe Chile as well. There’s some waves in Chile that I want to go and have a look at.
Luke O’Connell
Do you mostly surf those big sort of heavy, barrelling waves? Is that what you’re generally hunting?
Yeah, I think so, those bigger waves that have a bit more, I guess, consequence. But I’m also never opposed to going and having a chill trip somewhere like Mexico and chasing some point breaks like that too. So yeah whatever goes.
Luke O’Connell
For the time being, it’s back to selling houses for Luke, and surfing the less consequential breaks of New South Wales’ south coast. And while he doesn’t yet know exactly what’s on the horizon from a surfing perspective, hopefully it’s a dark one, blacked out by more barrels you could drive a bus through.
