Learn to surf in Byron Bay

Meet Rusty Miller.

Rusty proved how well he could hold his own on a wave when he became United States surfing champion in 1965. A few years later he migrated to Australia and since the early 1970s he has been teaching people to surf on the waves around Byron Bay. He is known around town as a bit of a legend, and after spending a few hours on the beach with him learning to surf, you get the impression there are very few locals he doesn’t know.

So what’s so great about riding a board on a wave, and why are so many people deciding to take it up?

Surfing Australia estimates that around a quarter of a million people graduated from surf schools across Australia last year and according to Rusty, the reason more people are learning to surf is simple - modern life isn’t giving them everything they need.

“I think that people have a lot of things on their minds these days. Even though technologically we are more advanced than we ever have been, we are lacking connection with nature, and I think that is what Byron is all about - people come here to reconnect with themselves and nature.”

“You have an external connection with nature, which surfing provides, and then you have an internal connection with yourself, which if you do something besides worry about your mortgage and your relationships, whether it be jogging, or golfing, you will find that when you separate your mind from those things and you do something else and then you come back to your regular life, the mundaneness of life, you get a new outlook at it.”

While getting a fresh outlook on life sounds enticing, Rusty says anyone wanting to surf must first learn two key skills.

“I do personalised surfing instruction. The real keys in my instruction method which I call the rhythm method are paddling and then standing up in one fluid motion. First thing I might do is draw a surfboard on the beach, I divide it into three equal parts, I have people stand in the centre part of the surfboard as if they are on a wave, looking forward, and then I ask them to take a mental picture of how they are standing and then I ask them to lie down and then I demonstrate how to get up and stand in one fluid motion, the key being, both of your feet land on the deck at exactly the same time.”

“The other important thing is to make sure that people float on top of the water. One of the most important things is that when you begin surfing, you begin on something that is large, therefore stable in the water and is on top of the water, it is a planing haul, that is what surfing is about, it is about slipping over the water.”

Surfing has become such big business in Australia that north coast based Southern Cross University began offering a Surfing Studies Diploma two years ago. According to the Course Coordinator, Jak Carroll, the industry is worth between one and three billion dollars nationally and $10 billion world-wide.

But Rusty Miller says the appeal of riding a wave has nothing to do with financial opportunities.

“It doesn’t actually produce anything relative to Gross National Product, however in this town it is because they have lots of surfing instruction, but it does give you this inner satisfaction and feeling which is what surf people crave.”

“After you go for a surf and you come into town, you tend to be a nicer person, you don’t kick your dog and you are nice to your wife and kids and stuff like that, I say that kiddingly, but that vibe, when the surf is good in Byron Bay and a lot of people get a lot of surf, the town is actually elevated by the spirit of what you bring in from the water. For most people it seems a little philosophical and spiritual but actually that is what it is about.”

“I have been held responsible for people running away from reality after learning to surf with me but I don’t take any responsibility for that.”

“The way I teach, if you understand the elements like the paddling and the standing up, you really don’t need another lesson necessarily, I mean people take multiple lessons, but basically my little one liner is ‘you get one surfing lesson and a lifetime of homework’.”

According to Rusty there is a good chance it will be homework you enjoy.

Posted: Friday, January 13th, 2006 Under: Gossip. | Home |

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