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\u201cI lived through a great era, a lot of freedom and a very quiet time down there in my youth, before tourism and all the rest, and the developments that have gone on.\u201d<\/p>\nWAYNE Lynch was due back in his old hometown of Lorne last month for public talks about the climate, growing up on the relatively undeveloped coast and being the first to surf many of its waves, but COVID ruined all that, like so much of the past few years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was surprised at just how much of it is still around down there,\u201d the legendary surfer and shaper remarked from his home near Yamba in northern NSW, where he and his wife moved about six years ago.<\/p>\n
Immunocompromised, he still made the journey down but wore a mask and only caught up with friends outside.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s just one of the demarcation points in his memory between a sparse, rugged landscape that helped to define his identity as one of the coast\u2019s surfing pioneers, and its contemporary state of increasing development, industrialisation, visitation and change.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just such a raw beauty to the place. As soon as you stand on those cliffs and look at the ocean, you just feel that energy that the Southern Ocean has,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t \u2013 well, I don\u2019t \u2013 take that for granted; it\u2019s unique, special.
\n\u201cI lived through a great era, a lot of freedom and a very quiet time down there in my youth, before tourism and all the rest, and the developments that have gone on.\u201d<\/p>\n
While the \u2018Climate Convo\u2019s\u2019 event he was due to speak at was cancelled, the topics still came up during his catch-ups with friends, particularly what life was like on the east coast having just been through some of the worst flooding, drought and fires on record.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been horrendous, a very difficult period,\u201d Lynch said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were very lucky, we nearly got burnt out, we nearly got flooded, but friends have copped it really bad.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s people who have got nothing, they\u2019ve lost everything and there\u2019s not much future at the moment \u2013 well, they don\u2019t seem to think there is, because there\u2019s not much of a plan. And so that all inevitably came to climate and what\u2019s going on.
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\u201cThat\u2019s one thing about growing old in an area, you witness the changes. Some are natural of course, cyclic and all the rest, but some are far worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way the erosion is down Apollo Bay now, they\u2019ve had to put in groynes and rock walls and all the rest just to stop the ocean road from washing away. Well, that certainly never happened before, so, it\u2019s definitely changing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, I suppose there\u2019s a certain urgency in the things we discuss, more so than there was 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
He listed several areas of concern: erosion, development, opening up of more and more oil and gas projects in areas his father grew up fishing, and live surfcams at once-remote spots.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo me it\u2019s fairly representative of the way things are going \u2026 it\u2019s a type of exploitation.
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\u201cLife is short and you leave behind a legacy of some sort, collectively and individually.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the important things about this situation we\u2019re in right now, with the climate changing \u2013 and I think that\u2019s almost too passive a word but that\u2019s what we use \u2013 you know I\u2019ve got grandchildren now and I look at them and so often I think what are you going to inherit and what happens if we don\u2019t correct the problem?<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really talk about it with the kids too much \u2026 I don\u2019t want them to develop a real anxiety, it\u2019s not for them to make the changes, it\u2019s for us, as elders and people who have lived a certain time on the earth to do something about.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WAYNE Lynch was due back in his old hometown of Lorne last month for public talks about the climate, growing up on the relatively undeveloped coast and being the first to surf many of its waves, but COVID ruined all that, like so much of the past few years. \u201cI was surprised at just how […]<\/p>\n