You can't be fearless, because that's when
you get hurt. You've got to be...
You've got to be smart and realise that you can
potentially get really hurt and
obviously point out that,
figure out the dangers and spots you
don't want to be and put yourself in and
try and keep yourself as safe as you can
but basically you're on that edge of you know
you're in a very dangerous spot
as you get older
I feel like you figure that out a little more
Surfing big waves from a young age like
I was you know 14-15 and paddling out
when it was pretty heavy
I'd never sort of say 'no' to paddling out
It was just in me to paddle out even if I
sat on the shoulder and watched what the
older guys are doing
Well I guess, when you're young like that
You're not really thinking too much
I guess you want to prove a point to
everybody and it was what I wanted to chase
becoming a professional surfer so
yeah, I guess I wasn't thinking too much at all
It's like pretty much just put
your head down and go kinda thing
All the stuff on the news and whatever
those days is so exciting to watch to be apart of
It's the the biggest attraction
Like when when someone, when highlights
come out of big waves it's almost more
viewed than than a competition or something
You know it's kind of the pinnacle of surfing
And my partner she um, she knows what I...
she's been with me since, since
I was twenty so she knows what it's like
I'm sure, I've scared her once or twice
But, you know that's part of it so
I was at a prime age, I was 26 and I was
performing. I'd had covers of magazines
that year and won big wave awards
for Australasia, biggest tube and...
It's all I knew from day one was my income was
surfing and then bang!
The surf industry apocalypse happened
In the late 90s heading into the naughties and
An unprecedented boom really
You know at one stage there I think...
collectively, the industry was probably worth, you know $10 billion
To the point it was almost ridiculous what some of the surf companies were doing
If you went to Times Square in New York City
you had MTV with Carson Daly up on
the top floor and right beneath it like
the Billabong store
and straight across the road was the Quicksilver store
and so they felt like the dream would never
end.
But it did end.
Spectacularly
...spectacularly-ly
It ended so spectacularly-ly
It basically just blew up and sure enough you know
And towards the end of the naughties that's
that's exactly what happened
contracts got pulled back in and Laurie's was one of them
There was a lot of good surfers that got cut at that same time
Just heavy, death-defying waves
Who doesn't want to watch that?
And no one did it with more grace and ability than
Laurie so it was pretty mind-blowing
to watch him kind of... back working as a
tiler as an unpaid professional surfer
when he's one of the best talents on the planet
You know people blew up about it you
know the guy how's this happening?
You know like this guy's amazing
How can you drop a guy like that?
And it seemed like the only person
who wasn't pissed off about it was Laurie
You know?
You know I'd never tell people this but, like
It was a really hard transition for me at the start
You know I had this massive low where you
lose your sponsorship or whatever you
But you have to find a job and I got no experience with nothing
At the same time we were having our first baby
Our first daughter Isle and um, yeah life was
pretty ah, it was a pretty stressful moment
moment that sort of year but like
everything I find I stayed positive
everything Kyle finds a positive and I
and I found my feet and yeah I've got good
friends around and a beautiful partner and kids
In a lot of cases there wasn't a lot of loyalty from the brand's towards them
Now they were fairly expendable
A lot of these guys are you've got to remember
Have been doing that since they were kids
and grow up with a mindset where they go
well you know this is a career you know
I'm gonna chase his hard
So, I really didn't know anything else and probably
didn't have a lot of formal kind of
training in anything else to fall back on
It's lucky I have a lot of tradesmen around me
that basically were offering me...
you wanna come do this, you want to come do this
or whatever so, yeah the change
was was a obviously a huge change
because you are get paid a lot less
money to go work ten times as hard
I think the positive is that it's made me
me realise to appreciate every hour of the day
It's made me realise that life is
short and precious you know
and when I was
surfing and getting paid to surf
there's a lot of times you're cruising and not doing much at all
which, sounds like the lifestyle and is amazing, but
I'm a really active busy person
so in a way it's, kind of it's,it's cool
being busy and working for your money
And now I feel like I appreciate surfing way more
A lot of the guys who are doing it
aren't doing it for huge contract dollars
and if they didn't have the contract dollars
they'd still be doing it anyway and
there's a lot of guys that do
Do those people deserve to be well paid
and well rewarded for like those crazy acts of
bravado? Yeah they should they should be
Australia can produce a lot more big
wave surfers and it gives kids the
opportunity to chase their dream
in something they love doing like every
other sport out there, you know?
And other countries who you know are pushing for
big wave surfers in their country
Australia will just fall behind if they don't
sort of step up a little bit
There's a lot of good Australian big wave surfers and not many
of them are getting paid not even that
It's just cool to watch what
people can do in the ocean, especially in
big scary waves, it's the biggest attraction
That's biggest thing I could tell people is you've got to think about what's going to be after
your career or whatever it is you're doing that you're
making money
You know because it could potentially end
and now I've seen what you've got to think about after surfing
You know I want to keep that to.