During the late 60’s and early 70’s, the surfing lifestyle meant getting in your kombi van packed to the rafters with surfboards, surfmaps, tents and sleeping bags and heading to the coast for classic surfing safari.
Where one ended up depended entirely on the waves. One day you could be riding the hollow lefthand reef-break at Summercloud Bay on Sydney’s south coast, the next morning you could wake up at Angourie on NSW’s far north coast.
The weather map dictated which direction these free-spirited wave hunters would point their kombi, and nobody knew how to read weather map better than ex-Maroubra surfer Gordon Merchant. He had an uncanny ability to turn up at the right beach exactly when it was ‘going off’ (that translated means when the wind, tide and surf combine to produce perfect waves).
It was after one such magic surf-run up the coast, in search of that inevitable Pot of Gold, that invariably punctuated his surf safaris, that meant Gordon simply did not return to Maroubra. He had found his surfing Utopia, a 20 miles stretch of golden beach and perfect point breaks.
