Beau Foster, Lower Clarence, Australia

With the Quiksilver contest kicking into gear on the Gold Coast yesterday and slipping straight into a lay-day today, your Stab correspondent is spending a final day in a small(ish) town on Australia’a mid-north coast, after staying with the SUPERbrand surfboard team for the last week. Aside from the friendly-as-hell shapers and business gents, are a handful of equally-friendly and extremely talented surfers. Among the talent are Hawaiian Clay Marzo, Australian Dion Agius, half-Javanese, half-Aussie Lee Wilson, Maroubra kid Max Ashford, and Central Coast fun-boi Beau Foster (pictured here). Seventeen-year-old Beau’s the kinda kid who can bring out the grom in every adult on the trip, talk as much shit as he wants and never cop anything back, and still surf at a level not far off that of the older team members. When I asked him about this session, he looked straight at me and rattled off the following string of sentences without hesitationt: “We drove around looking for waves all morning and Dion was saying that there was a back beach that’d be good. They walked down to check the back beach, and while they were down there I was watching the other side of the point, which is a right. I was frothing on it, so I got my shit on and waxed up. As I was running down, they were walking up from checking the back beach, shaking their heads. I had to take my vest off and ride back into town ’cause they didn’t wanna stay out there. When we got back to the house, everyone was talking about doing a photo shoot in this pool. I asked (shaper and all-round good guy) Sparrow if I could go surf or if I had to do the shoot. He asked how many waves I was gonna get and I told him three. He said it’d be cool, but hurry (back for the shoot). I ate a banana, ran down and paddled out. I caught more than three waves, and this (photo above) was one of ’em.” More from the trip, coming real soon. – Elliot Struck