Brendon Gibbens swoops breezily, Newcastle, NSW

While Rio De Janeiro wasn’t at its finest the last coupla days, Australia’s East Coast certainly was. Brendon Gibbens, who’s been staying with fellow South African native Craig Anderson at the latter’s home in Newcastle, NSW, scored the kinda waves you salivate over when the first chills of autumn start to land. A little further north of the Surfest contest site, Brendon and Craig lit up a mostly left bank (that still had the occasional right). “This was my first wave swimming out and I came up to see Brendon swooping down from above, laying his rail into the section,” says the photographer, Zachary Heath. While the conditions were mostly about barrels, we’re partial to the breeziness and intimacy of this cut down.