Beating the Heat

Over the weekend, Sydney experienced its most intense heat wave since 1973. Temperature sensors read 43 degrees and the city was a steaming concrete desert. And this all on the back of cyclones in the country’s north and flooding in Melbourne and Queensland. We asked Ozzie Wright and Jarrah Tutton, two Sydney surfers with absolutely no meteorological training or authority on the matter, how they beat the weekend’s heat. What we got was an interesting discussion regarding when the world’s gonna end, and the manner in which humanity will meet its demise.

Ozzie Wright 

Stab: How’d you escape the weekend’s heat wave?
Ozzie Wright: I was going for three surfs a day. The waves were great. It was small but it had a great shape. Good sandbanks, really shallow. There were a few people, but it wasn’t too crowded. I kept saying, “I feel like we’re at the Great Barrier Reef,” it was so crystal clear and beautiful. But at Bungan the hill’s really big and the sand gets so hot, so you surf then you’ve gotta walk up this giant hill of hot sand. By the time you get home you’re a mess– it was radical. I also met the next door neighbours for the first time in two years, ’cause they’ve got a real nice pool. Rocky (Rocky River Wright, Ozzie’s two-year-old son) and his girlfriend Grace went swimming. The kids were hanging over the fence going, “We wanna go in the pool,” then the neighbours said, “Yeah, bring ’em over.” They’re very nice people. I left ’em there for about two hours.

Rocky’s got himself a girl? Yeah. She’s, like, eight. A woman. They went out to a party on Friday night. It was a Mexican ‘Day of the Dead’ party, so we had skulls painted on their faces. It was awesome, (Vaughan) Blakey fell asleep face down on the cement, beside the house. We all just got drunk.

What are your tips for staying cool in the heat? I just go into the ocean. We bought a couple of those clam shell pool, but they’re for kids. I’ve sat in it a couple of times.

Is the world ending? No, I don’t think so. I definitely think that humans will become extinct one day, but I think the world will live on. We’ve got quite a few thousand years left in us. But then that heat might cause an ice age, it might send black smoke up and stop the sun from hitting the earth, who knows? Something like that is going to happen, surely. Only the cockroaches will be okay.

How long we got? Long in comparison to our lives, but not long in comparison to the life of the universe.

Jarrah Tutton

Stab: How’d you escape the heat?
Jarrah Tutton: Fuck man, it was out of control. I thought I was going to die. I swallowed six litres of water and didn’t even piss. I couldn’t escape the heat. I was working all weekend at a stand-up paddle board school in Watson Bay. I had four lessons and they go for an hour and a half each. When I finished, my car was overheating. I almost passed-out on the way home, I was that dehydrated.

What are your tips for staying cool in the heat? Grab a six-pack and sit at the north end of Bondi with an umbrella. If it gets real hectic head up to the mall at Bondi Junction, go to the movies and sit in the dark with the air conditioner.

What’s with all the cyclones and flooding? I reckon all that shit is ’cause of the el niño and the warmer currents coming further down south. I went spear-fishing at North Bondi at the start of the week when the heat wave was just starting and I saw a massive Black Bar Barracuda. I’ve never seen one further south than the Gold Coast (Bondi’s 11 hours drive south of the Gold Coast, to give you some perspective). We’ve been getting lots of Pelagic fish that you wouldn’t normally get down here. It’s going to be a hectic year for cyclones I reckon, ’cause the weather patterns are changing.

Is the end nigh? Um, I don’t know. The world’s definitely ending, but who knows when it’s going to end. I don’t think it’s going to be next year, but she’s going to end. We’re on a one-way path, we’re destroying our world. There’s going to be no food left, no water left and there’s going to be a mass extinction. Or the world could just kick up a storm, chew us up and spit us out, like with the dinosaurs. And polar shifts. We can’t keep going the way we’re going, something has to change. We have to change, which is highly unlikely ’cause we’re so set in our ways, ignorance is bliss and everybody likes to go, “Well fuck it, I can’t make a change ’cause I’m only one person.” That’s the attitude that’s got us to where we are now. Either something drastic is going to happen with the planet where we won’t be able to survive anymore, or we’re just going to fight each other to death. Pretty negative outlook on life, but I just look at it, like, just live – if you can help out, help out. Carbon foot print and all that shit. Be kind to your neighbours, be a good human. It’s pretty hard when 80 percent of the world is money hungry. There’s a saying: when all the rivers dry up and when all the seas are empty and all the trees have been cut down, that is the day when man will realise that he can’t eat money. We need a shift of consciousness. We need to start living as one whole entity, instead of hating each other. Religion this and religion that. And money. We need to take care of our planet, number one – our water, our rain-forests, our oceans, because that’s what sustains us. After that we need free health-care, free schooling.

What will be left after we destroy ourselves? Maybe Cockroaches. There’s always going to be some sort of life form on this planet. (The planet) will regrow and fix itself up when we’re gone. For how old our planet is and for how old our universe is, we’re not even a piece of fucking dust. To think that we’re all high and mighty and there’s nothing else out there, we’re pretty naive. Another 50 million years from now the cycle could start again. Evolution’s a crazy thing – it could be three-armed cyclops, or a new age of talking dinosaurs. – Simon Nicholas