Did Australia Forget How To Paddle?

A late-autumn swell hammered Australia’s east coast last weekend, providing days of overhead surf and stiff offshores. 

Typically, swells of this nature incite something of a national holiday in Australia. The Vegemite factory is closed, incompetent barbers everywhere drop their shears, and the entire population heads coastward in nutrient-deficient pick-ups with freshly waxed JSes, DHDs, and NPJs stuffed in the boot. 

This time, there was just one problem. Australians forgot how to paddle. 

Not you too, Stace!

Have a scroll through Instagram, and among the thousands of sand- and occasionally reef-bottomed tubes that were excavated last week in Australia, you’ll find that only a handful were caught by traditional methods (i.e. paddling). 

The rest? Well, surfers can thank Japan’s premiere adult toy brand, Yamaha, for some motorized assistance.

Anything for a cheap thrill, right?

From this side of the Pacific, it’s impossible to know whether a hyper-contagious, upper-body-specific parasite has infected the shoulders, pecs, and biceps of the Australian surfing nation, or if they were just too lazy to manually position themselves and paddle into slightly overhead waves sans artificial energy. 

Built atop the mountainous shoulders of Tom Carroll, Mick Campbell, and Glen Hall, it would be uncharacteristic of Aussie surf culture to take the easy way out. So we’ll have to assume it’s the parasite option. 

But don’t worry, guys. We have reason to believe that the antibodies necessary to defeat this plague live within one of your own.

His name is Tim Dickson.