The D-Bah Session Heard Around The Internet
Cue the arrival of Dane Henry.
“I’ve been trying flips since I was like 13 — I tried so many of them and then got one when I was 14 or 15 and there was a filmer, but he missed it,” says 17-year-old Fingal Head resident Dane Henry “Then just this year I’ve been landing them super consistent, feeling really good with ’em, really comfortable. That was the biggest one I’ve ever done.”
The flip Dane is referring to was featured (above) on our Instagram, alongside a lofty full-rotation that would make even the most scornful WSL judge smile — both landed in the same D-Bah session.
The clips received more than 500,000 views on our page, and similar numbers across Dane’s personal IG and Sharpeye’s page.
“The air heard around the Gold Coast! So good mate” commented Sheldon Simkus, echoing the excitement of Noa Deane, Josh Kerr, Shane Dorian, Parker Coffin, and Mateus Herdy, to name a few.
So, I called up Dane after a round of Burleigh QS heats to hear about the session, and learn more about the clearly talented youngster.
“Me and my mate just swung by D-Bah and we saw one good one and there weren’t too many people out. I ended up bumping into Owen Milne, the Surfing AUS filmer, and just went out for a quick warm up. I was just going to do a few carves and come in. I waited for two minutes and then that wave came through and my mate could have got it, but he just gave it to me.”
“I did a carve, but it was a bit weird and boggy. I saw the section down the line and figured I might as well just try something. I did the flip and landed, I saw Milne behind the camera just frothing. It was pretty crazy. I was shaking. I went back out and was bogging all my turns. I was frothing so hard,” he laughs.
After coming in to watch the clip, Dane paddled back out, quickly landed another ‘smaller’ full rotation, before hucking the psycho one which Noa Deane referred to as ‘skitsy’.
“I just tried to go as fast as I could down the line and then go as high as I could. I didn’t realize how big it was until I saw the actual clip. That was a sick surprise when I came in and everyone was frothing. I liked the full rotation better than the flip, honestly.”
Word spread like wildfire across Australia’s East Coast, and Dane says his phone was blowing up before Milne had even sent him the clips.
“After I did the flip, I checked my phone and I had so many texts from mates everywhere — Sunny Coast, from Wollongong, the Gold Coast — saying how crazy the clip was. It was insane. I still can’t believe it. I was wigging out on how everyone had seen it before me. I guess a little phone recording of the camera screen got sent to a group chat, which got sent to a group chat and it just started going around and around. It was a pretty hectic arvo trying to get the clips. Milne got ’em to me super quick and I ended up posting them like that arvo. Otherwise, I think the whole of Gold Coast would’ve probably already seen it,” he laughs.
Dane attributes much of his progression through the last few years to the Australian High Performance Centre. Built on a 4000 square meter block in Casuarina, Surfing Australia’s 4-storey High Performance Centre (HPC) fitted with trampolines, a skatepark, recovery rooms, conference auditoriums and cabins, is a fairly strong representation of the cultural heft of surfing in Oz -smaller than footy, bigger than tobogganing.
You can read our full breakdown of the HPC here.
“I’ve been in the HPC for the last five years. It’s just down the road from where I live and they’ve helped me so much. They’ve done a lot of trampoline stuff and skating stuff with me — a lot of other surfers have looked at that stuff and said it’s not really beneficial to surfing because they’re different movements — but t’s definitely helped me a lot. The coaches down there have been absolutely insane, they’ve all put in so much time to us and it’s definitely paying off. I hope the groms can take that knowledge and run with it. The tramps and the skating definitely helps and it’s been showing up in my surfing. It might not work straight away, but it’ll definitely work down the line.”
“We just do heaps of flips — so many reps. Some surf specific stuff, but it’s mostly aerial awareness stuff. And after having about two years-ish on the tramps, aerial awareness goes through the roof. That’s helped me so much, just spotting landings and everything. It’s been insane.”
In his last year of high school, Dane plans to go hard at the QS next year — joining Oscar Berry, Lennix Smith, and Hughie Vaughan in Australia’s youth surfing onslaught.
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