This Is What Pioneering An Unsurfed Slab In Tasmania Looks Like

Tasmania, Australia’s estranged island state, has roughly 575,000 inhabitants and 1,800 miles (3,000km) of coastline. 

California has about 39,000,000 inhabitants and roughly 840 mi (1,300km) of coastline. 

Compared to America’s surfing centerpiece, Tasmania has more than double the coastal land and roughly 1.5% of the population. 

“When I moved to Aus, my whole friend crew ended up becoming Tasmanians and they would just constantly tell me about how sick their home is,” says Californian Jade Morgan, who you might remember from ‘Milked.’  

“I’ve always dreamt of doing a trip there. It’s just one of those places, like, Wow… Tasmania. The allure of it sounded so cool,” continues Jade. “I ended up going down for Christmas last year with my housemate Hooky, who grew up there.”

The clip opens with some playful footage of Jade enjoying a novelty beachbreak in the more swell-shadowed portion of Tasmania, before transitioning into a montage of repeated freefalls towards a shallow slab of rock — a previously unsurfed, more-or-less unsurfable wave which Jade attempted to pioneer. 

“Right when we got there, we packed up the car with a bunch of camping gear and drove out west,” says Jade. “Hooky knew of the obvious waves, but there was so much swell we decided to go look around. We had a 4×4 rig, so we just ended up dropping down these dirt roads for quite a while, and pulled up to these little shacks. In the distance I could see this whitewater explosion out in the middle of the ocean.

“We ended up driving as close as we could and then hiking into it. I saw a wave spit, so I figured it must be surfable. If it’s spitting, it must be a wave. I was like, I’m just gonna fucking try. You can’t really tell in the clips, but it’s actually so far out there. You paddle through a huge lagoon of rocks and then it’s out past those rocks.  We decided we couldn’t name it unless it’s actually a rideable wave. And then I didn’t really get one. I definitely gave it a crack and got pretty smoked on a few.  I ended up getting a head dip, if you want to even call it a head dip, and we named it Shackies. 

“I saw waves spit and it looked like there was potential for it to be a decent slab. Even though I didn’t even really get one, it was still a super fun session hitting the eject button on pretty much every wave,” he laughs. 

After a few more beachbreak sessions, a trio of zig-zags across the island, and a solo effort at questionable Shippies, Jade finishes the clip at a more makeable boog-slab.

“We showed up to check that slab, but all my friends were over it and said it was too crowded,” laughs Jade. “There were like five people out. It was a lot of boogie boarders, so they were pretty stoked to see someone surfing it, I guess. They ended up just all being legends psyching me up and calling me into waves. That wave for some reason felt really familiar, felt like home. 

“I was so pumped to get shown around down there. It was super fickle the whole time. You have to put in so much hard work and time and miles to get a very small sliver of a session, but it was worth it.”