Watch: Harry Bryant In “RUST 2.0”

It was Harry Bryant’s sparkling personality that first caught our attention. He’s one of those life of the party types, could easily find himself a role in television. It is however, his surfing that continues to wow us, particularly in his approach to tackling a throating rock shelf. Perhaps its the company he keeps? Harry is known to wander about with a bodyboarding entourage.

Anyway, he’s just handed us the keys to his latest viewing, Rust 2.0. It’s an exclusively Australian piece, put together by his pal, Dave Fox. Haz had recently picked up a new set of wheels and had been busy touring the country, hopping between waves and pubs, thriving in the raw culture of outback Australia. The pair ended up with seven minutes worth of viewing that’ll likely brighten your day. We thought Haz might have had a few stories from the road, turns out he did…

So Haz, tell us about Rust 2.0, where was it shot and what were you chasing?
I got a Toyota Landcruiser, like a couple of months ago and I was so pumped to drive it, I pretty much did a lap of Australia. You just see so much more things driving. It just makes it so much more satisfying getting to waves when you’ve driven there, and it’s so good having your car there with all your stuff in it there with you. I just really like the novelty of driving.

We’ve probably been shooting for it over the last three months. But most of the footage was pretty much shot over a week around home. We just had a really good run of waves. Dion came down, I pretty much surfed with him for a week straight and had a really productive week of waves. Then did a trip down to South Australia with Craig and pretty much surfed all the way there and back. It’s pretty much two trips that kind of spaced out over a longer period of time.

What were the highlights? Where’d you get the best waves?
All the trips that I’ve done for this part were really fun. Just driving everywhere sleeping in swags and camping everywhere and having heaps of funny stories along the way. Best part’s been around home though, for sure. I moved to the South Coast around January and pretty much ever since I’ve been packing the car in the morning and having super productive days then coming back home. 

So tell us about some of these wild adventures, what happened?
A few funny things happened. We were camping in the desert and one afternoon there was a tree with all these berries where we were camping and we ate some of them. All of us had this crazy experience. We had this hallucinogenic afternoon, we went fishing, there was this crazy sunset, we ate these berries and we were just wigging out all afternoon. Then we woke up the next morning and were like ‘that was wild’. I don’t know what these berries were but they sent us crazy. Craig found this tree and was like ‘I’ve seen these berries before I reckon we can eat them’ he’s watched some doco on them. Me, Craig Dave, Dion and Spon were all stuck in this realm, for like 6 hours it was sick.

Dave set his swag up and he reckons he had something wriggling under his back the whole time and we were there for like five nights or something. When Dav packed his swag up there was a death adder, underneath. It had made a nest under him and it was this warm little snake, just snuggled up to him the whole time. It was so funny cos he felt it every night – he’d been sleeping on a snake for like five nights but he never did anything about it. 

Was it alive? 
Yeah it was alive. I think it liked the warmth of big Dav. So it just posted up there the whole time. Some of the places in Australia are so outrageous. Driving through towns that you can’t believe people live there, and there’s so much open space that I feel like other countries don’t have. Swear one part of the drive was seven hours and there was nothing in sight, just raw landscape and desert. You just don’t get that in America or the rest of the world. I just love driving around and learning more about Australia and seeing everything that it has, it just blows me away. Especially travelling around so much, like when I was younger going to different countries. But as soon as soon as I got my license and I got my car, I just drove everywhere and the best surf trips I’ve had have been in Australia. I honestly wouldn’t care if the only surf trips I did for the rest of my life were in Australia. There’s just so much vibe and so much good shit happens, it’s fun as.

One afternoon we stopped into this pub just to have something to eat and it was this chick’s 40th. We all walked into this pub and this chick’s just smashing a Bundy Rum and it’s dripping all through her chin and she’s like ‘where are you guys from?’ and we’re like ‘oh we’re from the east coast and she goes ‘well, don’t act like you’re local! I don’t see you pricks around here, don’t think that you can push in front of anyone at the bar mate!’ She had these yellow teeth, just full maggot on Bundy Rum. You see the craziest things. You think ‘wow, this is so raw’.

Any sketchy situations?
We came really close to running out of petrol one night. You just feel like you’re on your own out there, with no reception and if something were to really go wrong you’d just go into complete survival mode, where as if you fly into places, or in a built up area or town you can get help but when there’s just nothing there, when you’re driving away you’re thinking ‘we could’ve been really stitched up there’. You really need to know survival shit. You feel so good driving home after.