You never forget your first surf trip. Mine was at the age of 11 to a magical place called Moonee Beach, just north of Coffs Harbour. It was the ‘80s and my brother and I were salty surf rats decked out in the latest fluoro shades. We camped for a week and scored many a wave by taking a short walk from our campsite across the estuary to the beach.

Photos from the trip show us surfing, whacking cricket balls and eating watermelons bigger than our heads. Fast forward and it felt very satisfying to return to the region, chasing the waves with my own young family in tow. Having already Googled the area, my two boys knew the best spots and were eager to surf them all. We pitched our tent at BIG4 Sawtell Beach Holiday Park; a great base for daily surf checks and enjoying the relaxed vibe of Sawtell village.

Perfect surf is a very subjective matter and it can be tricky to find waves to suit a multi-generational clan. The selection of surf breaks on the Coffs Coast is exceptional, ranging from safe ‘shoreys’ for beginners to challenging breaks for the pros. We used a handy guide book (Mark Warren’s Atlas of Australian Surfing) to get an overview but made our best discoveries independently. Few things beat the thrill of rounding a corner or topping a headland to find perfect uncrowded waves peeling off.

We’d had a great surf at Macauleys, a popular spot for surfing competitions, and were slurping banana smoothies when the sound of an old Kombi twanging towards the harbour’s southside caught our attention. We decided to investigate and soon pulled up at a rise overlooking an offshore-groomed beach. Our guide book described it as a spot that “sorts the boys from the men” but on this day Gallows was head high and the perfect canvas for gliding on a longboard or practising shortboard manoeuvres.

The perfect spot to catch up on some reading

We surfed for hours, splitting sets with friendly locals who shared local surf lore and exuded a sunny vibe. My wife joined us and we had the whole family out together, a rare treat. Afterward, we hit the local skate park (Brelsford Park) in the heart of Coffs and watched some talented locals perform kickflips and nose blunts.

Gusto Skating at Brelsford Park

That night we dined at Lime Mexican in Sawtell. The place was packed, live music spilled over from the bar next door and we were lucky to get a table. Sawtell’s eat street is a beauty; the median strip is lined with enormous fig trees which throw shade across a string of restaurants, cafes, bars and an indie cinema. Best of all, it’s walking distance from our campground so we could waddle home full of beans, beer and good cheer!

On our final day, we found another great wave right in our backyard. Sawtell Island shields winds from most directions and its sandbanks are regularly topped and sculpted into shape by an estuary which runs out on both sides of the island. We surfed with a small crowd, made some new friends and logged some more memorable rides.

Gusto making the most of the surfing road trip

Packing up to leave was hard but we consoled ourselves with the thought of a return. Our next trip would definitely have to be longer. On the drive home I reminisced about my first visit to the Coffs Coast and reflected on how the experience awakened my life-long passion for surf exploration…and I wondered how my own kids would remember this little adventure 30 years from now.

The Coffs Coast’s Best Waves

1. Arrawarra – A long measured right-hand pointbreak. Best on a SE swell and a SW wind. Ideal for longboarders and learners.
2. Moonee Beach – A beautiful beach break reached by a tree-lined walkway. Best in small SE swells.
3. Macauleys – Located just north of Coffs this classy beach break is protected from the NE sea breeze and often has high-performance waves.
4. Gallows – Handles big challenging swells (thus the name) but can be super fun on smaller NE swells.
5. Sawtell Island – Great point-style waves can be found on either side of the island which protects the waves from most winds.

For more information on these locations, visit coffscoast.com

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Australia was still in its infancy when a young stonemason by the name of George Saxby hefted his worldly goods (and his enormous beard) onto a coastal trader and shipped out for the Manning Valley. Vast tracts of countryside were being carved up and sold for a song as the Gold Rush drove new arrivals into a fever. In those days convicts were still being sent to Terra Australis, Tasmania still had tigers and explorers were still trying to find an inland sea. Bush rangers roamed the countryside, sticking it to the squattocracy and generally making a nuisance of themselves. For George Saxby, it was an exotic land, brimming with opportunity and adventure.

Founder George Saxby

The major industries of the time – logging, shipbuilding, farming, mining – all relied on back-breaking toil. All these thirsty men, sweating rivers under a baking colonial sun didn’t need another stone worker. They needed a drink. George Saxby had long been fascinated with the alchemy of impregnating water with bubbles. He started making his now famous stone Ginger Beer recipe in hand-corked ceramic bottles, shortly after arriving in the Manning.

154 years later, Saxbys’ fifth generation of descendants are still producing soft drinks in Taree, making Saxbys one of Australia’s oldest family run businesses. “When George arrived in Taree there would have been around 300 people in the town,” says his great-great grandson, Saxbys’ Managing Director Ian Turner. “He started making drinks in a factory near Cundletown in 1864 and was a founding member of the Church of Christ and the original president of the cricket club. He served as mayor for two terms, started a newsletter and later represented one of Taree’s first newspapers.”

Ian Turner, Managing Director of Saxbys & descendent of George Saxby

Saxbys serviced the Manning region and all its fledgling townships from Gloucester up to Lake Cathie. George would make many of the deliveries himself – not always successfully. “On one occasion he lost control of his horse and cart and it all ended up in the Manning. He lost everything including his horse,” laughs Ian. “I think that whole generation were very adventurous. Just to survive and make a living you had to do whatever you could. It’s a great history to have.”

The soft drinks business was firmly established by the time George passed it on to his sons, Dolph and Edwin, in the early 1900s. Ever since, each generation has dealt with
unique challenges during their tenure. Dolph and Edwin Saxby moved the business to Arthur Street, Taree, took on a partner and changed the company name. During the war years they struggled to find enough steel for their bottle caps, but the business persisted where many others folded.

Saxby family photo. Image by Kirk Owers

Another disruption came much later in the early 1970s when soft drink containers shifted from returnable glass bottles to one-way bottles and aluminum cans. “It drastically changed our business model and cost structure. And it meant that now the big Sydney manufacturers could expand into the regional areas and undersell us,” says Ian.

While most small regional operators couldn’t compete, Saxbys adapted and expanded. “We invested in our future. We built our current factory in 1976 and started spreading
outside our local area. Up until then country manufacturers were very respectful of each other’s area. They all knew it was a tough gig and that we had to look after what we had. Eventually all those small guys disappeared. In the 70s there would have been 80 or 90 soft drink manufacturers in regional Australia. Today, between Sydney and the Queensland border, there’s just us.”

Reid Farrell & Ian Turner

As the company looks to the future, new challenges loom including, eventually, succession. Saxbys’ Business Support Manager, Reid Farrell, is the only other current staff member to share the Saxby bloodline. “While we are the only family members actively working at the company there are relatives who are shareholders and lots of young people who may decide they want to get involved down the track. I was born in Texas and didn’t start with the
company until I was 30,” Reid notes.

A visitor to the current Saxbys factory may be disappointed by the lack of beards among the 50 or so staff. Certainly, there’s nothing to match the facial forest sported by the company founder in his prime. Now, it’s the type of bushranger beard that is often paired with a man-bun and a fixed-gear bike and is in vogue in many inner-city enclaves. Saxbys have sent up the hipster trend with a satirical advertisement which suggests that George Saxby was their original inspiration.

“I actually had a full hipster beard for a while there,” laughs Reid. “But it wasn’t real. It was photoshopped onto my company portrait, until Ian took it down. There is a genuine hipster market for our products – especially for young people who use soft drinks as alcoholic mixers,” says Reid. “But that ad was mainly just a bit of fun. Soft drinks are meant to be fun.”

To check out their clever commercials and for any other info go to www.saxbys.com.au

The post Billions of Bubbles – Saxbys soft drinks appeared first on Coastbeat.

Australians are great campers. Give us a sturdy vehicle and a few basic supplies and we’ll be sweet for weeks. Our wide brown land is rich in beautiful places – most of them a long way from the nearest hotel. Luke Sutton has turned his passion for off-roading into a remarkably successful business. Drifta employs 75 people who manufacture hundreds of niche products – many designed by Luke himself. The products are available from Gloucester, a new retail store in Queesnland and online.

What attracted you to camping as a youngster?

My father John was very much into the outdoors and our family always camped a lot. During school holidays we’d camp in a big old canvas tent, often in Forster. We always stayed in caravan parks as we didn’t have a 4WD. Dad was very organised and so too were our campsites. He also had nifty ideas. One was a large two-piece timber roof rack for the top of the old Holden station wagon that we loaded our tent and camping gear in. This then converted to a kitchen bench that held our camp stove. I guess it gave me the background I needed to develop Drifta years later.

Drifta 4WD crossing a ford

Camping used to be considered “roughing it” but that seems to be changing…

Camping was always a cheap option but it has become kind of cool, especially for city people who may never have camped before. The rise in popularity of the SUV has helped this shift. People are getting a lot more adventurous and exploring new places with greater confidence. Touring our wonderful country is becoming a big thing. We are unique in Australia regarding affluence and leisure time and we have the greatest country in the world to explore. This is what has largely driven our camping and 4WD industry. No-one in the world sets up their 4WDs like we do in Australia.

Can you tell us a bit about how you got started and what products you specialise in?

It all started 18 years ago with a camping kitchen I made in my garage. It lifted out of a vehicle and stored camping and cooking gear and set up into a kitchen. When camping trailers became a big thing, I designed a range of camping trailer kitchens which became very popular and allowed us to expand, hire staff and move to Gloucester. We also became very busy travelling all over Australia, selling our products at camping shows. Money was tight – I couldn’t afford a forklift for three years. We then started designing and building drawers for the back of 4WDs. Basically, we found a gap in the market and over about four years we have become, I think, the largest custom 4WD drawer manufacturer in the world.

Drifta camping set up

Among your many innovations is a tarp designed for emergency use – to give shelter and collect water.

One of the biggest problems when a cyclone devastates an area is that there is no fresh drinking water afterwards. I devised a simple solution using a hex tarp with a gutter sewn in that catches rainwater and feeds it into a drum. As well as providing shelter, it can collect and store up to 500 litres of water from just 50mm of rain. The nonprofit charity organisation Sea Mercy have been providing emergency assistance to Pacific Islanders. We’re looking at gaining donations, so we can manufacture as many of these rainwater collection tarps as possible.

You were an early adopter of digital marketing. How important has that been?

Almost all our sales are online so it’s crucial. Our website has always had a lot of content. I was encouraged to do my own marketing by John Symond (from Aussie Home Loans). It’s not easy to put yourself out there and you need to be honest, believable and have integrity – if you do, it’s the best marketing possible.

We started doing YouTube videos eight years ago and have now made around 240 videos. My son Kaito is skilled at filming and does most of our clips. We have had over four million YouTube views, and this is largely what drives our business. We’ve used social media to foster a Drifta community and we host camping events to bring everyone together. We have up to 500 people attend and there is a great sense of belonging.

Life sounds busy. Do you get time to head off into the bush anymore?

It can be hard. We have several divisions to our business and continue to grow. Such growth is not without its costs, personally and physically. Camping for me is business and while I enjoy it, when I’m camping, I’m working. The key is to find ways to completely relax and to reset yourself. I love boating so having a boat is important for me. I haven’t had the time to go on larger road trips, like to the deserts of inland Australia for quite a while. I’m looking forward to the business settling down, so I can get back out there.

Drifta trailers are designed for off-roading

Watch video content on YouTube 

For product information, go to www.drifta.com.au

Donate to Sea Mercy at www.seamercy.org

The post Campfire King, Drifta 4WD Camping Gloucester appeared first on Coastbeat.

The Great Lakes region has long been a favourite destination for nature lovers. The pristine white sand beaches are among Australia’s most beautiful: clean, rainforest-fringed and buttressed by headlands which shield the wind and sculpt desirable waves. Whales, dolphins and eagles are frequently sighted while anglers dig beach worms to land their dinner. Most visitors spend their days facing east – on the sand, in a boat or bobbing on a board.

The Cabin living room and fireplace by Claudia Gabriel Lim Photography

But the Lakes region has another side to it, figuratively and literally. A narrow isthmus of coastal land, its western flank is bordered by a series of coastal lakes, National Parks and wetlands. Brimming with wildlife and flora, the hinterland is ripe for adventure. Wallis Lake, one of the cleanest coastal lakes in Australia, empties into the sea at Forster and backdrops the small villages of Pacific Palms. It’s a beautiful body of water especially at dusk when it mirrors the sky and shines like Inca gold.

Normally my family stay as close to the high tide line as possible but when the opportunity arose to experience 100 acres of seclusion on the western side of Wallis Lake, we jumped at it. Our boys were eager to fish from the private jetty and hunt for yabbies in the dam. My wife and I packed books and dreamed of all the places we might read them: in hammocks, by the fire, on a sun-warmed daybed.

The Navigator House perches on a scenic ridgeline, part of a finger of land with views to the Green Cathedral and Seven Mile Beach on its opposite shore. The spacious house features a big sun-dappled deck overlooking a grassy slope clipped by the resident donkeys, Teddy and Jaco. Including an adjoining cabin and nearby cottage, the entire property sleeps 20, making it idyllic for small or extended family gatherings and retreats.

Interior of the Navigator House by Claudia Gabriel Lim Photography

Before long we’ve unpacked, and my wife is easing into a hammock. I spend the afternoon fishing off the jetty, playing badminton, launching yabby traps and feeding apples to the donkeys with the boys. As night approaches, fires are lit, and we gather in expectation. A new outdoor dining area, cooking fire and kitchen has recently been completed, a local chef is keen to test it out and we’ve been invited to sample the food being prepared over the glowing coals.

David sources sustainably farmed local produce for his restaurant and catering business. We feast on pork from Coomba’s Long Table Farm, buffalo rump from Burraduc Farm in Bungwahl and a brace of rib-eyes from the Manning. The meal is topped off with a tail of fresh crayfish (caught by my son) and marshmallows by the fire. We waddle home, blissed out.

Enjoying the fire with the bran as a backdrop. Image by Kirk Owers

The next day the kids find six yabbies in the traps which need liberating or eating (we can’t decide). A casual hit of tennis turns into a proper game. Then it’s basketball and another fishing session. After lunch we follow a wallaby track and find a remarkable wetland-fringed rainforest thick with huge Elkhorn Bird Nest Ferns.

We spot plenty of wildlife throughout our stay including sea eagles, lorikeets, kookaburras, owls and lace monitor lizards. We don’t want to leave, and we make plans to return. Nearby Wallingat National Park is said to be great for mountain biking and there’s an amazing lookout from Mt Whoota. Best of all, these experiences aren’t an either/or option. Hit the beach in the morning and go for a rainforest adventure or a kayak in the afternoon. At Sea Eagle Point, both are at your fingertips.

The author was a guest of Sea Eagle Point www.seaeaglepoint.com.au

To book email [email protected] See a short video on YouTube of Sea Eagle Point.

The post A Great Lakes weekend escape – Sea Eagle Point appeared first on Coastbeat.

The Manning River snakes down from Barrington Tops, fat and brown and undisturbed by dams and weirs. On its winding journey it becomes engorged by multiple tributaries before forking into a double delta at Taree and eventually joining the ocean at Old Bar and Harrington. The delta region is made up of several islands including Oxley Island which is green and wet and surrounded by dark clouds the day I drive across from the mainland. I make my way through the drizzle past lowing cows and leaning fences until a small sign tells me I’m at the right place: Croker Oars.

Two large green sheds and several smaller ones make up the complex which is busy with delivery trucks and workers. Less active are the cows, bulls and horses which also reside on the property. It’s an attractive spread but not a spot you’d expect to find technical sporting equipment being manufactured for export. You wouldn’t guess that Olympians from as far away as Italy and China are heavily invested in what comes out of these big sheds next to these indifferent cows.

“Everyone thought I’d go broke when we moved here,” says founder and family patriarch, Howard Croker, whose son Darren is now the business owner. Both men show me around the property while they share their remarkable success story.

The Croker family fell in love with the Manning Valley after holidaying nearby for many years and in 1977 Howard decided to move his oar manufacturing business to the region despite the naysayers. “We were doing well in Sydney, but I wanted a lifestyle change. I researched some companies in America that had done a similar thing and had been successful. We’ve been here forty years now – there’s no-one building oars in Sydney anymore.”

A big part of the attraction was the river which borders the property and is delightfully suited to still water rowing. “The river is shallow hence boating is not hugely popular – especially big boats which give a lot of wash. The wind is pretty good also – we can get blown out by the north-easter but we’re pretty sheltered from the southerly,” Howard explains. “There’s nearly 100km of rowable water here. It’s 28km just around the island so you can go as far as you’d want without turning back,” adds Darren.

The father and son duo work well together, finishing each other’s answers and sharing an easy laugh. “We’re very lucky we get along so well because a lot of families don’t. We do pretty much everything together,” says Darren.

“It’s very much on Darren’s shoulders now. I have to bite the bullet and back away. Succession is very important. A lot of businesses don’t manage it well, but I think we have. It’s been extremely hard for me to give that away. You’ve got no idea how hard it was,” says Howard, whose success in business was recently recognized with an Order of Australia (OAM). Now in his 70s, he still rows most weeks for pleasure and is definitely not retired.

We tour the grounds and in a dark shed cluttered with dusty tools Howard digs up a prized possession: the very first pair of wooden, hand-crafted Croker oars.  It took a day’s hard work and considerable expertise to make a pair like this and few were as good at it as Howard Croker.

“I did a boat-building apprenticeship and afterwards I noticed no-one wanted to make rowing oars. They all wanted to make boats. It was all done by hand and it was very physically hard work. It wasn’t until the late sixties when we started using machinery that it made it [financially] worthwhile,” he says.

Howard is the first to concede that modern machine-produced oars are a big improvement. “Carbon fibre oars are almost half the weight. I miss working with my hands, but I couldn’t do it anymore. If I picked up a jack-plain it’d really hurt. There are only a few people left who know how to make a wooden oar.”

Not that there’s a calling for vintage oars in the ultra-competitive, high tech sport of rowing. Nor would it make economic sense. Croker Oars used to produce 500 wooden oars a year; now it makes thousands of carbon fibre oars, most of them for export and many for Olympians.

The fledgling company’s big break came in 1964 when Howard supplied the Victorian rowing crew with oars for the Tokyo Olympics. After that boost and many years of hard work, Croker Oars gradually established themselves as the biggest oar manufacturer in Australia and eventually to its current position as the second biggest in the world. But there’s never been time to rest on their reputation. Oar manufacturing is a dynamic business which demands constant innovation in order to get even a tiny edge on the opposition.

Many of the Croker family members are successful rowers themselves, dating back to distant relative Peter Kemp who won a world championship in the 1880s. Howard has won Australian titles as has his daughter Joanne. Another Croker sibling, Troy has competed in surf boat tournaments. To get a sense of just how competitive the industry is I ask the Crokers who they would support in an Olympic final: Germans using Croker Oars or Aussies using a rival oar maker.

“Germany,” they answer immediately and in unison.

It’s not that they aren’t patriotic.  Many Australian rowing teams use their oars but 80% of their stock heads overseas. As international teams won’t travel to Taree to go oar shopping, the Crokers must go to them (Darren spends six months of the year on the road; Howard has been to ten or twelve Olympics).

In the constant quest to top their rivals, Croker Oars have a distinct advantage: the colour pink.

They began using the bright colour for their oar sleeves in the 1990s and it quickly became a highly visible signature. Now, when Olympic rowers cross the finish line, it’s easy to see how many are using Croker Oars.

In fact, the industry is so competitive that there are some areas in the manufacturing shed I’m asked not to photograph. Instead, we finish the tour strolling the paddocks, admiring some bulls and feeding Howard’s much-loved draft horses, Ted and Denza.

Howard says he feels a similarity in the disparate disciplines of rowing and driving a draft horse. “The set-up of the plough is like setting up the pitch of a [rowing] blade, the way it goes through the soil. And the other thing is striking out [starting off] – I can strike out extremely well because you learn in sculling to line two points up to keep the boat straight. I make two points up in the paddock and head for those.”

Maybe rowing and farming aren’t such an unusual mix after all.

To learn more about Croker Oars, go to www.crokeroars.com

The post Croker Oars – from Manning Valley to the world appeared first on Coastbeat.