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The title “Big Wave Maniac” might sound stereotypical. But! ANYONE who knows Aussie charger, Ross Clarke-Jones, knows such a description couldn’t be more apt.
The pinnacle of Ross’ colourful career, competitively at least, was without doubt his win in the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau in 2000.
Such was Ross’s achievement, when he held that over-sized cheque aloft on the presentation dais surrounded by his peers and fellow finalists he couldn’t help but shed a tear. Close friends even sighted relief for their good mate. Ross had done it! Officially etching his name into the history books by winning the one event that with all its hallmarks virtually mirrored Ross as a surfer; enduring, revered and colossal in terms of character and heart.
Indeed, it was at Waimea Bay where Ross first felt the attention of the international spotlight shine down on him. As a teenager riding a borrowed board in the 1987 Billabong Pro, Ross paddled into and successfully rode half-a-dozen monstrous waves on a day that was so large, two famous surfer refused to leave the sanctity of the beach and two others very nearly died, after being caught by rogue waves that closed out the entire Bay.
Incredibly, it was also the first time Ross had EVER surfed Waimea.
Many years later, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, former media tycoon and publishing giant Kerry Packer, ‘summoned’ Ross into his Sydney offices to meet him in person and discuss the new picture he’d had hung behind his desk.
The picture was of Ross, surfing one of the largest days ever recorded at Outside Log Cabins in Hawaii – a cloud break reef visible from Waimea Bay that only comes to life when it is as big, or bigger than that first day Ross ventured out there as a teen.
It was a strange moment for both men, Ross recalls. Two heavy weights, at the top of their game, simultaneously respected and feared by their peers, yet in awe of each other’s achievements in worlds that at the time, that were much more clearly removed of each other than they are today – Big Business and Big Wave Surfing.
Since that moment, Ross has continued to blaze his own trail – an exponent of tow-surfing, riding waves in Japan, Tasmania, Southern Victoria, New Zealand, Maui – wherever storms brew the biggest, most radical conditions. And he’s even had time to surf the “Porocora” tidal wave that surges daily up the Amazon River. Surviving, in all irony, a one-metre wave that would barely register on Hawaii’s outer-ocean buoys when the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau is given the green light.
But of course there are no crocodiles, life-threatening microscopic fish or 44 gallon drums floating in the line-up at Waimea Bay …
The pinnacle of Ross’ colourful career, competitively at least, was without doubt his win in the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau in 2000.
Such was Ross’s achievement, when he held that over-sized cheque aloft on the presentation dais surrounded by his peers and fellow finalists he couldn’t help but shed a tear. Close friends even sighted relief for their good mate. Ross had done it! Officially etching his name into the history books by winning the one event that with all its hallmarks virtually mirrored Ross as a surfer; enduring, revered and colossal in terms of character and heart.
Indeed, it was at Waimea Bay where Ross first felt the attention of the international spotlight shine down on him. As a teenager riding a borrowed board in the 1987 Billabong Pro, Ross paddled into and successfully rode half-a-dozen monstrous waves on a day that was so large, two famous surfer refused to leave the sanctity of the beach and two others very nearly died, after being caught by rogue waves that closed out the entire Bay.
Incredibly, it was also the first time Ross had EVER surfed Waimea.
Many years later, one of Australia’s wealthiest men, former media tycoon and publishing giant Kerry Packer, ‘summoned’ Ross into his Sydney offices to meet him in person and discuss the new picture he’d had hung behind his desk.
The picture was of Ross, surfing one of the largest days ever recorded at Outside Log Cabins in Hawaii – a cloud break reef visible from Waimea Bay that only comes to life when it is as big, or bigger than that first day Ross ventured out there as a teen.
It was a strange moment for both men, Ross recalls. Two heavy weights, at the top of their game, simultaneously respected and feared by their peers, yet in awe of each other’s achievements in worlds that at the time, that were much more clearly removed of each other than they are today – Big Business and Big Wave Surfing.
Since that moment, Ross has continued to blaze his own trail – an exponent of tow-surfing, riding waves in Japan, Tasmania, Southern Victoria, New Zealand, Maui – wherever storms brew the biggest, most radical conditions. And he’s even had time to surf the “Porocora” tidal wave that surges daily up the Amazon River. Surviving, in all irony, a one-metre wave that would barely register on Hawaii’s outer-ocean buoys when the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau is given the green light.
But of course there are no crocodiles, life-threatening microscopic fish or 44 gallon drums floating in the line-up at Waimea Bay …
