You wouldn’t want to be a fish in this particular neighborhood. There you would be, minding your own business, waving your tail, opening and closing your mouth, enjoying the simple things in life – and then a moment later you would find yourself face to face with a seagull, being launched more than 40 meters into the air by a naturally occurring water cannon of spectacular proportions.
A series of wild videos were taken by Chris White and “drone man” Ben Allen during filming Tension 11an independent boogie board film released on YouTube. White had previously seen the wave and captured it in still images for his coffee table book, Dark light.
“The very first time I saw it,” says White, “I wasn’t filming, I just had my camera. We were exploring the waves and we randomly ended up there… I have this picture of… At the time I thought it was just two waves hitting each other. Everywhere I posted it, people thought it was fake because it looked like it was a mirror image. And then it exploded… I’ve always been curious: Does that happen every time the swell is big?”
It seems the answer is yes. White returned to the site more or less from memory, having decided to revive his iconic Tension films, first released in 2000 on VHS tapes. Staff MagEthan Davis describes the original films beautifully, as “sloppy, heavy documents of record hunting and bad ideas that merged hardcore bodyboarding with a Jackass-level disregard for consequences.” They became cult classics on the fringes and occasional public threats when the jokes escaped control and on A current issue or Today Tonightframed as evidence of Australia’s moral decline. Which of course just made them funnier.”
Little seems to have changed in that regard, bless their cotton socks; the Tension 11 trailer (NSFW) is packed with asses, farts, naked karate and crudely sketched genitals, as well as death-defying wave riding. An accurate representation, in my experience, of the Australian adolescent experience at the time.
But the team also collected a pile of images of this unique ocean phenomenon that happens over and over again. And it’s not two waves coming together; in many cases it is actually two giant 40-footers colliding with two more smaller waves washing back from the shore and simultaneously crashing into a hole left by hydrodynamic forces over a reef close to the surface, sending a huge amount of water shooting skyward as if a depth charge had gone off beneath the waves.
The team was lucky that their drone wasn’t shot out of the sky while they were filming it. At this point it’s only fair to hand you over to White and Allen. Pardon the language; I don’t think many of us would do much better under the circumstances. And if you’re not a fan of all-Australian screeching and hollering, just turn the sound down, because they’re getting a bit excited.
HOW WE FOUND THE CRAZIEST WAVE ON EARTH
The Tension team won’t reveal where they found it: “I want to go back so bad,” says White, “but at the same time, I don’t want to kill anyone. It’s scary to think what could happen.” Both agree that some of their co-conspirators on the board would probably find it difficult to resist the idea of sitting over the dip, hoping to be launched skyward. But the plan is to return to the site at some point in the future Tension 12 project.
Still, they are stunning images of an extraordinary natural event, and I can’t help but be swept up in the sheer joy of these two beautiful Drongos as they tell the story. Godspeed, you crazy bastards.
Source: Suspense films
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