olive bowers
Luke Kennedy – and we must be kind for he strives hard for the Corporation – is having to wear an embarrassingly PUBLIC criticism of Tracks.
Tracks, the Surfers Bible.
The home of discontent and abandoned prose for decades. Its halls are adorned with trophy pieces of reportage, and astounding witnesses of places and seas only a few of us ever search out.
Tracks was always there first.
Look at the names: Falzon Ellis Witzig Carroll Baker Ridgeway Dart (mate) Doherty Baker, and now Luke Kennedy.
Today Luke has somebody half his size, and a third of his age, in his face.
Olive Bowers, aged thirteen. I can see her now, sitting at the kitchen table with her mother and grandmother, flicking through the surfer’s bible(s). Looking for the girls who surf. None here, try another one. Have a cup of tea. None there.
They flick through another and the only sweet flesh in a photo is near naked, and not surfing. They try another, another.
Six magazines, the sample size, that was all that was needed – because anyone who is related to Helen Garner researches before they write.
– and whaddya know before you know it; Jason Stegar hears about it, and today the surfers bible cops the biggest serve from the biggest newspaper in the surfing South Pacific and on the biggest morning of the week – all from a girl aged 13 with the right phone number.
All you need is to be connected, that’s what being a Garner knows, and that’s something all those ^ hoary silverbacks learnt very early in their publishing lives, trouble now is, everybody is a surfer.
My betting is that Tracks will be hiring some perfume in the sweat shop soon.
A Tracks baby, this is Carmen.
header pic swiped from SMH, by eddie jim – I’m with you here ed
petebowes.com 
I sat and actually pondered a response to this and thats a first , possibly a last leg of a irrelevant journey started during the NC rain, TRACKS is reflective of the pop culture that is surfing today , remember it was not that long ago that TRACKS ran a glowing review of some stupid tv show called puberty blues like it was of cultural significance.
Micky Dora had it right screw it up and throw it in the trash …..
And well written by the young wahinie
Don’t let some 13 girl change or have any influence over your publication,it existed with its culture before she was born.she only needs to worry about going surfing, but clearly she worries about things she should not, go surfing and don’t think about sex, magazine’s, competitions, cause if you do you are fake to surfing. Surf for your soup not for your beliefs.
Soul not soup, ha
The culture Mick … where did that go?
well done Olve
Any religious scholar over at Surfing will tell you sex sells better than stories about women’s surfing. I expect a nod and a wink from Tracks but little real change. Tracks is just old media, not exactly a new problem. Write your own story and we will follow.
Path of least resistance combined with a dynamic medium without direction. The sheep are literally waiting for thier assignment as puppets.
each individual sheep echoes the same aesthetic, eliminating the fundamental aspect of their claim.
a direvative culture circles the drain that it focuses upon.
“technology” is hailed as progression as it suffocates the freedom thought.
Ingenious.
Is Rebecca Olive still available?
trousersnake mantalos, always on the job.