Teacher: Steve Parker prepares to hit the surf with a new batch of koori learners.
Andrew Mathieson
STUCK with just a six-foot board in the unforgiving ocean, sometimes Steve Parker gets caught in a pipeline of a different sort where the indigenous surfer slips into his own Dreamtime.
“I look around and I feel like I’m connected to the water,” he says, looking out into Wye River’s swell.
“Where I come from, my people are from the Torres Strait Islands and are the Yorta Yorta, the river people.
“I’m also part of the Birrarung and all of these have water elements to their lives, especially my island side.”
An Aboriginal flag tattoo inked onto his left arm ensures that heritage is never far away in the water.
He snaps back to reality as a curly wave rolls in.
“That’s sometimes a bit scary,” Steve grins.
“When you’re inside one of those tubes, time just stops.”
Surfing has been an escape for the 33-year-old with an unconventional past.
When Steve was a kid, he was a bit of a skater around Warragul’s parks.
Dad was a surfboard shaper, though, so slowly the son gravitated toward the beach.
First, Phillip Island held appeal but now it’s the Surf Coast’s undulating waves.
Steve spends most of his time in Torquay teaching indigenous youth to surf – many for the first time – to build self-esteem and promote a healthy lifestyle.
It’s a path that leads back to his roots.
“I have been on my own journey,” Steve reminisces.
“I was adopted when I was a baby but I found my mum when I was 11, so being able to do this for surfing takes me back to my real community.
“I’m constantly meeting cousins and family everywhere I go.
“Not being around community when you’re growing up and then reaching your community is like finding family.”
After he obtained his level-one surf coaching certificate just over a decade ago, Surfing Victoria approached Steve about running a few indigenous programs.
He remembers Surfing Victoria chief Max Wells telling him: “We’ve got a bit of funding for you”.
That was barely $1000 to run initial surf tours to Warrnambool, Bridgewater and Torquay.
“We were happy to start it off small and with our (Victorian) koori titles and were able to make it stretch with the kids,” Steve says.
The titles started out with 35 nervous souls at Warrnambool but nine years later it has peaked at 220 surfers, with the competition now run over two days at Urquhart’s Bluff, between Anglesea and Airey’s Inlet.
Steve also created a Geelong development squad from 10 of the keenest indigenous surfers in the region.
Nearly a dozen of his pupils now have coaching certificates of their own, which quickly raises a smile
He thinks back to the humble beginnings.
“Over the years I’ve done programs when no one’s turned up,” he laughs, “but we always keep coming back.”
Some Koori kids have taken to surfing like ducks to water, Steve says.
“I’ve had kids come down from the Murray region who have had no experience in the ocean or haven’t ever seen it and they’ve jumped out on the boards.
“It was like they had been doing it for 10 years or something.”
One family from Swan Hill moved down to the Geelong region when their kids excelled at surfing.
Others haven’t been so keen to pry their children away from the usual footy, boxing or basketball pursuits.
Steve recounts a few convincing lines he used on parents.
“Do you mean bribing?” he sheepishly asks before rehearsing, “I’ve got a free wetsuit here.”
One of Steve’s ambitious plans is to have one of his indigenous surfers on the professional circuit.
It would fill Steve with unmistakable pride.
“Bloody oath my chest would swell out,” he smiles.
