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Co-authors Mike Ritter, author of Thai Stick, and noted surf filmmaker Jack McCoy explore the myths around the early days of discovery at Grajagan (aka G-Land) one of the crown jewels of surfing. This mythical surf break would become the focus of Mike Boyum’s obsession to create the world’s first camp in the zone where tiger-inhabited jungle meets pristine sea. Ritter and McCoy’s verified account of the motley crew of drifters and scammers who first found their way to this surfing mecca is both compelling and powerful. This book will delight and excite all surfers and adventurers who prefer to venture off the beaten track.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.
304 Pages
Published by T&G.
Distributed in North America by Chatwin Books. Customers outside North America (US, Canada, Mexico) can purchase this book directly from T&G here.
From ancient times to the present, the Alps have had mythological, spiritual and romantic significance. Recognizable peaks, like the Matterhorn, have become trademarks for chocolate companies and the like; their rugged profiles filtering into our everyday lives, even in places far away. Over the past century, advances in engineering have made access to viewing platforms easy in the Alps, and now thousands of tourists line up to photograph these scenic vistas every day. For his series Don’t Look Down, Rimmer sought to alter these views, and thereby question the experience of what we already know in our collective memories. By deliberately inverting the image into an unnatural colour palette, the landscapes become foreign and unsettling.
Brad Rimmer is an Australian photographer who works on long-term projects of portraiture, landscape and social documentation. Based in Fremantle, he seeks to uncover the human within often alienating everyday environs. He is the author of three photo books with T&G Publishing: Silence (2010), Don’t Look Down (May 2019), and Nature Boy (September 2019).
In 2017, Rimmer received the Artsource / Atelier Mondial residency in Basel Switzerland. The images created during that time form the basis for Don’t Look Down.
Numerous national and corporate art collections have acquired Rimmer’s work, including the National Gallery of Australia, the Wesfarmers Collection, Artbank, St John of God Health Care and Murdoch University.
Brad Rimmer is represented by Art Collective WA: www.artcollectivewa.com.au
Paola Anselmi is an independent curator and arts writer based in Perth, Western Australia. Over 25 years she has held curatorial and research roles at several prestigious art institutions and collections including the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Centre for Contemporary Art Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy. A PhD candidate at the University of Western Australia, her research focus is Western Australian photographic history. She is a regular contributor to Australian arts publications on Western Australian contemporary practice and has published numerous exhibition catalogue essays.
ISBN: 978-0-9873050-9-1, 68 pages, ca. 7.7 x 10.28 inches, hard cover.
Please note: Chatwin distributes Don’t Look Down only in North America (US, Canada, Mexico). Orders for shipment to other countries should be placed through T&G Publishing.
Bundle and save 25%!
Buy a copy of ‘Waterproof’ and ‘Unearthed’ for a combined discounted price.
ABOUT UNEARTHED
When Australian surfer Nat Young won the World Championship at Ocean Beach, San Diego, in 1966, his home break near Sydney would momentarily become the centre of the surfing universe as board design adapted to a more ‘radical’ style of surfing. Ten-year-old Stephen Cooney and his older brother Butch were friends of the Young brothers and would become deeply involved in the shortboard evolution. By the age of 14, Stephen had left school to pursue his love of surfing fulltime, eventually joining Albe Falzon for the filming of the seminal surf film Morning of The Earth. He was only 15-years-old when he became the first known person to surf Uluwatu in Bali.
Stephen’s account of his childhood and life as a grom is in turn both funny and poignant, as he reveals some of his family’s tragedies and struggles. The stories of filming MOTE and those early days at Tracks will surely one day make it to the silver screen. All three acts of Stephen Cooney’s early life will entertain and enlighten you, and serve as a companion piece to other works celebrating the 50th anniversary of the seminal surf film Morning of the Earth.
Foreword by Albe Falzon
ISBN 9780648952725
Flexi-cover, 224 pages
ABOUT WATERPROOF
Customers outside North America (US, Canada, Mexico) can purchase this book directly from Cyclops Press here.
Waterproof by John Ogden is an important new work featuring the work of Australia’s leading surf photographers from the first known photograph of the Australian surf zone, through to 20th century boom in surfing and the contemporary scene. Featured photographers include Richard Daintree, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Jack Eden, Bob weeks, John Witzig, Peter Crawford, Ted Grambeau, Joli, Bill Morris, Sean Davey, Tim McKenna, Trent Mitchell, Russell Ord, ‘Rich’ Richards, Stuart Gibson, Fran Miller, Leroy Bellet, Ray Collins and dozens more. It includes a Foreword by two-time World Champion surfer Tom Carroll.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia
ISBN 9780648952732
Hardcover in dust jacket, 256 pages,
Selected reviews:
The Australian Financial Review
“arguably the best surfing book published in Australia.” John Witzig
This beautifully designed hard-cover book documents the first 25 years of surfing at Cactus beach in South Australia. It captures the feel of an era when a new generation of youth were riding a wave of change. Cactus is a labour of love by author Christo Reid. He has lovingly chronicled the early days of this remote place in a journal format. The book’s distressed art design gives it more of a photo album feel accompanied by thoughtful text.
This book is out of print. We have limited stock available.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.
Chatwin is pleased to distribute the acclaimed, beautiful new standard work on the history of Australian surf photography.
Waterproof by John Ogden is an important new work featuring the work of Australia’s leading surf photographers from the first known photograph of the Australian surf zone, through to 20th century boom in surfing and the contemporary scene. Featured photographers include Richard Daintree, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Jack Eden, Bob weeks, John Witzig, Peter Crawford, Ted Grambeau, Joli, Bill Morris, Sean Davey, Tim McKenna, Trent Mitchell, Russell Ord, ‘Rich’ Richards, Stuart Gibson, Fran Miller, Leroy Bellet, Ray Collins and dozens more. It includes a Foreword by two-time World Champion surfer Tom Carroll.
Waterproof is not just a homage to the pioneers and leading lights of surf photography. It provides a lineage … a road map to where we are. Influences come from around the surfing world, but this anthology tracks those particularly Australian transitions, putting a few more missing pieces in the jigsaw. Waterproof does not dwell on professional surfing or what sort of equipment certain surfers or photographers use. It looks at surfing through a broad lens, embracing all forms of activity in the surf zone. Surf and Ocean photographers are often viewed as an unusual breed, a sub-culture inhabited by some real characters, some of whom have shuffled off this mortal coil in recent years. It is time to acknowledge them, and to celebrate their skills and dedication in creating images that inspire us.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia
ISBN 9780648952732
Hardcover in dust jacket, 256 pages, $55 (US)
Available for immediate shipment.
”Waterproof is not just a homage to the pioneers and leading lights of surf photography. It provides a lineage … a road map to where we are. Influences come from around the surfing world, but this anthology tracks those particularly Australian transitions, putting a few more missing pieces in the jigsaw. Waterproof does not dwell on professional surfing or what sort of equipment certain surfers or photographers use. It looks at surfing through a broad lens, embracing all forms of activity in the surf zone. Surf and Ocean photographers are often viewed as an unusual breed, a sub-culture inhabited by some real characters, some of whom have shuffled off this mortal coil in recent years. It is time to acknowledge them, and to celebrate their skills and dedication in creating images that inspire us.”
Tom Carroll (twice World Champion)
Selected reviews:
The Australian Financial Review
The remaining limited edition copies we have had the edges bumped during shipping. These damaged copies are non-refundable. We are otherwise sold out.
Co-authors Mike Ritter, author of Thai Stick, and noted surf filmmaker Jack McCoy explore the myths around the early days of discovery at Grajagan (aka G-Land) one of the crown jewels of surfing. This mythical surf break would become the focus of Mike Boyum’s obsession to create the world’s first camp in the zone where tiger-inhabited jungle meets pristine sea. Ritter and McCoy’s verified account of the motley crew of drifters and scammers who first found their way to this surfing mecca is both compelling and powerful. This book will delight and excite all surfers and adventurers who prefer to venture off the beaten track.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.
Special Limited Edition Print
· Individually signed and numbered by the authors
· Leather cover / gilded edges / ribbon marker
· Includes specially printed set of three postcards
Photographed & recorded by Peter McConchie.
The positive power and importance of fire on the Australian landscape told by Cape York Indigenous Elders and Community Leaders.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.
Published by T&G.
Distributed in North American by Chatwin Books. Customers outside North America (US, Canada, Mexico) can purchase this book directly from T&G Publishing here.
Nature Boy is a sequel to Australian photographer Brad Rimmer’s monograph Silence (2009). Probing at the essence of rural Australia and the emotional impact of the natural landscape upon individual psyches. Rimmer this time adds stories to the compendium. The raw, yet poetic narratives conjure the late adolescent years of a lad wrestling with whether to stay or leave his remote country homeland for the lure of the city and so much more. A coming-of-age account the elegant mix of observation and heartfelt reminiscence are almost autobiographical, and hint to the nascent sensibilities of the young Rimmer as an artist.
Nature Boy is a story about the ordinary; failing high school, the romance and fantasy of falling in love with almost every girl I knew and the sadness of never giving too much away in the pursuit of it. It’s a narrative about the past and its recurrence in the present. Normality is never far away; it’s a narrative that plays out over and over again in a small town.
It was 1981; I was nineteen, in limbo between teenage and adulthood, in youth and boredom drawn to the heady mix of cars and speed, sport and alcohol, any of life’s extremes that presented themselves. That year changed me.
You cannot be untouched by a landscape of absence. I was working on the wheat bins in the north-eastern wheatbelt. An unforgiving land of Mallee and Eucalyptus woodlands and red earth on the edge the grain belt. Where decades of over cropping and droughts create struggle that changes people, mentally and physically.
The memory of impacting incidents and this landscape still resonate with me today, like the red earth that stains everything. Events taken for granted while testing the fragile line between life and death in becoming a man, struggling with the timeless question of ‘should I stay or should I leave’, all a part of finding your place in a small rural fringe community. It’s our history, all of it, including the long-term effects of a single action on subsequent generations, where memories continue to resonate.
How does our history, our experiences and our emotions shape us? How do we arrive at a time in our lives when we can find a comfortable balance between looking back and looking ahead? How does our sensory archive collect sounds, music, smells, colours, shapes and the tiniest details to trigger memories, almost cinematically?
Over the past five years I have returned to the places where I worked on the wheat bins. These visits are still fraught with mixed emotions and disengaging with the past remains difficult. The subjects in my photographs are local young people, the same age I was in 1981. Our meetings are brief and intense. As they surrender to the portrait I can feel that sense of integrity and inquiring honesty that I felt as a teenager, though these subjects have no direct relationship with my past. The people in these photographs own their own histories and their presence speaks of resilience and a personal human condition. Each one is creating their own story, making choices, collecting and storing their memories.
On the last day of summer 2015, in that same wheatbelt landscape, a tragedy occurred. It was personal and while the circumstances leading up to it were sadly predictable, as tragedies seem to flow effortlessly from one generation to the next, it is still hard to accept. Maybe revisiting was a way to reconnect with that reality of place and circumstance that is never far away, reminding me where I came from and why I chose to leave. Now there is another scarred tree on a familiar country road that I can never pass without the memory of loss.
ISBN: 978-0-9870790-0-8, 96 pages, ca. 9.75 x 13.25 inches, hard cover.
Please note: Chatwin distributes Nature Boy only in North America (US, Canada, Mexico). Orders for shipment to other countries should be placed through T&G Publishing.
When Australian surfer Nat Young won the World Championship at Ocean Beach, San Diego, in 1966, his home break near Sydney would momentarily become the centre of the surfing universe as board design adapted to a more ‘radical’ style of surfing. Ten-year-old Stephen Cooney and his older brother Butch were friends of the Young brothers and would become deeply involved in the shortboard evolution. By the age of 14, Stephen had left school to pursue his love of surfing fulltime, eventually joining Albe Falzon for the filming of the seminal surf film Morning of The Earth. He was only 15-years-old when he became the first known person to surf Uluwatu in Bali.
Stephen’s account of his childhood and life as a grom is in turn both funny and poignant, as he reveals some of his family’s tragedies and struggles. The stories of filming MOTE and those early days at Tracks will surely one day make it to the silver screen. All three acts of Stephen Cooney’s early life will entertain and enlighten you, and serve as a companion piece to other works celebrating the 50th anniversary of the seminal surf film Morning of the Earth.
“… growing up on the Northern Beaches of Sydney, Australia, and experiencing the exciting days of shortboard development, then being swept up in the creative approach to surf filmmaking that became the perennial movie Morning of The Earth, and finally, working on a ground-breaking surfing commentary known as Tracks magazine: these were three distinct eras in which I was the grommet …”
Stephen Cooney
Foreword by Albe Falzon
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia
ISBN 9780648952725
Flexi-cover, 224 pages
Available for immediate shipment.
Published by Cyclops Press.
WHITEWASH –The Lost Story of an African Australian has been shortlisted by the Australian National Maritime Museum and the Australian Association for Maritime History for the 2022 Frank Broeze Memorial Maritime History Book Prize. The 'Saltwater People' companion books were the recipients of this award back in 2013.
A true story of breathtaking scope that follows a family’s journey across several centuries, from First Peoples genocide and the transatlantic slave trade to flight and freedom in a new land, punctuated by some of the most significant conflicts in human history. It is also the story of race, identity and the whitewashing of Black and Indigenous history.
George ‘Bernie’ Showery was born in Sydney, Australia, in the years prior to Federation. Abandoned by his African-American father when he was just three years old, an eccentric father figure would later introduce him to carefree days at Freshwater Beach. It was here, in the summer of 1914-15, that Duke Kahanamoku would demonstrate his graceful ability to walk on water, with the ocean serving as both a stage and a supreme metaphor for change.
Soon after, Bernie Showery would be called away to fight for the British Empire, serving in the Middle East with the legendary Australian Light Horse and the Imperial Camel Corps. Fighting alongside Lawrence of Arabia, he would witness the great cavalry charge at Beersheba, the fall of Damascus, and the maneuvering behind the British carve-up of Palestine.
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.
STONE FREE IS A TRUE-CRIME ODYSSEY—AN ELEGY FOR A VANISHED WORLD—UNTAMED, UNREPENTANT, UNFORGETTABLE.
From the cradle, Warren Anderson’s future had been set out for him. But his parent’s plans for an ordered life collided head-on with the awakening 1960s counterculture that rejected those ideals. Reforged as James “Abdul” Monroe, he emerged not as a compliant citizen but as an outlaw fugitive.
Stone Free unravels the true-life odyssey of a Californian misfit who walked away from the American Dream. What began as a search for meaning morphed into one of the boldest marijuana smuggling operations of the twentieth century. As Thai stick grew in legend, Abdul became a kingpin in the pan-Pacific dope trade, moving over 100 ton of prized bud to the Western world, while living large in idyllic tropical havens.
But living untethered had a price.
As Nixon’s War on Drugs turned up the heat, Abdul was betrayed by former friend, Mike Boyum, and convicted on major conspiracy to import marijuana into America. Unrepentant, Abdul—inmate 52260-098—was shackled and shuffled through 25 federal prisons, doing time alongside outlaw ghosts like surfing’s dark prince, Miki Dora, and the infamous Stopwatch Gang bank robber, Paddy Mitchell.
Link to the book trailer: https://www.cyclopsproductions.com.au/book-trailers
Published by Cyclops Press in Australia.