Surfing, or at least the very act of it, is ultimately down to two main components-the surfer and the wave. Some are content riding the gentile waves found skirting most towns and cities around the world but others choose a much more dedicated path. For a select bunch of individuals, big, thick remote waves are what really gets the blood pumping and a break located in Western Australia’s deep south seemed purpose built for those inclined.

Known simply as The Right, the wave can be found way offshore surrounded by a hellishly deep channel which, one can assume, is home to all sorts of sabre-toothed creatures.

Alas, for those not deterred by such things, The Right offers the thrill of a lifetime due to its intensely powerful and unpredictable nature. Not by coincidence, it attracts a unique, and loyal, breed of surfer not afraid to zig where others would most definitely zag. The cast of characters includes surfers like Chris Shanahan, Ben Rufus, Kerby Brown and bodyboarders such as Ryan Hardy, Dan Ryan and Chad Jackson to name a few. Among that crew though is the most mysterious of them all, the enigmatic Chris Ross. To get into the mindset of Mr Ross though, we must first examine what makes such a man tick. It’ll start about seven days out and after all these years, Paige knows exactly what’s coming next. The phone calls, the meteorological talk and the all-important size. Four metres, interested. Six metres, let’s hold off on dinner.

Seven metres-the bags are packed, the car fuelled and pointed in the right direction and the steepness nights will begin. Any minute now, a flurry of blonde-headed excitement will pull the trigger, whisk her into the car and the long drive south will begin. “He used to be so much worse, but he still gets so, so excited,” says Paige. “He” is Chris Ross, the hardest charging man of mystery who ever did surf for free. Chapter One Long story short? Ross is what you’d call a man full of surprises. For someone with such a big-wave reputation, he’s an exceptionally good small wave surfer, is devilishly handsome and has quite the thing for bees. “I inherited about 30 hives from an old homeless guy down south and I think I’ve got enough honey to last a lifetime,” says Ross. “I’ve had some pretty wild experiences getting so stung, sometimes 50 at a time. I do try to be careful but they always seem to get me.”

Despite a promising junior competitive career, the call of the wild was always going to be too strong a pull, even for someone born into a postcode bursting with perfect waves. He’d already chiselled out a solid reputation in waves of consequence, but it was that plateauing competitive career that ultimately fuelled the decision to pack his bags, head east out of Margaret River, turn right at Nannup and just…disappear. “I’d just been knocked out a competition and I was really down on myself.” Ross recalls. “Some friends had been telling me about these waves down south, so I thought-I’ll just go down and check them out but as soon as I saw what was going on down there, that was it for me. I was gone.”

Months went by as the rumours began to spread. He was up to something down there but no-one expected what would happen next. About the same time, photographer Russell Ord set out with his own goal in mind, nailing the perfect surf shot, preferably in waves of consequence. On a hunch, Ord also headed south and by chance bumped into Cross atop a hill overlooking the most beautiful beach on earth. Out to sea, thick walls of water lurched out of the deep Southern Ocean, turning the most magnificent shade of blue before violently detonating onto a barely covered rock shelf. For many, it would be the stuff of nightmares, but for Cross, Ord and the handful of others so inclined? It was perfect. “I knew it was what we’d been looking for,” Ord recalled of that fortuitous meeting. “We’d put together bits and pieces of rumours and pictures that had started to appear in body board magazines. And then we overheard some guys talking in the pub one night and that kind of sealed our fate.”

It didn’t take long for the first images of Chris Ross at The Right to appear and to put it mildly, they were shocking. Standing tall in the belly of the beast of Australia’s thickest, meanest wave, Ross seemed at ease wearing nothing but a wetsuit and a huge grin. “My first surf at The Right was like nothing else I’d ever seen or heard,” Ross recalled of his maiden voyage. “But I knew straight away that this place was going to be something special.” Those first images took even less time reaching Ross’ parents, Jim and Yvonne, who, surprisingly, recall bursting with pride after double clicking the first email attachment sent to them by Ord. “A lot of people expect me to feel fear when I see photos of Chris at The Right,” says Yvonne. “But I just feel so proud and I know he has a pretty good handle on what’s going on. I actually feel better when I see the photos because at least I know there were a few other people there.”

Years before, Yvonne had coaxed young Chris back into the water after he’d tried to match it with father Jim in the solid waves of Margaret River’s Mainbreak. “I just clobbered, my head smashed into my board and I didn’t want anything to do with surfing after that,” Chris recalls. “But mum was really good, she used to take me boogie boarding at some of the softer waves around town and really encouraged me to get back into it.” Yvonne noticed her son’s confidence returning, albeit aided by a healthy fascination with a popular action figure of the time. “As a kid, he was obsessed with that cartoon character, Skeletor,” Yvonne recalls with a slight giggle. “And when we used to go surfing before school, he’d come paddling up behind me and say in the same voice as Skeletor, ‘Don’t let fear stand in the way of your dreams’-it seemed funny at the time but it all makes sense now.” With the love for surfing and sense of confidence returned, Ross swapped boards and started a rapid upward progression in the series of breaks around home.

First on the list was Rivermouth, a punchy yet tricky little beach break that has long served as ground zero for every little grommet in Margaret River. It wouldn’t take long however before Ross’ eyes would be drawn a little further out to sea to a wave known simply as The Box. “I’d been watching The Box for a while and to tell you the truth, it looked like the funnest thing on earth,” says Ross. “Then (local hotshot) Andrew Sheridan got a cover shot on a magazine that to this day is still the best barrel I’ve ever seen out there and that’s when my love affair with it really kicked into gear to the point I started to become quite obsessed with it because once you get a taste for waves like that, everything else tends not to feel as special as it once did.” With his confidence now in full swing, Ross also returned to the heaving peak of Mainbreak, the same wave that had almost ended his surfing career years before.

“I think initially, I’d see my Dad out there riding the biggest waves and I guess subconsciously I wanted to do what he was doing,” says Ross. “Looking back though, I went out there a bit too big a bit too early but in a funny kind of way it conditioned me for what was to come. When I eventually got back out there when it was big, I could sense I was pretty calm where other guys were a little freaked out so that’s when I figured I could do alright in bigger waves too.” But Ross, like many other underground big wave riders around Margaret River also had another trick up his sleeve-the ability to hold his breath for extended periods, developed, again subconsciously, while free-diving for a staple of the West Australian barbeque-crayfish.

“I used to be obsessed with getting those things. Sometimes I’d just be peaking out underwater without any oxygen but I could see that crayfish sitting there and I just couldn’t let it go.” Ross also employed the free-diving method of hyperventilating before plunging into the depths, which is said to purge the body’s bloodstream of debilitating carbon dioxide, thus reducing the urge to breath. Ross concedes, it’s just a theory, but it seemed to work for him. “I found it was really only when you get pushed to that point where you think you’re about to die that you realise if you can just push through that, you can hold your breath for at least twice as long.” Again, just a theory, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. Jim Ross was quick to notice his son’s renewed confidence amongst the big waves and recalls him suddenly being a fixture in the lineup, when the going got tough.

“You’d be out there paddling like mad for the horizon and he’d be yapping away and paddling with one arm he was so at ease,” says Jim. “All that confidence did eventually come back to him, but he did put a lot of work into it.” It was also around that time veteran surfboard shaper Maurice Cole introduced the new buzz sport of tow-surfing to those for whom too much of a big thing was never enough. Ross quickly teamed up with fellow devotee, Leif Mulik, and the duo set to work among the miles of untapped waves the region had to offer. “It was just paradise, the absolute best thing in the whole world,” Ross recalls, still giddy at the thought. “Instead of slowly paddling around with the crowds and waiting for a set, you could just grab that towrope and it was just action, action, action. Instead of paddling into a bomb and just hoping to make the drop, you could be setting up for the barrel straight away.”

The learning curve was not without it’s failings though. “I ended up sending Leif’s ski over the falls one day. I was towing him into a wave and kind of got stuck in the lip. I probably could have ridden it out, but I panicked and let go. Jake Paterson (Yallingup based pro surfer) towed us in and we got it fixed but it never really worked the same after that.” Mulik, who was at the end of the tow rope seconds prior to the sinking, recalls perhaps being a victim to Ross’ enthusiasm for quick hits of adrenalin. “ I think he (Ross) just saw the wave and wanted to flick me into it so bad he just forgot I was there. He whipped me in so fast I kind of ended up going in the opposite direction.”

Ross’ fate however would be forever sealed in 2007, the same day local surfers Courtney Gray towed Damon Eastough into an award winning 66-foot wave at the newly discovered deep-water break named Cow Bombie. That waves of that size could exist in his neighbourhood blew the second-last fuse left in a mind already exposed to a short lifetime of big. “I just could not believe what I was seeing-it was just this complete natural phenomenon that was right around the corner from my house,” he recalled. Shortly thereafter, Ross found himself hightailing it back home from another of his little hiding spots down south and set sail straight for the bank. “I got a loan for $22,000 and got a ski. I pretty much hitched the ski to the back of my car, turned back around and headed straight back down the coast.”

As luck would have it, just as Ross went looking for a bigger sandpit in which to play with his new toy, photographer Andrew Buckley found himself firing off a sequence at an undisclosed location down south that would send Ross and the surfing world in general into an absolute frenzy. “I’ll never forget that feeling of coming round the corner and seeing The Right for the first time, “ Ross recalls. “I’d gone down there looking for it with a mate and we headed out to where we thought it was and it was just the wildest, windiest trip out to sea you could imagine,” says Ross. “It got to a point where we were both wondering if this was some sort of cruel joke but then the wave came into view and floored us both.” And that, as they say, was pretty much that. “We had a reasonable first session, but what stood out was the amount of water drawing up the face of the wave. It just made you feel like you were going as fast as you’ll ever go.’ So Ross set about designing a board to suit the wave under the mentorship of local shapers, Marty Littlewood and Chris Chapman. “It took a while to figure out what works best out there.

My first couple of sessions the board just didn’t fit the wave and I ended up having a couple of really bad wipeouts and remember thinking, ‘I gotta get these boards right or I’m going to kill myself out here.’ Slowly, bust surely under the tutelage of Littlewood and Chapman, Ross dialled in his boards to the point where his confidence soared at a wave with such consequences, it had almost ended the life of Western Australia’s most respected big wave riders, Paul Paterson. “I honestly thought I was done for,” Paterson recalls of the wave that nearly held him under to the point of drowning. “I was driven down so far that when I opened my eyes, everything was pitch black. I was held under for two waves and was just lucky when I came up there wasn’t a third because that would have been the end for me. It dawned me after that little experience that The Right is not a wave to be taken lightly, at all.”

Which is not to say Ross is in the habit of taking it lightly, it’s just, as his wife Paige, a wildly talented musician with a voice for the ages, suggests, he’s somehow predisposed to the dangers that lurk. “I guess you could say his approach is slightly unorthodox, but I just think he’s naturally, physically and mentally equipped to deal with whatever happens out there,” she says. “In some ways, it’s like he’s pre-surfed the waves on the days leading up to a big swell. He can’t sleep, gets really edgy and has trouble just chilling. You can really see his mind is going a million miles an hour but when he gets out in the elements, he just has that ability to put it all into neutral and just cruise.”

Ross would be the first to claim there are others who surf better or harder out there and the wave has since gathered a small circle of like-minded devotees, including Ben Rufus, Cale Grigson and Chris Shanahan. But it’s allure spreads far and wide, attracting the unique breed of surfer happy to down tools and make a beeline for The Right once conditions go green. Myron Porter is one such surfer. Though living and working about 14,000 kilometres away in the north western coastal town of Carnarvon, Porter found himself developing a healthy addiction to The Right once he’d gotten a taste. “I really scrutinise the shit out of every swell before I pull the trigger and head down,” says Porter.

“But my real indicator is Crossy, if he’s frothing on it, that’s as good as gold for me.” Since first making its mark on the international surfing scene, a relentless flood of imagery emerging from The Right has inadvertently taken the gloss off it, an oversaturation of the senses if you will. But for committed devotees like Cross, Porter, Shanahan, Grigson and Rufus, the joy of The Right will never get old. “I’ve missed a few days out there over the years and it hurts like nothing else. It really does feel like I’ll regret it for the rest of my life.” So Cross did what he always does, bit the bullet and purchased property not too far from the wave. “I figured if I can be right near it, I’ll never miss it and be happy till the end of my days.”

GUEST AUTHOR Anthony Pancia

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