Scrambling over the dunes in the pre-dawn light I am eager to see if the sunrise will line up with my expectations of Waikuku Beach, just north of Christchurch. I'm in the Waimakariri district to capture some images of the lifestyle and natural beauty of the area for a client.
With just 10-minutes before the first rays are due a choke of cloud thickens and squeezes the colour out of the early morning sky.
So intent on the hues of the sky I hadn't noticed the swell lines rolling in or the little grey-haired man clasping a tin of coffee on the beach.
"Much cleaner than yesterday," he offers with a childish grin incongruent with his weathered skin and long grey hair.
I ask him if he is a local and he nods toward the beach houses behind the dunes. The look in his eye is familiar – somewhere on the spectrum from taking the mickey out of me to a calm all-knowing wisdom. The latter better suits his wizard like appearance. I settle on that.
Doug Singer, it turns out is 72 and calls Waikuku Beach home. He tells me he surfs everyday if he can, but soon corrects himself, "oh, hang on, I didn't surf yesterday – the swell was too raw".
The tide is super high this morning and Doug is quick to make an observation that the tide is higher than the settlement behind the dunes.
"Did you see those puddles when you came in?" he asks. "They weren't there before the earthquake. I reckon the whole area has dropped down – just slumped like flour settling when you whack the container on the bench."
He considers the inundation for a moment, "it won't affect me – I'll just build a barge and put my house on that and float up and down with the tides." He chuckles at the thought, but I get the feeling he's deadliy serious.
He continues to tell me that he has a role in a new movie: The Five Kingdoms. He tells of a scene where he is in a dark cold lake wearing only a nappy, "I'll let you in on a secret," he tells me as he leans in. "It's actually just my bathtub with a black tarp".
He's worked with the movie director before and he's looking forward to seeing the final product. He seems quite pleased to be playing such a confronting role.
When Doug turned 70 a few years ago, he took up skateboarding and has never looked back. "I never realised how much it would help your surfing," he offers with a smile. "I'm surfing better now than I was 10 years ago."
The sun has taken a place in the sky behind a softbox of cloud and I realise my time has been consumed by meeting one of the greats of New Zealand surfing ... a kaumatua of the waves, the wizard of Waikuku. I wouldn't have had it any other way – that randomness of surfing and its colourful characters is the very heart of New Zealand surfing culture.
See you at the beach ... Derek
PS Part of my assignment this past week had me shooting images around the Rangiora Airfield, which is one of the country's busiest. I bumped into an old friend there, Chris Anderson, who flies bush planes (super short landing and take-off planes with oversized cartoon-esque tyres). He offered to fly me around so this week's aerials are made possible thanks to him and his collection of flying machines.
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