Great Surf, a Cosy Cave and Fresh Fish: It's All a Surfer Needs

Red Bluff is an isolated stretch of Western Australia’s coast with a bushy green headland that overlooks a white sandy beach and a turquoise blue ocean. To reach it, you drive 70km along an isolated stretch of sandy road which can get very boggy, especially after rain. In a two wheel drive, you feel lucky to get through, but when you arrive, you’re suprised to see two wheel drives parked everywhere. The foreshore is dotted with panel vans, tents, station wagons, and caravans, all flagged by towels and wetsuits, flapping in the breeze. They belong to the full time surfers, who spend the winter months here surfing the world class waves.
 
 On the southern end of the beach is a cave, a rocky hideaway beneath the headland, which this winter, is home to Taras Mulik.
 
 “It’s first in, best dressed. I got here in June and there was no-one in the cave, so I jumped in,” Taras explains, as he buffs his board in front of the cave, repairing a crease.
 
 His friends Brad, a fisherman and his girlfriend Cheryl, visiting for a few weeks, are sitting behind him, reading thick paperbacks in the shade. Taras is waiting for the wind to drop before he goes in for his first surf today.
 
 “I first found out about Red Bluff from a good friend of mine who always used to disappear in winter. When I quizzed him, he told me about it, so I thought I’d have a look and I’m glad I did, because that was about nine years ago now. When I came up the first time with a friend, I hitched here and camped in a little tent. I didn’t have much at all. The waves were so good. I stayed for three or four months. I don’t think I’ve missed a winter here since,” he says, smiling at the ocean.
 
 “It’s a good escape here, it’s probably the best escape in WA. Here and Gnaraloo (just north of Red Bluff) are the primo locations for us.”
 
 Taras lives for good waves. He spends his winters surfing at Red Bluff and the remainder of the year surfing on the south coast, at Margaret River.

If he saves enough money, he tries to have a surfing trip to Indonesia in between.
 
 “I try and stay up here for as long as my money lasts. I wait for it to warm up again down south, before I go back. The hardest thing about this place is leaving , I keep saying: ‘Just one more week, just one more week.’”
 
 His life has followed pretty much the same pattern since he was about 20. He got used to travelling as a child because his mother, an art teacher, “was a bit of a hippie who roamed around a bit”. He spent his early childhood in the northern NSW town of Mullumbimby, came to live in Perth at the age of six, and learned how to surf relatively late, at the age of 15.
 
 In the years after high school, Taras worked as a surfboard repairer and as a deckhand for an abalone diver. In the summer he usually finds work doing surfboard shaping and repairs. For the remainder of the year, he lives on unemployment benefits, a fact he carries little guilt about.
 
 “Ten per cent of Australia own this country’s wealth, so if people paid their taxes right, then the percentage of people on unemployment benefits wouldn’t really make a major difference, if the money was shared around evenly.
 
 “I’ve done a lot of work and I’ve paid taxes. When I’ve earned good coin, a lot of it has gone into tax. You don’t get much back. There’s no use working for the weekend if you’re not enjoying it,” he says.
 
 Taras sleeps in his van and uses the cave for living space. He has a gas fridge and gas cooker in the cave, and lives mostly off the fresh fish he catches every day. He pays 5 a night for the camping fee.
 
 “The caretakers are so cool that if you’re desperate, you just give them a hand digging out the toilets or clearing the rubbish, and you get the week rent free,” Taras explains.
 
 His average day goes like this:
 
 “Generally I wake up fairly early, when the morning stars are still in the sky.

When I wake up, I look straight out at the ocean from my van. You look out to the point and if there’s a decent amount of white water there you go out surfing. If not, then it’s a good time to go fishing. I have a cast of lure, sometimes I catch crabs in the rocks for bait. Then I come back and eat my Weetbix!
 
 “After a morning surf, I’ll often cook fish for lunch. Sometimes I’ll catch crayfish or squid - every sort of fish you can imagine. If you need some food, then you’ll write a little list and whoever is going into town (Carnarvon) will get it for you. There’s no ‘have tos’ or ‘not have tos’. If you run out of milk, it’s not a big deal. We all share.
 
 “In the afternoons I’ll surf, or read, or fish later on. At night we sit around the fire and talk about the day’s events - the fishing or the surfing - or play the guitar.”
 
 For Taras, surfing is a lifestyle and an addiction. Living at Red Bluff puts him in touch with nature and makes him appreciate simple pleasures.
 
 “It’s a big relief when you get here, you feel yourself unwind after the first week and get back to basics. I’ve always got the philosophy that the more you’ve got, the more you’ve got to worry about, whether it be mortgages or power bills, so it makes it heaps easier to live here.
 
 “If you go more than a couple of weeks without a surf, you can really notice your health going downhill. You have more thoughts on your mind. It’s like meditation in a way. When you’re out there, you’re not thinking of any day to day stresses, you’re just thinking: ‘That’s the wave’ and after you ride, you think about the wave you were just on. It’s sort of like a healing process, I suppose.
 
 “The sea life is the beauty of being here. You get all sorts of sharks here - mainly reef and bronze whalers. I see them every day. Some guys were hand feeding them with fish scraps the other day.
 
 “I’ve seen humpback whales cruise out the back, close enough to see big barnacles growing on the side. Sometimes they come in and stay with their calves. We get dolphins as well. After a while we take it for granted. I suppose Japanese tourists would pay a lot of good money to come here and see what we get to see.”
 
 Although he doesn’t consider himself talented enough to be a professional, Taras says you need to be very confident to surf at The Bluff. “It’s such a fast wave here, it’s not a place for beginners. It’s a challenging wave, to say the least. I’ve hit the bottom of the reef a few times, but that’s to be expected.”
 
 Taras has made all his best friends through his time at Red Bluff. He sees a big contrast between the type of person living in a small community like his surfing fraternity, and the suburban city dweller.
 
 “In smaller areas, you can really notice the difference the way people are with each other. You get treated as a name, not as a number.
 But in the city, everyone is racing around, working so hard that they have to go to the pub and spend all their money to enjoy themselves, whereas in a country area, everyone knows you. You are a person.
 
 “Your comfort zone becomes a lot bigger - rather than it being confined to a small house in a suburb, you can step out anywhere and still feel comfortable.”
 
 He says he can easily see himself still coming to Red Bluff in his 40s and 50s.
 
 “This is my favourite place on the whole earth, just knowing you have so many good friends here, and the cost of living being so minimal. It’s good to know you have places like this where you really feel comfortable. This is one of the places I would call home.”