Wayne Lynch was 23 when this interview was published by Tracks in 1975. After a long period underground to avoid the draft, Lynch, a one-time teen surfing sensation, was making a brief but successful return to competition. "Moody, erratic, unpredictable. That's how Wayne Lynch describes himself these days," author Phil Jarratt wrote in his Tracks intro. "I would add intelligent, sensitive, and direct. He told me that if I misrepresented him in this piece he'd destroy me. There was a smile on his lips, but I have no doubt he meant it."

What have you been doing these last five years?

Well, I didn't surf for a while. I left the whole thing and just got out of surfing. I rode bikes, travelled around Australia, then when I got back into surfing I went to Indonesia, came home and started shaping boards.

Are you really into shaping or is it something to do to keep surfing?

No, I’m really getting into it and have a really good setup. I shaped before but didn’t really like it. Now I’ve built my own shaping room in the bush, and when I get it more organized it’ll be great.

Roundtails, mainly. Pintails for tubes. All the boards I design are for tubes.

Queensland part of the time, Western Australia, and Victoria.

Yeah, if I get malaria again it’s all over for me.

So what happened? You contracted malaria in Bali?

Well, first I had a bike crash, and when I was in hospital there I got malaria, which was radical.

I lost about a stone [14 pounds]. I came home and I was here two weeks before I went to a doctor. I kept getting skinnier and I couldn’t eat and in the end I went unconscious and they took me to hospital.

Oh yeah, quite a lot for the first six months. I still get sick a lot, even now, like my health is rather fucked up generally.

Just eat good foods. No strict diets because I eat healthy and always have.

Nat started it in Puerto Rico, in 1968, because I used to swim around a lot. Just a little joke.

How do you feel about doing interviews now? You shunned them for a while.

I didn’t really shun them. No . . . I suppose I did. I didn’t want to have anything to do with surfing for awhile. I wanted to forget it.

I got sick of being a star, of having to be Wayne Lynch. Like at 16 it’s a bit too much.

You were even younger than that when it first started.

I just stepped out of school, straight into it. I didn't know what was going on, and it fucked up my head so bad.

Basically I’m just a country kid, always lived in the country—country naive—and I stepped out into a big fucking world, and was famous, and that just does something to you, it bends you around a bit. A lot of people use you and there is a lot of dishonesty in it.

Yeah, completely. (Laughter). But that was my fault I guess.

I found it a shallow way of living. I mean, to get high off people telling you how good you are, it’s pretty fucked.

At first, though, it must have felt pretty good.

At first, yeah. It was great. All I wanted to do was surf. So I just stepped into it and thought how great it was. This is it. I made it, easy street.

When you were about 16, that would have been 1967, you went on that trip with Paul Witzig, to shoot 

Was that the high point of your star trip?

Actually, honestly, getting out of it was the high point. It's funny, in a way, looking back. The best I ever surfed was before anyone recognized me. I was surfing really good about in early ’67, then I exploded and I didn't surf as well. That was the real reason I think that I got out of surfing when I did.

Your surfing was affected because you had a famous name?

Like, you were expected to meet a certain standard.

Yes, but instead my surfing just deteriorated. Like in 1970 for the world contest I could still surf hollow waves but for contest-type contest surfing I just packed it up. I just got so fucking sick of it, having to be something. Having to go out and surf this wave because they wanted to see it.

 article years ago where they had a double-page spread of you doing a re-entry, and the caption said “This surfer is going to be the next world champion.” How did you feel about that sort of expectation?

So that's what I'm talking about. I mean, it's ridiculous. I’m not a good contest surfer and never was. It was a fluke that I ever won anything.

Was it ever your ambition be the world champion?

About 1966 yeah. After that it disappeared.

Right now I just want to get healthy and get back into surfing. After the accident I was really fucked up but this year I want to get into it. I might do a bit of professional surfing, like the Coke contest, but I’m going to pick carefully and see if the whole thing is right for me.

If you go into contests are you going to play the game or are you just going to surf the way you normally surf?

Pretty much surf the way I always surf. [Note: a few weeks later, Lynch beat Mark Richards, Simon Anderson and Wayne Bartholomew to win the 1975 Coca-Cola Surfabout]

A lot of people in surfing are always talking about, or wondering about, what Wayne Lynch is doing. You have that sort of mystery-man aura. Is that something you strive for, or does that just happen?

No, I don’t strive for it. It happens because I don’t like people knowing what I’m doing; it restricts me creatively. If people know what you are doing and where you are all the time I reckon they’ve got you, you know what I mean? You have to do what you want to do before they know it.

You'd like to clean up your act before anyone sees it?

Do you like having that mystery around you?

I don't know. It’s there and I don’t think about it.

As far as Victoria goes, it is the nicest town. I can do what I want to do. I feel independent and free here.

No. Glassing is shitty, it really is. I just shape 'em.

What about the social life here, are you a party-goer or what?

No not heavily, but I like the odd rage here and there. (Laughter).

Do you still get recognized in the water?

Yeah, I guess I do. But it’s really different now compared to when I was young. It's not a big head trip.

No, not particularly. Maybe to a degree, but I’m pretty fair. I like to give people waves. If there’s a guy out there and he’s been waiting and a set comes in, well, that’s his wave. Fair's fair.

Let's go back to when you came home, from Bali, after the accident. Where did you live? What were you doing?

I came home eight months after the accident. I was laid up that long in Bali. So at that stage I went and lived out in the bush at Lorne, in a valley behind a farm. No electricity, grew my own vegetables, lived in the old millers huts.

At that stage I was living with a guy and we just dug gardens and got into growing foods. That was kind of all I did.

You know, I might. That was a really good time in my life.

I did some building for my father. But yeah, the rest of the time I spent in the gardens, growing herbs and veggies.

Yes, I don’t eat any meat, it just doesn’t interest me at all.

It really fucks with my body, especially with the malaria. I should be careful with what I drink, but I'm not. Like I said, I really enjoy a good rage. It's worth it. (Laughter)

Yes, I'm learning guitar now. I'm not good, but I'm impatient. Like I pick up a guitar and want to play it well.

A lot of hot surfers are like that. They want to learn to do things well and quickly, and in a lot of cases they can. Is that true for you?

Anything. Squash, tennis, sailing. I really like sailing and have a quick cat which I sail in the big swells around Lorne.

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