AustLit

'The sun bends their bodies across the roadside puddles. Shadows swim out from under their cranks where the playful morning light twists their bodies, bikes and surfboards into a jumble of sharp, angular shapes as they pedal past the muddy sinkholes that border the bitumen leading into town. They are two teenage boys with tangled hair yet their reflection appears like a triceratops come to life; a prehistoric beast waddling down a smooth black sweep of tar, a forgotten curve of the Great Ocean Road beyond the tourist stops and biblical rock formations, brittle like toffee eaten at the edges by potholes and puddles. They reach an 80 sign pocked with rusting bullet holes and follow the burnout marks, reading the tyre tracks, where sunshine dances across the sticky caramel dirt that plasters their wheels and spits on their legs and the arse of their pants.'  (Introduction)

From the landlocked boondocks of country Victoria to the wild coast of West Papua, Deep Water follows Brendan McAloon's remarkable journey to the most remote corners of the globe in search of the perfect wave. Evocative and mesmerising, Deep Water travels from isolated Indonesian island chains to Hawaii's infamous North Shore, from Tahiti's Tuamotu Atolls to the velvet green fields of Ireland, the unearthly suspense of an Icelandic winter, and beyond. Illustrated by images from the world's leading surf photographers such as Jon Frank and Ted Grambeau, the text and imagery combine to capture the allure of travelling to exotic wave locations and present compelling portraits of some of the biggest names in the surfing world, including world champions Mick Fanning and Kelly Slater.

Abstract from publisher website