They were the best years of my life. In 1976 I helped import some Bali weave sarongs to a little shop in Noosa called “Kuta Baru”. All I really wanted to do was get free trips to Bali, coming over twice a year to buy sarongs, go surfing and soak up the Bali Hindu way of life. But then a big wholesale client from Sydney asked me to co-ordinate his orders from a clothing factory in Denpasar, and before I knew it I was his quality control guy living most of the year in Kuta. We had a few boom years followed by a long slow slide as the market for Bali surfie gear went off the boil, no longer flavour of the month. But I got to surf some beautiful uncrowded waves with all the original Bali surfing pioneers, like the late Ketut ‘Froggy’ Jati, Wayan Suwenda, Gede Narmada, Wayan Sudirka, Wayan ‘Billy’ Badra, Nyoman ‘Bobby’ Radiasa and Ketut ‘King Kong’ Kasih. Balinese surfers are incredible to surf with, they have a lot of fun in the water, always joking and laughing. You have to understand that these guys were rebels, breaking with centuries of Balinese tradition (according to which the sea is a fearsome realm and swimming in it to be avoided, ed.). So their joy at discovering the fun of surfing was inspiring. They became the role models for the next younger generation, guys like Ketut Menda, Cookie, Made Kasim, Wayan Ganti, and then later on Rizal Tanjung, Made Switra and a host of other surfers now sponsored and travelling all over the world just to surf.

Some of the most precious memories of my life were surfing into the sunset at Halfway Kuta after work most days, watching the locals smiling broadly as they zoomed across the golden walls of water. Even as the facade of Kuta has changed with the growth of tourism, completely unrecognisable from the quiet fishing village I fell in love with back in the seventies, the warmth of the people remains. I guess I’ve had a lifelong love affair with the waves of Bali and my book is the result.


The book offers advice to readers on how to use the language section. For example, you suggest memorising a few new words every day, and copying them out into an exercise book. Are these tips that you used to learn the language?

Yes, I soon realised the only way to understand what was going on was to learn some of the language. Like everyone else back then I got hold of John Barker’s Bagus language handbook. My friend Wayan Sukertha from Cempaka Losmen used to drive me on the back of his motorbike to batik factories, and I taught him English while he taught me Indonesian. Every night I’d look up new words I wanted to say to people the next day and write them down, trying to memorise them. Bit by bit the lingo sunk in, and within a few months I could hold a basic conversation. After a year or so I started dreaming in Indonesian and that was an incredible breakthrough. Probably the best advice you can give anyone trying to learn the language is to speak to yourself in Indonesian, think in Indonesian 24 hours a day. It also helps to have a few cross-cultural romances...

They say Indonesian’s an easy language to learn, but there are some decidedly weird concepts, from a naive Aussie’s point of view. I could never understand why I was always an hour late for ceremonies until I realised setengah tujuh (lit. half seven, ed.) meant half TO seven, not half PAST seven as in English. And the concept of terima kasih implying “NO thank you” was firmly learnt when I arrived hot and sweaty at the late Agung Raka’s house one steamy afternoon to be asked “Mau minum?” (“Want a drink?”). Foolishly I said “Oh, terima kasih!” (“Oh, thank you!”) and then waited and waited, dry-mouthed and unquenched for half an hour until I summoned up the courage to ask “Is there a drink coming” to which Pak Agung said “But you said ‘terima kasih!’’ That means ‘No thank you’”.

How and when did you come up with the idea for the Indo Surf and Lingo?

Friends in Noosa kept asking me “Where are the best waves in Bali?” or “Where can I stay and eat?” or “How do I say ‘thank you’ in Balinese?”, so that’s how it started out, as pages of hand written maps and notes for my friends. I also realised there was a need for a simplified guide to the language that didn’t start with the difficult grammar most books got bogged down with. So it started out as An Easy Guide to Indonesian, and then I added the surf spots and some photos to make it more widely appealing. But basically I wanted to help other surfers learn the language quickly and experience the magic of Indonesia for themselves.