Читать книгу Empire in Waves. A Political History of Surfing онлайн

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Troy’s early travels are illustrative. He began his global jaunt in 1963 by ship, making his way across the Indian Ocean and through the Mediterranean on his way to the British motherland. It might seem natural that a white Australian would begin his excursion in Europe, though Troy was there not to imbibe the art and architecture of Florence or the café culture of Paris. It is not that “culture” did not interest the Australian. It did. After passing through the Red Sea, for instance, he ventured inland to explore the antiquities of Egypt, and he wrote home about the magnificent paintings he saw in Europe an cities such as Seville.⁹ But Troy was traveling the world to surf, and the principal culture he sought was not the high culture of the Grand Tour but the subculture of modern surfing. He began his European adventure in the Channel Islands, finding surprisingly good waves in Jersey. While there, he saved an Italian waiter from a near drowning, which earned him notice in the English press, and he took surfboard orders from the locals and offered wave-riding lessons.¹⁰ From the United Kingdom he left for France, where he entered an international contest just hours after disembarking in Biarritz. Despite his exhaustion, he won. Troy, a recently arrived and still traveling Australian, was pronounced the Europe an surfing champion.¹¹