The Return of a Raw Australian Surf Classic.
In 2001, Ocean & Earth released CHANNEL O.N.E., a surf film that captured a defining moment in Australian surf history, a time when the industry was booming and the stoke was endless. Boardies were 22 inches long (minimum), CJ Hobgood and Layne Beachley took out the ASP World Titles in a shortened season due to 9/11, and Kelly Slater was still five world titles shy of his eventual eleven. Nobody had heard from Gonad Man for well over a year, seemingly ending his reign of terror.
Adventure in the early 2000s for the O+E team meant travelling Australia tip to toe and heading into the relatively unknown parts of the Mentawais, chasing waves that could change your life with a handful of boards, on a dodgy boat that would ultimately be subject to a mutiny. Now, over two decades later, the film returns in 2025. Digitally restored and revisited, CHANNEL O.N.E. stands as a snapshot of an era when surfing was raw, unfiltered, and purely core. We caught up with Phil ‘Macca’ Macdonald to get the lowdown on the session at that ‘Right’.
“I remember we were on our way out to Asu from Nias, and we stopped to check that ‘Right’, and it was huge. After a while of watching from the back of the wave, we got the dinghy, and as we pulled up, a set came through. It must have been a good 12-foot, and it was probably the most perfect and biggest wave I've ever seen in my life.” - Macca
“We spent the whole morning out there until it came onshore, and it was pretty big. I think we were all on 7’4”s and got some of the worst beatings in our lives. Looking back, that was one of the craziest sessions because it was just this kind of spot that had been surfed, but probably not at that size yet. There was just no one around, and these big, huge, perfect barrels were just spitting down the point. We were riding seven fours and seven sixes. It was like this all morning. We were the only ones out. If you didn’t make it like this one here [Macca points to the clip of him getting smoked on a 10-foot wave], you got smashed, went over the falls, and hit the reef.”
“Shane Wehner got a huge one. He fell out of the sky. It was on the cover. I popped up, and he basically landed on my head. It must have been 12 ft. We ended up both in those rocks and then in the lagoon.”
After that session at ‘That Right’, the crew motored south from Nias, still chasing more waves. One morning, expecting to wake to the perfect walls of HT’s (Hollow Trees), they instead found themselves completely lost. No land in sight, no staff, and a captain on the edge. What followed was a full-blown mutiny.
“We're like, where are we? Half of the staff on the boat declared mutiny and jumped off the boat. I think the Captain was having some issues at the time, and he wasn’t really getting along with the staff. We actually ended up going back on another boat later on in the season, so it wasn’t all that bad. We got two cracks at the Ments that year,” Macca laughs.
“People used to say the O+E guys were too crazy and wild. Looking back, I probably wouldn’t change anything. It’s part of that era. Re-launching it now, like we did with The Ritual, you look back and it represents us then and still today. If you’re raw and authentic, people naturally engage. It’s part of our history. You walk up and down the hallways [of Ocean & Earth HQ] and see images from those trips. CHANNEL O.N.E. got three or four covers — Tracks, Surfing Life, and other big names back then. That probably doesn’t happen now because it’s all social media and online. But there’s a lot of history and special memories traveling to these places with my brother and mates, and perfect waves, knowing no one else is going to turn up. That’d be hard to get back to now.”
SURFERS:Todd Prestage, Phil Macdonald, Ant Macdonald, Shane Wehner, Dan Ross, Joel Reading, Tom Whitaker, Dayyan Neve, Gabe Kling, Matt Bemrose, Asher Nolan, Kurt Jacobs, and Kazunori Numajira.
MUSIC:
- “Hotel Madyas” - All India Radio
- “Signpost” & “Better Off Dead” - Grinspoon
- “Two Faced (Check Your Head Up)” & “Karma” - Superheist
- “Fat Boy” - Inertia
- “Skintight” - The Donnas
- “Celestial Q&A” - No Fun At All
Running time: Approx 30 mins
Shot, directed, edited, produced, sound engineered by: Matt Gye.
Images by Bill Morris
Shot in: Australia and Indonesia
Distributed by: Ocean and Earth
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🦘 Born in Australia
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