Surf's up from Ahipara to Riverton

New Zealand surf breaks are world renowned, but it’s not just waves that they’re known for.

Avid board-rider and photographer Derek Morrison's book Surf Dreams takes us through the country's popular and most remote surfing  communities with tales of the personalities who ride the waves.

The focus is on 15 settlements where the swells are ever changing.

Morrison told Kathryn Ryan the idea behind the book was to identify what New Zealand’s surf culture looked like and its point of difference from places such as Australia, California and Hawaii.

“Every single town had a slightly different view on that [its identity] and I really fell in love with every single town to be honest, I could live in any of them, they all had something really special about them and it’s hard to pick [which one was his favourite] you’ve got such a wide variety.

“I really liked scenes like the Tutukaka coast, it’s absolutely stunning, so from a photographer’s perspective you can’t really point your camera in a direction that you’re not going to get a beautiful shot, the water is beautiful and clean. They don’t get a lot of swell but they like that because they get to do their work, so if you go somewhere where there’s a lot of swell it’s quite hard to pick up the tools and not look out at the ocean and feel like you’re missing out on something, so there’s a special element to that.

“Then you’ve got somewhere like Ahipara and you’ve got the Shipwreck Bay there – just an absolute gem of New Zealand and for the locals that live there they have a different experience with it where they are surfing little waves all the time, just about every day, they can go and surf around there and find something, and then you’ve got those days where you get the four to five metre southwest swell and that place turns on and you just have something quite different, actually for the locals [that’s] probably not that great because all the surfers from the North Island converge on it and it gets really, really busy and the locals kind of get pushed out a little bit, but that was is an absolute spectacle when it’s on. There’s quite a few little stories like that around the country.”

While the North Island’s West Coast is regarded as having some of New Zealand’s best surf breaks, Westport and Greymouth in the South Island are two of his favourite spots.

“At Westport you have a beautiful bay called Tauranga Bay which has this massive peak right in the middle of it when the swell’s good, but it’s sheltered enough to handle all the wind, it’s a real gem, and [there’s] not a lot of locals there… there’s plenty of room, good vibes, everyone’s super friendly and it’s just amazing. You can get some really special days there, it certainly rains a lot through winter, but summer you can get some outstanding days there.

“Greymouth… there’s beautiful waves there to be had and a really interesting group of characters there who run the local board riders, Kahuna board riders club, which is right out on the end of the head of the river mouth there… there’s a lot of interesting stories from those guys.”

Interesting stories and the characters that tell them are another feature of Morrison’s book.

“I think it’s quite distinct with all of them, they have the surf sort of fused into them, they’re almost cursed by the ocean and they can’t stop thinking about it, they’ll be spending a lot of time looking at it and it’ll be in their mind 24/7.

“What’s interesting about that is it’s right across the generational spread – from the 71-year-olds who have been surfing all their lives to the grommets, the eight and 10-year-olds who are surfing after school every day – they can sit down at a bench together, watching the ocean, and have a conversation that’s on exactly the same level… it’s something that they share that they can’t get enough of.”