A sky-blue treatment frames Michael Peterson’s barrel-riding poise; but the enigmatic surfer has to share the cover with a beer-swilling kangaroo, in this ‘All Aussie Issue’. Just who is the best comp surfer in the world? According to Tracks 1975 that proud boast also belongs to MP, who ‘zipped and zapped’ to victory in the Pa Bendall classic on his fabled Fangtail design. The photo it in the mag makes the board look like something made in Count Dracula’s shaping bay. The ‘coupla kids’ referenced on the cover are Guy Ormerod and Chip Greenfield. After a taste of contest success and prize money, 15-year-old Guy’s life-plan is pretty straight forward. “I’m heading to The Islands to get some tubes and if I haven’t got any money I guess won’t be eating too well.” Meanwhile, after an east coast road trip, S.Lane arrives in Byron and claims ‘Boredom reigns supreme’ and the cane toads are multiplying. Celebrated scribe, Phil Jarratt, assumes the editorial helm in place of American John Grissim, and thus begins a golden era of Tracks. Out-going Grissim happily refers to himself as a septic tank, while the list of words he has proudly added to his vocabulary Down Under includes ‘Shaggin Wagon’, ‘strewth’ and ‘portable piss-ups’. Opposite Grissim’s outro a smiling woman appears in a quarter page ad wearing a pair of early Quiksilver boardshorts and a tag line that invites customers to ‘Slip into a pair and feel it’. Who was to know the fledgling, Victorian boardshort company would become a global giant in surfing.
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