WARRIORS OF THE BIGHT

In beating back Big Oil, the misfit crew of surfers behind the Fight for the Bight have done more than save Australia’s southern coast—they’ve created a movement for bigger fights to come

- SEAN DOHERTY

“WE WON.” The text message was to the point.

“WON WHAT?” I replied. It was early morning.

“THE BIGHT. THE NORWEGIANS HAVE FUCKED OFF.”

The message from my surfing associate down in the Great Australian Bight took a minute to sink in. Huge if true. Hadn’t we already lost? Norwegian oil company Equinor had been given the green light to start drilling 7,000 feet below the surface in one of the most storm-torn stretches of ocean on earth. It was a done deal. But sure enough, in a piece of divine intervention, overnight they’d pulled out and gone home to Norway. The phone started ringing, white-hot. This was big. A surfing protest movement that started from scratch last year had just saved a thousand-mile stretch of coastline. Wins like this are rare birds, and I hadn’t had time to ponder the significance of it when Maurice Cole walked in the door. As an old school coastal defender who’s fought for decades to keep Bells in its natural state, he was over the moon—even more so considering his son, Damien had led the Bight campaign. He gave me a hug but then stood back. “Thirty years I fight for Bells and I still can’t save it… and you blokes come in for 5 minutes and save the whole fucking Bight!”