‘He’s maybe got a few screws loose’: the slab surfer taking extreme sport to new levels

Before his fatal attempt to summit Mount Everest almost a century ago, British mountaineer George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb the world’s tallest peak. “Because it’s there,” he famously replied.

Watching Facing Monsters, a recently-released feature-length surf film, the same question comes to mind. What would prompt someone to charge some of the world’s heaviest waves?

Indeed, it’s more than that. The film about West Australian surfer Kerby Brown, is not so much about big wave surfing, as dangerous wave surfing. This is extreme sport taken to a whole new level.

There are plenty of large waves in the world, including many along Australia’s vast shores. Attempting to ride any wall of water more than a few metres high is attended by risk, but Brown takes death-defying surfing to a new level. Riding monstrous slabs as they erupt upon the coast – deep water swell violently colliding with shallow reef – is the protagonist’s specialty. Why do it?

“A lot of big wave guys chase the same waves, the same swells,” Brown says, speaking by phone from his home in far-south Western Australia, close to the monster waves he likes to surf. “I don’t like that scene. For me it’s about removing yourself from everything. A lot of the waves I’m looking at are really remote, untouched areas. That’s a huge appeal for me, to get away from your normal day to day, completely switching off, getting amongst some of the most raw, powerful, natural elements – the ocean.

“Particularly these really heavy, challenging, unpredictable waves, there’s just so much that goes into it, there’s so many unknowns,” he adds. “It’s such a special feeling, it makes me feel alive. That’s where I feel most comfortable – out in the ocean, away from the