New Zealand
You don’t need to leave New Zealand to have an adventure. Explore the backyard with our featured stories on some of New Zealand’s best surf towns and coastlines.
The concept is simple: take a bunch of Backdoor’s best team surfers and put them into the best waves we can find in the south. Covid has other ideas. The lineup is impeccable: newly crowned national champion Daniel Farr, Under 18 national champion Ava Henderson, inaugural Super 16 champion Taylor......
Finals day moves to Nine Mile Beach as the swell that has given so much all week abates and a building north swell fills in at the 2022 New Zealand Surfing National Championships held at Westport. Finals day never disappoints on these big occasions with Daniel Farr and Billy Stairmand......
Sunshine and a pumping swell greet competitors at the opening day of the 2022 New Zealand Surfing Nationals held at Westport, Buller. Day one sets up an exciting set of scenarios for the nationals with Paige Hareb and Ava Henderson destined to square off in a field full of potential......
In 2020 young filmmaker Isaac Chadwick burst onto the surf scene in Otago with Bask. It was a gritty, insiders peek into the world of the surfing student in Otago. Nothing was sacred. He captured a vibrant youth culture thriving in the sub-culture of student life set to a background......
Out of lockdown blooms a new magazine that puts women at the centre of New Zealand surfing culture and champions their connection with the ocean. Find out how these three, in their early 30s, turned lockdown adversity into a magnetic creative surf production … and why it is here to......
Surfing on the Otago Coast is a sublime experience most of the time, but the number of surfers who report supposed “near-death encounters” with sea lions is puzzling. According to Doc Coastal Otago Ranger Jim Fyfe, we’re reading them all wrong. In this film he offers us his cheat sheet......
Luke Griffin sits down to discuss growing up in the Mount, working with his older brother and shaper Jordan Griffin, and experiencing a Dunedin winter. Luke is one of those surfers who is unfairly gifted. He has equal parts raw talent and great style on top of a board. I......
Surf photographer Craig Levers, or CPL, as many will know him by his picture credit, is a bit of a nomad. Like most surfers he likes to travel. That has led him into a whole new world of escapism and the vehicles that deliver us to dream locations. Craig was......
Pro surfer Paige Hareb visits the South Island in the middle of winter to explore the southern waves between snowfalls in the mountains around Queenstown. Paige also takes some time to pass on some of her knowledge to the Queen’s High School Surf Academy girls. Along with a lot of......
There is no question that surfing has special properties that few of us can fully grasp … or thrive without. It just is what it is. Immersion in the brine. The rise and fall of the ocean’s surface and real moments of intensity, fear, power and vulnerability. For Gisborne surfer,......