Out Front: Gold Coast

It’s one of those coasts everybody knows, or we think we do: a gorgeous stretch of white sand beaches, black lava rock headlands, and crazy spiraling blue-green barrels moving in an endless procession between. Gold, indeed, at least as we know it. Yet this is a surf zone in constant flux, dependent on sand flow, seasonal climate shifts, and massive waves of humanity passing through as often as the swells that, just occasionally, turn it into a kind of surfing hallucination. The Goldie dreamscape lures people from around the globe, and its status in surf culture — the whole place is a World Surfing Reserve, for one thing — tends to blind us to the fact that for many surfers, it’s simply home. Generations of wave-riders have grown up here: some have become famous, a few are more than famous, a handful or so are kind of immortal, but depending on their age and longevity, all will have stories. Maybe of the day they saw Michael Peterson obliterate Kirra Point. Maybe of the day a 15-year-old Steph Gilmore f