G'day Barefoot Central readers - from the land down under. My name is Clinton Veivers from the Queensland Barefoot Water ski Club - Southern Region - and I hope to be bringing you news from this side of the planet about what’s going on in barefoot water skiing throughout our local area and about the events that we attend. If you have a map of Australia handy you will be able to see at a glance the area we cover being from the Tweed River on the Gold Coast to Bundaberg a few hours north and out west to Roma, St. George, Goondiwindi (pronounced ‘Gun-da-windy’) and most places in between. We recently held a come and try day at St. George on the Balonne River and had a blast while we were there! If you happen to be a Hugh Jackman fan and have seen the movie Paperback Hero then you have seen what the countryside looks like out St. George way. 

Back on the lush Sunshine Coast we’ve just run our last tournament for the 05-06 season at our main ski site being Bushy Browns Private Ski Lakes near Woodford. We had about 15 skiers from juniors to masters enjoying the balmy conditions as the storm clouds were building up and looking like rain would be coming later in the day – and it did! If you’re from the U.S reading this, spare a thought for us poor buggers over here sweating our rings out and having to keep jumping in the drink to cool down a bit while you have nice cool temperatures over there ha! ha! We had a great day running all three events and seeing Pb’s fall left right and center. It’s great to see more people gaining their jump rating as we previously only had a couple who were going over.

As you can see in the photos Cameron Smith, Gizella Halasz, Laura Dickers, Anne Buckley and Clint Collier are playing silly buggers in the shallows while awaiting their next run and beating the heat in the process. The fact that there is a tournament going on in the background isn’t worrying this mob!  It’s common to see competitors at our tournaments chilling out in the water and it doesn’t take long before someone’s getting dunked or some weed is thrown and smacks you in the face. One of our Veteran Men’s (not mentioning any names Mr. Dickers) chucked a green tree frog down one of the girls’ tops who happens to have some frog-a-phobia which was great for a laugh! She chased him about for a bit which provided some great entertainment. Some other familiar faces you may see there are two current world champions being Gizella Halasz and Cameron Smith. Cam is back skiing after surgery on his foot in December and Gizie sat this comp out as she is going in for an arthroscope on her right shoulder next Friday. Gizie had shoulder surgery that has not been healing like it should, so hopefully this procedure will help her get back on track. Giz hopes to get back to her former self so she can retain the title as worlds best! Good luck to both Cam and Giz in recovery!

Cameron who is now working for Custom Ski Boats on the sunshine coast (the boat builders whose boats towed the 2004 Worlds at Mulwala, Australia) had a run of bad luck just before Christmas when he skied into a hardwood pallet that had been floating partially submerged in the Maroochy River! They were skiing three up with Cam positioned in the right hand curl. The driver didn’t see it as it was just submerged but after the boat went past it surfaced just enough for Cam to see it at the last moment and ski straight over it. Most of us who have been footing for long have skied over something at some time but usually it just stings or leaves you bruised for a few months, but this is a footers nightmare. Cam spent three days in hospital and went under general anaesthetic twice for two separate surgical procedures. It’s the first time in Cams forty something year young life that he had been knocked out fully. It opened up his foot from the ball to the heel 6 inches long and at the deepest was 2 inches! At the heel it actually contacted bone! Some of the boys at the shop joked that now at least he has 6 inches to show! Ha! What’s worse is they wanted to see if they were right – we can understand that though coming from wake boarders!! Cam is still limping and skiing is quite painful at present but he still manages his back tumble ups to one and more. He tells me that in four months he should be able to ski without pain and will be training hard for the Worlds in September this year.  Hopefully he can bring home the gold again for Australia!

Good news from here is the start up of barefoot endurance skiing with the prompt and great help from Chuck Gleason at Barefoot Central. Our first event is posted on Barefoot Centrals home page and you can view the details from there if you haven’t already. Chuck had a design done for the event which is way cool and every one over here who is going to compete is very excited about it. We are very much in the infancy stages of organising and running these events but we aim to get good at it as we go. Hopefully in the not too distant future we can get good enough to take a team to the world level and stick it to the Yanks! Big call seeing as though we haven’t even given it a go yet but we have to aim somewhere. Nothing would be sweeter than to flog the U.S at their own game!! Ha ha! I can feel the knives being sharpened already! We will be catching the team endurance challenge on video and taking plenty of pics. I intend to do a write up on the event and send it to Chuck at Barefoot Central so you can read about the event and maybe even view the footage. It might be good for a laugh!

All the best for now,
Clint Veivers.