Kanga: The Trials and Triumphs of Ian Cairns

Ian “Kanga” Cairns tells how his dream for surfing to be recognized as a legitimate professional sport became reality. This is one of surfing’s biggest stories now told in two separate volumes. Volume 1 is set in Australia, South Africa and Hawaii’s awesome North Shore. Cairns features with other surf legends, heroes and hard men in conflict. Together they provide a detailed narrative of surfing’s transformation as it evolves from the drug-infused hippy era of the late 1960s to a fledgling world tour in the late 1970s. Volume 2 charts the spectacular fall and resurrection of Cairns in the USA as surfing becomes a multi-billion dollar industry with Olympic Games status. A must read for anybody interested in the dramatic changes surfing and surfboards underwent through the short board revolution as it reaches the high performance skills and equipment of today’s best riders. This is a surfing odyssey. We follow Cairns from a stoked young teenager with a passionate love of waves, to an ambitious and outspoken young man who rises quickly from the obscurity of Western Australia to become an acclaimed big wave charger and champion, then trail-blazing sports administrator and winning coach in the USA. Cairns is confronted with many life-threatening challenges along the way as his remarkable journey reaches the absolute pinnacle of world surfing. An adventure, sports biography and surf history all wrapped into one.