Word: tongas
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...Missionaries who came to Tonga shortly after Vason appear to have stuck more closely to their brief, and to have frowned on a pastime in which men and women, boys and girls - almost certainly naked - cavorted in the surf. It's thought that the missionaries convinced the chiefs that fanifo was corrupting Tongan youth and didn't belong in a budding Christian society, and that the chiefs placed on the sport a tapu, or ban. "This is, to some extent, speculation," says Po'oi Puloka, secretary general of the Tonga Amateur Sports Association and National Olympic Committee (tasanoc...
...surfing's Tongan revival? It all began with a love affair. In 1977, a 21-year-old chef from Sydney, Steve Burling, embarked on a holiday with some mates. Their plan was to surf Indonesia's best spots, then check out the less popular destinations of Tonga, Samoa and Fiji. But Burling's holiday ended on Tongatapu, where on his first day he met a local beauty called Sesika. Burling had never had a girlfriend before; never been in love. Sesika knocked him sideways. "It was her femininity," he says. "And she was slamming attractive." She followed him back...
...atafu Beach, some 20 km from Nuku'alofa, the capital. The Burlings thought about opening a restaurant there, then became excited about the idea of a resort. Burling considered his choices: stay in Sydney, he recalls, and be another "brick in the wall," or take a risk in Tonga. For a free spirit like Burling, it was a no-brainer. "I figured that if we ended up back in Sydney with the arse out of our pants," he says, "we wouldn't be much different to a lot of other young couples." Like the missionary Vason, Burling's father, Alan...
...time he was in high school, having featured in the local press for excelling in overseas competitions, Michael had drawn a number of his friends toward this unfamiliar sport. None of them had a board of his own - one still can't buy surf equipment anywhere in Tonga - so they used boards donated over the years by guests of the resort, usually superseded old faithfuls. "If the surf was good, I'd pick them up from school and bring them back here for a couple of hours' surfing," says Burling. "Sometimes they'd sleep here and I'd run them...
...Through the '90s, Burling's coterie of young surfers expanded and diversified - it took in numerous girls, for one thing - and in 1994 the Australian established the Tonga Surfriders Association, which now boasts more than 30 active members. As a surfer, Burling lacked champion qualities, but he was technically sound and adept at imparting what he knew about staying on a wave to these wide-eyed pioneers. "I don't know what I've done right, but I've just explained simple technique and the kids have taken it from there," says Burling. "With video, too, it's great these...