Layne Beachley: In Ali Gripper’s Saltwater Cure, the surfing icon says the ocean is where she felt safest

The roar of the Pacific breakers greets you as you walk into the Northern Beaches home of seven-time world surfing champion Layne Beachley. Her husband, INXS star Kirk Pengilly, is watching Sunday afternoon rugby league in the living room, and in the garage on a giant board rack is her quiver of 40 surfboards that she stores at home (she has 102 in total at last count). She walks up a set of stairs leading to her office: a spacious eyrie with an expansive view over Freshwater Beach. During lockdown, with time on her hands, Layne started building a self-empowerment platform called Awake Academy, an online course based on some of the life lessons she’s learned as a professional athlete. One look at the multicoloured Post-it Notes on the walls, and the spiritual classics on her bookshelf — Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now and Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations with God — and it’s obvious that she is pouring her usual zeal into her new business. Her sunny, confident nature works well when she is on stage presenting, and she enjoys it. The course itself, she is keen to point out, is not simply about reaching your potential; there’s a strong emphasis on self-awareness and self-care. “One of my favourite topics is incorporating what I call the seven doctors into your day: drinking lots of water, exercise, healthy food, sunshine, rest, laughter and journalling.” If anyone has learned the importance of self-care, it’s Layne. She’s painfully aware of how hard she’s driven herself and the havoc it’s wrought on her body and mind as she battled her way to the top of a tough, male-dominated sport. She has regular chiropractic sessions for her neck, back and hips, injuries caused from pushing her body too hard, and has spent so many hours out in the ocean straddling a surfboard that it has changed her physiology; she finds it almost impossible to stand with her legs together, and her upper body has a slight curve from countless hours of paddling. “I placed ferociously unrealistic expectations on myself for a long time,” she says. “For many years I rarely took care of myself and I was only focused on my goals and achievements. I have a very high tolerance for discomfort, but for many years it was at the expense of being a well-rounded human being. I neglected my body signals and pushed through the pain.” She pours cups of herbal tea: she might be a tough competitor but she is a warm and hospitable host. “I had no empathy and no compassion for myself, which stems from my upbringing as well. My dad’s been a wonderful inspiration — he was an incredibly fit man — and I just adored him, and still do, but the tough love approach he took to parenting ended up having a long-lasting impact.” When she reflects on the lengths to which she pushed her body on the surfing circuit, she grows serious. “I acquired a tiger shark mentality. I saw the breaking down of my mind and body as just another challenge that I had to push through and overcome. The more broken I became, the harder I worked. I would just keep pushing myself until I ended up depressed and scared and very isolated.” As well as suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, she endured some very dark days of clinical depression, which led, at one particularly low moment, to the brink of suicide. A herniated disc in her neck in 2005, when she was 33, was the final wake-up call, forcing her to stop surfing for several months and take stock of her life. So what drove her to such extreme measures to prove herself? Layne pauses for a long while before answering; she’s thought about this a great deal. When Layne was seven years old, a skinny tomboy with a mop of long blonde hair who was never far from a skateboard, a bike or a surfboard, her mother, Valerie, died of a brain haemorrhage. It was sudden, after a minor operation went wrong. Soon afterwards, her father, Neil — worried that others would break the news to her — decided to tell her she was adopted. Layne didn’t say anything at the time, but the news had a profound impact on her. “When Dad told me I was adopted, I decided I was going to be the best in the world at something,” she wrote in her journal. “I just had to be the best to be loved and approved of.” The mystery of her birth mother and why she had given her up — and the loss of her adoptive mother on top of that — cast a shadow over many of her formative years. It was her great good fortune, she says, to be adopted into a beach-loving family. She was four years old when she started surfing — Nippers, the surf education classes held every Sunday morning, held no interest for her. Instead, she paddled out the back of the sets at Manly Beach on her foam surfboard. Neil, a keen surfer and member of the local Surf Life Saving club, would be either with her or watching from the club’s balcony with a sausage sandwich and a beer. Her competitive streak saw her leave the security of her “foamie” and the south end — or family end — of the beach and strike out among the boys at the north end. She was the only girl out there. They gave her a hard time, and she was harassed a lot, but she was quick-witted and held her own. Surfing with the best male surfers would sharpen her skills, she knew, so she was always prepared to take a deep breath and surf in their territory. Once she’d finished high school, she joined the long hard slog of the professional women’s circuit. They stayed in backpacker hostels, and made their own way to their competitions, on planes, trains and buses, often in countries where they didn’t speak the language. A surfing coach or lucrative sponsor was something they could only dream about. Even when she was ranked number two in the world, Layne held down four jobs, working 60-hour weeks to fund her surfing. Layne was one of several trailblazers, alongside Wendy Botha, Pam Burridge and Pauline Menczer, who harnessed their anger about their treatment to advocate for a better deal for women’s surfing. Astoundingly, it wasn’t until 2018 that female surfers received equal pay. Despite all these obstacles, Layne’s addiction to surfing has never wavered. On a family holiday, she saw Hawaii’s big breaks for the first time — the fabled Sunset Beach, Pipeline and Waimea Bay. They seized her imagination. When she was forging her way to the top of women’s surfing, she fell in love with Ken Bradshaw, the Hawaiian big wave rider. He greatly admired how she would get out there and tackle the monster swells — swells so big that some of the girls would throw up on the beach because they were so afraid paddling out into them. Ken also passed on his passion for tow-in surfing, which introduced her to the outer reefs of Hawaii and the biggest waves of her life. Once, she caught a 15-metre wave — the biggest wave a woman had ever caught at that time — and she was euphoric for days. As Layne perfected her technique and surfed the biggest waves in the world, her longing to meet her biological mother continued to grow. Maggie Gardner had been trying to find her daughter for years, and finally got in touch when Layne was 27 years old, after she had won her first world championship. Layne’s first feeling was relief, when she found out why her mother had given her up. Maggie had been only 16, an unwed girl from a strict family, when she realised she was pregnant. She was forced by her father to give up her baby for adoption. But when Layne discovered the circumstances of her conception, she was deeply shocked. Maggie had been raped after a dinner date with the manager of a Kings Cross modelling agency. After a tumultuous start to their relationship — Maggie admitted her unintentionally clumsy approach was a textbook case of how not to go about reaching one’s daughter — the pair became very fond of each other and Maggie became a fixture in Layne’s life. Maggie passed away from ovarian cancer in 2017. Her other daughter, Melissa, is now close with Layne. There are many famous surfers who have had a positive impact on Layne’s life — Tom Carroll, Wendy Botha, Barton Lynch and Pam Burridge all spring quickly to mind. But it is the ocean that has had the most powerful effect. The big blue has always been her comfort, her consolation, her retreat and her escape from the world. As she writes in her teenage journal: If I had my surfboard that’s all that I needed — and my bikini. It gave me an escape from all troubles. It was such a safe environment. There were times when I went out and I solved all my problems … and times where I’d go out there to escape it and think about it and not worry — not try to solve my problems. That’s the wonder of it. It’s the place that nurtures me, reflects me, teaches me a lot. It’s like going to Mother Nature. It’s where I feel the safest. Today, she remains just as convinced of its transformative qualities “The biggest lesson I’ve learned from the ocean is surrender. Because I’m a control freak. The ocean is a great place for control freaks. I’ve learned to surrender to a force more powerful than me. I’ve learned respect and admiration, and how it reflects my emotions … I’m often out there when it’s big. I’m often out there on my own. It’s a great reflection point on channelling my own fears, addressing them, and overcoming them.” This is an edited extract from Saltwater Cure by Ali Gripper, $29.99, published by Murdoch Books, out now. Awake Academy: Know yourself, grow yourself and live a happier, more purposeful life by Tess Brouwer and Layne Beachley, $36.99, published by Penguin, is out now. More information is also at awakeacademy.com.au. Lifeline: 13 11 14.