Warning! this is a raw account and not for minors!
It was meant to be written "in the manner of" Bukowski or Thompson but came out as Damon Runyon.

Jim and I arrived at the Lennox Head backpackers which I thought Jim must have liked for it's proximity to the surf as he had stayed there a fair bit in the past.
I went with Jim as I had done before because he would call the surf as likely to be good and I would usually be available at short notice for the trip.

I thought that that particular backpackers was a bit dirty, as in not clean, and we were placed in a fetid dorm room of about eight or ten people of the usual euro trashpacker types who were at Lennox slumming it for a few days or weeks or months, gradually making their way up the coast.

The surf was apparently going to be on the next day and we were definitely amped after arriving at Lennox in the late afternoon so we headed to the pub and imbibed a few pre-celebratory pints of Tooheys Old and had a game of pool or two (the pre-celebrations are based on the hope that the surf was going to be all-time the next day and we would be getting seriously barrelled off our nuts, which looking back now was a kind of standing joke as it rarely happened, but if it did, this is the kind of pre-celebration we should have)

A bit later on in the evening at the pub, in rocked three of the English female type of the aforementioned Euro trash/flash/backpackers and as we had seen them previously at our "home", the Lennox backpackers, they sat down with us and had a beer.

Jim is Jim as we know and was playing it pretty cool with his cards close to his chest but I admit he was making some ground with the girls (yes girls as in girls, back then I would have been 30+ and Jim was a crusty 40+ or so (sorry Jim) and these girls were about 19-25 y.o. max.

The good looking long haired brunette who was fairly entertaining in a young, loud and confident way was warming to Jim's form and I was losing out with the other two...so I bailed back to the dorm room in anticipation of a good surf the next day and probably thinking Jim was not going to have a chance to pop the nice one anyway.

I remember waking the next day in the stinky dorm room and asking Jim, who was in the top bunk, "What happened?" and yeeha he reckoned that he had got a root!

"goodonya son!", I thought...as you do...and next of course I was very keen to know more...as you definitely do!

We quickly prepared for a surf as the sun was coming up and saw the same 3 girls from the night before outside in the courtyard (this is early mind you and I don't know what they were doing up, probably couldn't sleep in the cesspit) and Jim looked a bit nervous about saying hello to "the one" but as we were wet-suited up and ready to rock, we just said "hi" and kept walking, with me doing a bit of...err...I think you would call it, "good-natured ribbing".

We walked over the road and could just see that the surf was pumping!

As we walked over the dunes I tried to solicit some information about the circumstances of the previous nights liason but Jim wasn't giving much away, then as we ascended the top of the largest dune, lo and behold, there it was, Jim pointed it out!, we had come upon what became known later in legend as... "the rutting patch".

The rutting patch was a circular area of sand about 3m in diameter atop the big dune which looked out of place amongst an entire beach of pristine wind combed sand.

The rutting patch was obviously very well trodden with hand prints and foot prints and also, well, "...rutting prints" and as Jim walked on by with nary a glance, I was looking at the rutting patch and looking at Jim and by now I was fully amazed and dying to hear more about Jim and his nublie young conquest from the the night before.

Did I mention that right in the middle of the rutting patch was a used condom?

I caught up to Jim who is not beaming as you probably imagine he would be, no he is Jim and being Jim he is recounting the story with a straight face, and he tells me that he had to go back to the room, from that exact dunal location, by himself, to get a connie from his wallet... and I was more than suprised, I just couldn't believe it!

"What", I exclaimed, "So you are about to get a root and events are unfolding fortuitously", so to speak, "and just when the desired outcome looks most certain... you tell her that you must have a condom!?"

Yep. Jim thought the young English glamour was perhaps a candidate for well, you know, the pox and he thought it wasn't worth the risk.
"Well she was rooting Jim", I thought, to myself, perhaps unkindly, "So he could well be right!"

So off he did traipse, back to the backpackers (about 100m away) to get the straight jacket and yes he did return by the most direct route with utmost haste and with a condom, and luckily she did indeed remain excited by the prospect of his return, that is, on heat, and in position.
That she had stayed put was, to me, the embodiment of the stroke of the luckiest fortune imaginable! and I may have mentioned to Jim that I thought he was trying his luck a tad with that most safety conscious course of action!

So Yes Jim did seal the deal that night and further details of his performance we will now never know and although the English girl got his phone number and seemed quite keen later that day and was heading Jim's way (north to the Goldie) she did not look him up, I know because I kept calling him over the next week or so and asking "has she rung yet?, has she visited?"

The other sad part of the story (for me) was that the surf was about as good as it ever gets...that is, 4-6 ft, offshore, hollow as, stand-up barrels, long rides and for some reason I could not make a take-off to save myself.

Jim was ripping the bag, gettin' barrels and long rides as were a small bunch of others who were probably locals. I remember counting eight take-offs in a row that I blew either at the top or at the bottom of the wave.

There were heaps of waves the surf was absolutely the filthiest filth, yes all-time, yes perfection, yes lots of barrels, and for over two and a half hours from sun-up until the wind got up.

I was gimping and kooking and flailing and going over the falls and just hating life in general but I was still laughing about the condom in the middle of that torn up sand dune.

I think I was quite proud of Jim after that night, (well let's face it I still am!) I did think of Jim as quite old back then,(5 years younger than me now) and mabye I thought he was losing his mojo a bit.

He proved that weekend once and for all that he still had the goods to go in more ways than one!

Jim was a good bloke and was one of the few people you meet in your lifetime who was always still "up for it" meaning up for the surf, the party, the band, the trip...Jim could always make the scene and he liked it that way, he kind of built his life around being able to drop everything and go.

He was positioned to never miss out on anything that he wanted to do and he probably never did.