Excerpt from Occy: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Mark Occhilupo

I only caught the tail end of the real Wild West days on the North Shore. They reckon it was way more radical in the ’70s, but it was still plenty wild enough for me. Later that season I was checking Rocky Point one day, just minding my own business, and ‘Fast Eddie’ Rothman pulled up—the head of the local surfers club, Da Hui, or ‘the Black Shorts,’ as they were known. Then these guys pulled up behind him in their car, because that road at Rocky Point is really narrow. Eddie goes, ‘Hey, move your car’ and the guys are like, ‘No worries, just a minute, we’ve just got our boards under the trees. We’re just going to grab them.’ And he’s like, ‘Hey, move your fucking car now.’ And they go, ‘Nah, it’s sweet, we’ll just grab our boards.’ I was going, oh no, is this seriously happening?

Before I knew it, he knocked one of them out. There were about five of them and they all just jumped on him, and I was the only guy around. I was only eighteen, it was only my second time in Hawaii, so what do I do? Walk away, and Eddie knows I didn’t come to his aid? Or jump in and get my arse kicked too?

Eddie broke free and one of them spun around and gave him a blind kick to the head, and they all jumped on him. I figured I’d better help out, so I was trying to pull them off, going, in my squeaky voice, ‘You don’t know who you’re fucking with! You don’t know who you’re fucking with!’ Then out of nowhere these big Hawaiians appeared and just waded in and sorted the guys out. They were holding these guys while Eddie dealt it to them. It was a big fight and the stone wall there at Rocky’s started collapsing under the strain.

I saw Eddie the next day and I was like, ‘Fuck, how heavy was that? What did you do with those guys? 'He’s like, ‘I thought they were Brazilian but they were Israeli, and my mum’s Israeli, so they’re all staying at my house. ‘I couldn’t believe it. I thought, this place is way too heavy.

Occy: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Mark Occhilupo is available for purchase directly from the author, Tim Baker, here.