Rumour has it that some Newcastle Slingshot reps came down to Toowoon bay and were given such a hard time that they vowed never to return ???? Any body know what happened ??

lol - I hear toowoon is a sick spot but the local crowd is a little "posessive" of thier spot.

i.e. if you are not a local you are not welcome...

Sick kiting spot but anymore than 5 kiters in there and your fooked,
locals freak out as well and can have a whinge, better kiting spots to go too, they can have it.As for slingys being **** kites I think not.

Hey I am actually one of the two slingshot riders that went down to towoon bay yesterday, the other one being Dave Sorenson.

Originally we were planning to kite in the entrance but the wind was the wrong direction so we thought we would go to towoon bay, it is an awesome spot but like some of you have said some of the local crew are not easy to get along with, others are fine.
Dave rigged a 9m Link with the new red bridle which is going to be released soon so he purposely crashed the kite in the water 4-5 times to check the relaunch on it.
After this we both rode, two other guys got in a fairly nasty tangle and Dave went to help out by dragging ones board into shore, the guys cabrinha bow kite deflated during this.
After this Dave started riding again trying his usual handle passes and crashing the kite fairly hard sometimes until he absolutely nailed it into the water and the bung came undone and he had to swim to shore.
On the way to his car to get a pump he had 2 guys come up to him separately making smart ass comments about how links always crash and how they are not a good kite and generally getting in his face about being on slingshot at there spot, Dave even made it clear to one of the guys that if they wanted us to leave they should just tell us.
While this was happening I was still riding, I did a small transition in where I swung my kite back without looking over my shoulder to see if there was anyone downwind/behind me.
My lines collided with another riders lines which caused both of our kites to crash, as far as I could see no damage was done, I apologised and sat in the water next to him after our kites were quickly untangled and relaunched making sure he was alright and apologising for the mistake that I had made, there was nothing else I could do it was clear that I was sorry.
The other rider than returned to shore almost immediately and I continued to ride for roughly another hour and a half.
After packing up my kite and returning to the car, the other guy which I was tangled with was still in his wetsuit sitting in the cold and rain in the car park next to ours, he immediately starting blowing up at me swearing straight to my face.
There was no need for this as I am only a 16 year old kid and he was clearly in his mid 30’s if not older and I had made it clear about how sorry I was and how much of an accident it was and that I didn’t mean to run into him.
At this point in time Dave said to the guy I was only 16 and to watch his language and how there was no need for him to talk to me like that especially in front of another few locals of the spot.
Also there was not one word said about the previous collision which ended up with both riders swimming to shore.

The end result of this was not that we were scared off the spot by locals and vowing never to come back, it was we weren’t coming back to ride with a group of people with the worst attitudes in kiting we have ever seen.
Please remember I am not talking about the whole of the towoon bay kiting group only a certain few, people like Scott and his girlfriend are friendly as and happy to help anyone out.
Mitch Brown

Sounds like these two guys terrorised Toowoon bay!

Failing handle passes,crashing their kites all over the place!

Even taking out a local rider!WTF??

Toowoon Bay is a small sensitive riding spot.You can't blame the locals for being protective. They have to go there all the time,the Cowboys merely move on.

This is dave here, note i've riden pretty much most places in aus. I've always tried to be respectful to others and make friends with all locals. At toowoon we didn't get attitude from everyone only a few individuals. if your read what sab wrote " well thats what you get when you ride *****kites" you don't have to be a rocket scientist to realise, some people looked at what kites we rode and judged us. To windangoesoff at the stage i was testing the water relaunch i did it out of the road where no one would be affected. As for user we did very few handle passes and the beach wasn't what i call crowded at all, we came in late afternoon when a lot of guys had finshed for the day. Scott and his girl michelle plus a few others were quite friendly and open this is what i usually expect from all kiters. Ps scott goes off to great rider. Sorry for the controversy. Lets alll forget about it and move on, to go out riding and having fun, after all that is what this sport is all about.

[quoteI have actually been riding with you guys in Newcastle a little bit more lately, and I have been impressed with how friendly and accepting you guys are, even when some of the good spots get crowded!
Cheers
Justin

We do get the odd stuff up at squids when it gets crowded, but there is no bad attitudes so everyone just keeps on kiting, if you stick it out long enough you will be the only ones left when it get dark.

I assume you have a red CB

ric

Hey there why do you refer to us as the slingshot boys?? We are just kiters like everyone else.. I didnt realise mitchel had bumped the car next to us as i know i didnt? If you refer to my comments on the guys kite loop when i said it was a high kite loop as making fun of him then you should of said something i wasn't meant to be making fun of him. What is talking it up?? Is it the excitement of arriving at a new location which is going off, seeing guys out there ripping and talking excitedly of going out trying new tricks and looking forward to having a great afternoon. With reguard to mitchel taking out a local rider, it was an accident he wasn't even doing a trick he turned around at the end of the beach without looking. he apologise to the rider when it happened and made sure he was ok. accidents do happen, i dragged a board in for one of the local riders after 2 locals had a tangle. yet we are still critised. we rode where we watched the locals ride before we went out. like i said lets put it behind us and move on, hope everyone got out and had a great session yesterday.

shows how differently people can see the same situation. Only those there on the day know the truth. I suppose what i want to say is:
Locals - try and be open to imports, maybe approach them and let them know of any special rules for the area, or tips..and in a nice welcoming way.
and
Imports - be respectful when you kite at a new spot, ask dont assume.

I know from experinece, from both sides that sometimes **** happens, people are ****ers, it is best to try and defuse a situation, really most of the times does it matter? I only think it does when a situation becomes dangerous. JMO

I was the other local rider who got taken out. The rider who took me out was not a loccal rider and should not of been riding as he had faulty gear and told me that when we got in. I refer to you as slingshot boys because you do ride slingshot kites, dont you. I dont care what kites you ride, If you had been riding the same kite as me and took me out i still would of been pissed off. Towoon bay gets crowed very easy and where at the point now where we could be stopped riding their any day. The surf club has been getting pissed of with us because of people riding in the flags and launching there kites over people. Due to the threat of being kicked out, we have become very protective of our awesome spot. Sat was the first of its nature and something like that had been building up for a while.

i was there on saturday, it was an awsome day, i had heaps of fun riding with everyone, i was one of the guys who asked about the slingshot link, because one of the locals bought 3 of them and they looked and went like s##t, so i asked him what he thought about them, he just replied it was his first time on it. i dont know how i was being a smartass, it was a simple question. maybe he has a bit of an ego, anyway i know most of the locals at the bay and they are a fine bunch of blokes, the young 16 year old isnt a small fella so if he wants to ride with get out of my way attitude then he will always be confronted, he is pretty lucky he didnt get snotted, i have seen lesser incidents in sport with unhappy endings for some, being young he should have respect for older people.

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Originally posted by Boris

I think there should be more collisions on the water!
What's wrong with a bit string tangling??
Kind of gives us 2 sports to do at once. Kiting, while doing a jigsaw puzzle.
We might actually invent Tandem Kiting by accident.

I actually enjoy seeing how close I can get my kite to someone elses without hitting it. Sharpens the skills.

I'd love to see how many kites we can fit in Toowoon at once!
Boards have to be inside the bay, and on the water. What do ya reckon? 55 kites?
Put the word out and see how many takers are willing to try it.






LOL havent laughed like that for ages Boris!

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Hey this is going to be my last post on this topic because it has been blown completely out of proportion, what started out as such a small incident has been blown up to be major.
I point out again we didn’t go down to the central coast to cause trouble, we just wanted to go have a good ride at a good spot.

Also I would like to clear our names as being reckless and uncaring kiters with a crap attitude, that is not what we are.

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looks like you should have tried those tricks and re-launch capabilities somewhere else with more room.

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There was plenty of room there for kiting and there were other guys out there trying the same sort of tricks, also were Dave was testing the re-launch was downwind and out of the way, isn’t it safe to make sure you can re-launch your kite before going out to ride?

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it started of buy the guy opening his and hitting the car next to him

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Dave and I have talked about this and neither of us did it, i can remember being very careful when i opened my door because i know how tight of a park it was, so i have no idea where you got that from.

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he then started talking it up on the beach and picking on one of the local boys kite loops

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What do you classify as talking it up? We got to the spot pumped up to ride we never said anything negative about how the guy was riding, he was a good rider. His loops were impressive it was bloody windy but he was still doing them, I can remember saying gees he got flogged a few times but that isn’t bagging out his riding, when ever anyone see's a good stack that comes up somewhere.

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the younger of the two, took out a local and again didn’t even say sorry when he got to the beach

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I made it clear in my first post how I had apologized and made sure that the rider was not injured in the water, and I had all intentions of confronting him again on the beach to say sorry about the whole thing again, the reason I didn’t was because as soon as I got close to him he started abusing me and swearing at me, so why should I apologize again when he was being completely rude about the whole thing and very aggressive?

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we don’t want this sport to turn into one where just because you kite at one spot you think your king ****

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We never made out that we were king sh1t, talked ourselves up or anything we did not even talk to many of the locals so I don’t see were you got that from, and our sport isn’t going to turn out like that.

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the young 16 year old isn’t a small fella so if he wants to ride with get out of my way attitude then he will always be confronted, he is pretty lucky he didn’t get snotted

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Just because i am not a small feller that would not justify being "snotted" by a middle age man, i don't ride with the get out of my way attitude, it was simply a mistake where i turned around without looking, it happens everywhere, people make mistakes and you just have to accept them, would you like it if you accidentally ran into a guy and it was made a big deal on a national forum?

I am not having a go at you guys I just think that I need to clear my name as I have been made out to be some kite maniac with attitude.
So please can we move on from this it has been taken to far all ready.

Mitch Brown

Personally I love going an kiting new spots. Finding a sick setup is one of the sports great feelings. While I was up at Shelly most of this day I feel I should probably reflect what I did see.

I didnt see any of the sledging or collisions.

I did see yellow kite in the water so often (it seemed to be every second run) I thought the rider was a beginner. However, I have seen dave ride @ squids and know this isnt the case (unless I am confusing him with someone else). Most often when the kite was in the water it was upwind of most of the riders.

Im sure most of you would agree that the last thing you want to see is some guy continually dropping his up wind of you (whether he be a beginner or a pro). Downwind, and he can drop his kite to his heart's content...

Toowoon is an awesome place to ride. Unfortunately it gets crowded easily. More than 3 or 4 kiters in the bay means that you really need watch where people are before you jump and often means you can go plenty of runs without finding the opportunity to do what you want to. The small nature of the bay also means that a dropped kite takes up a lot of valuable space. As such most of the locals are happy to cruise and boost big jumps or "old school" tricks which dont often end with dropping the kite or alternatively take it turns.

Regardless of who was there first, you will invariably need to be considerate of others when riding here. If you are you will find that it can be a great place to ride.

I sure as hell intend to keep visiting other destinations, and I would hope anyone adequately skilled could visit ours and have a great time.

Pete.

... and on a serious note, kudos to Mitch the 16 year old for posting the most mature and well-articulated posts in the history of this forum!!!

I have been riding at Toowoon for 10 years now (4 kiting and 6 years wavesailing before that)and live 3kms away and I am still scared of the locals, so I just launch in the bay and then stay out back in the waves for my time never coming into the bay.Then I come in quickly pack up, drink my free beer and run away home.