Paddle Out

Bronte

The Last Wave

Bronte 24/3/07

Three Years

1000 Words

PBR's last launch of HMS Mellish

Here's some pics from Morg's last PBR launch.

Was a longtime coming but well worth it.

Geoff

Hey Guys.

Well its almost a year now since we lost our boy Morg’s due to that stupid **** that just didn’t do his job properly! For me and I’m sure for you guys it has been quite an emotional rollercoaster coming to terms with the unnecessary loss of such a good friend. So to help close up the wound and say goodbye in the most appropriate way, five of us took a trip from Jakarta down to Cemaja last week to catch some waves, do a bit of soul searching and cast the remaining ashes of Morgan into the surf that he loved so much.

In the true spirit of our typical surf trips the farewell preparation and ceremony was a bit mad and totally unorganized. Over a wicked seafood dinner & beers the night before the farewell ceremony, the boys conceptualized (amongst other numerous and ambitious plans) to launch Morg’s ashes into the Indian ocean by way of a model Javanese fishing boat. Of course we bought a model boat that looked the business but didn’t float upright at first so we had to undertake some running modifications & draw upon the assistance of Ade Rabig (the local surf board repair boss) to source materials & help with the modifications. Upon completing the seaworthy adjustments to the vessel we all piled into our transport & headed off to a specially selected calm little surf spot called Logi (refer pics). Just to make things a little more interesting, as we arrived at the quite little surf spot a thumping great storm hit us with 30 knot onshore wind gusts. But we struggled on through all these difficulties with good humor & launched Morgs back to sea!!

I’m sure he was watching over the 4 days we were in Cemaja & found the whole thing totally appropriate!!

Cheers

Ev

The 'Morgan Mellish'

The Morgan Mellish

Blueys Beach Saturday 15th December

The Morgan Mellish Memorial Fund smashed its target to raise funds for an Inflatable Rescue Boat which became a jet ski, the “Morgan Mellish” and the time has come to launch his Boat and celebrate his love for the surf.

“Morgs” will be launched at the Elizabeth Beach (Pacific Palms) Surf Club - Bluey’s Beach on Saturday 15 December 2007.

BA plan puts QANTAS in a quandary

Kay O'Sullivan
SMH, December 1, 2007

British Airways bans surfboards

Eugen Tan of Aquabumps fame speaks HERE about how the ban will affect surfing around the world.

Arjun Ramachandran
SMH October 26, 2007

turtles line up

Bondi Ice

Click for large image

1988 Johns surf trip

Morgs, James Dalton, Sean Curtis and Chad Reed

This photo was taken in first year of college. One of the problems faced by serious ANU surfers was that the beach was about two hours drive away. The alternative backdrop for surfing photos was the recently deforested, but not yet cleaned up, B Block courtyard. Ben Hunter

Morgan Mellish Memorial Fund

To honour Morgan’s sense of adventure two of his friends, Ian Prentice & Greg Beard, will be completing the Greenland Adventure Race in September this year.

The race features 40 kilometres of kayaking, 50 kilometres of mountain biking, and roughly 90 kilometres on foot and is ranked No.3 in the Lonely Planet’s Most Gruelling Events.
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Five tough days of competing in the beautiful, wild and diverse terrain of Greenland.

Ian and Greg will be seeking sponsorship to raise $15,000 for an Inflatable Rescue Boat (IRB) to be donated to the Pacific Palms Surf Life Saving Club, at Elizabeth Beach near Blueys, on the NSW Central Coast. Blueys Beach was Morgan’s favourite surfing spot.

The IRB will be named "The Morgan Mellish".

All money raised will go to the Pacific Palms Surf Life Saving Club.

MORGAN MELLISH MEMORIAL FUND
BSB 032020 AC 207320

Thank you for your support.

The Last Wave

Bronte 11am Saturday 24th March 2007

Morgan's rhythm: surfboard, laptop and smile

Neil McMahon
March 22, 2007

A GATHERING of mourners can be about many things, but is a ritual shorn of meaning if love isn't one of them. It can be grieved in gratitude or regret, but there seemed none of the latter where Morgan Mellish was concerned - he was a man well loved and who loved well; a buccaneer who romanced life. Life swooned.

It still does, even now he's gone, dead in the Garuda air crash that claimed 21 lives in Indonesia 15 days ago. At his memorial service in St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney yesterday, it was clear Mellish didn't die wondering about much. He once told his mother, Dawn: "I want to live as close to the edge as I can without falling off."

He did that, with a spirit that made it easier for grief to give way to a smile. Hundreds gathered to honour him a day after his cremation: his mother and his mates, his father, Peter, sisters Caroline and Lucy, a boy and girl who called him Uncle, his Indonesian girlfriend, Nila Tanzil, and important figures from Canberra - Joe Hockey, Julia Gillard, Mick Keelty - who called his name at press conferences.

Mellish was there, too, beaming down from giant screens - scaling a cliff, sailing a boat, swimming, always smiling. The politicians would have been hard pressed to miss him - he may have written for the dry Australian Financial Review, but the shock of hair and the smile told another story. He had a grin like a grand piano, tuned for honky-tonk and rock'n'roll. That, it seems, was how he lived his life, confident of his rhythm and keeping a sometimes frantic beat - Elvis with a surfboard and a laptop.

His editor, Glenn Burge, told that story, of the time Mellish, the AFR's man in Jakarta, turned up to cover political talks in Indonesia carrying both those things. "Morganesque moments", Burge said. He loved his work - a Walkley award tells us that - but a decent wave could mean as much. Maybe more.

A childhood friend, Simon Dale, said Mellish only had to be near a beach and he'd be smitten. "He'd see the waves and start running." When he lived in Bronte, said schoolfriend Ben Hunter, Mellish would prop himself up in bed to see if the morning was worth a proper greeting. The swell was outside, and that was the morning news the reporter tuned to first.

He was "the kind of guy who made you suck your stomach in", Burge said - athletic, a whirl of energy, smart but sometimes frustrating, because it could be hard to judge his focus. But you had to like him. "If he did have a temper, I never saw it."

That much was evident from the turnout of Mellish's colleagues yesterday, who came by foot from Fairfax headquarters and by plane from Jakarta. It's hard to get journos to cry, and perhaps harder to get them to swallow too much God. Good reporters take nothing on faith, but they had to yesterday.

This was a service heavy with prayer and religious imagery - God, like Mellish's parents, had lost his only son in his 30s, said Dominic Steele, of the group Christians in the Media. One of Mellish's sisters, Lucy Chik, chose a reading that said: "Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart."

Simon Dale spoke of what he'd lost, concluding: "I'm going to miss that smile." And there it was, larger than life on the screens above, tossing some honky-tonk and rock'n'roll among the hymns.

SMH

On the way to the beach

Beach

Cool Boardies

Morgan and I went for a surf trip about 2hrs south of JKK back in April last year. He was so stoked when I gave him these boardies as part of his christmas present... but he looked back at his old boardies with puppy dog eyes.. "But I've had my other boardies for over 10 years!"
Belinda

Indo Surf Check

After searching many surf spots, Morgan and I became despondant... no surf... it looked like Lake Indo.
Belinda