′′I was dead. Apparently I rolled over and my lips were blue, my eyes were closed. And I was.
.. yeah, I was dead.
“But this is all a complete blank to me.” Nineteen-year-old surf photographer Byron Mcloughlin is back in Australia, at home in North Curl Curl with his feet firmly on terra firma again. His first trip to Teahupo’o, where this year’s Olympic surfing competition will be held, won’t be his last, but it so easily could have been.
Ten days ago, a reasonably last-minute trip to Tahiti to shoot the swell of a lifetime landed Mcloughlin in an induced coma after clinically drowning. He has spent the past week has been spent piecing together the biggest wipeout of his life. Reliving the Tahitian monsters pounding the razor sharp reef he had just hit.
Thanking and consoling the local watermen and surfers who pulled him out of the Pacific Ocean, who were left shaking and in shock themselves afterwards. Recovering in a Tahitian hospital with “lungs that looked like popcorn” and organs that had their oxygen supply cut off by the life-threatening amounts of salt water Mcloughin had swallowed. Teahupo’o – arguably the most infamous and intimidating wave in the world – is enjoying an international spotlight like never before as the Olympics come to town, attracting the best surfers on the planet, a luxury cruise ship to house them and an Olympic-sized cast to make it all happen.
Mcloughlin arrived at Teahupo’o, which loosely translates to “place of sku.