UNTOLD: WHAT IS OPAL FEVER?
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UNTOLD: WHO IS A FIFTH GENERATION AQUAMAN?
20 MAY 2024
Josiah Schmucker is many things. A professional big wave surfer. A fisherman battling the high seas of the Southern Ocean. A chef inspired by a life spent thriving along Australia’s most remote coastline. But beneath what he does, or where he is from, is who he is. And Josiah? He’s an Aquaman, a being that lives and thrives under (or in Josiah’s case, in) the water. But what does it take to not only live by the ocean, but be of it?
Josiah Schmucker’s hair is as untamed as the coastline that threatens to envelope him. He is a lone figure standing on the edge of the Australian continent, gazing out over the Great Australian Bight. The unforgiving wind dances through his curly mop, causing his locks to pirouette above his head, twist across his face, before landing in his eyes. Standing at the edge of the earth, Josiah doesn’t look like the odd-human-out in this rugged scene. There is a piece of this place, something wild and unbroken, that lives within him. “I’ve just lived here for so long, I feel like I’ve sort of become part of the environment,” he says. Perhaps the salt, wind, sand and swell of the Eyre Peninsula is, in fact, in his blood – he is a fifth-generation resident after all.
A third-generation fisherman too, learning how to read the sea, and respect it, thanks to his dad. Josiah is as much of the sea, as he is of this untouched peninsula connecting South Australia to Western Australia. It’s led him to beat the odds and become a world-class surfer at just 18, travelling and taste-testing coastal cuisines the world over. But this peninsula, the Eyre Peninsula, keeps pulling him back home.
As a west coaster, it’s inescapable – even inevitable. It’s not uncommon to hear other Australians quip that those on the Eyre Peninsula (or, simply, the ‘EP’) are ‘built different’. More grit, less fear, somehow closer to the core of their humanness. It’s what makes Josiah the real Aquaman.
Meet Josiah Schmucker
Aquaman’s Origin Story
One of the world’s most famous fictional superheros, the Aquaman character can speak to fish, control the seas and manipulate the weather. When the character was first created, he was known to be the son of a ‘famous undersea explorer’ who believed in the lost city of Atlantis. In the original comic, Aquaman says his father “learned ways of teaching me to live under the ocean, drawing oxygen from the water and using all the power of the sea to make me wonderfully strong and swift ”. In the first origin story, penned in 1941, Aquaman says: “I became what you see – a human being who lives and thrives under the water”. Change the context and you could be talking about Josiah. His dad is a well-known local fisherman and surfer who would take Josiah on boating expeditions from as young as three.
Josiah at home
“I’ve always loved and respected (the ocean),” he shares. “I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve felt I wasn’t going to come home…I’ve been in some pretty dicey situations, but just having dad by my side sort of guiding me and teaching me about the ocean, and the environment…he’s been a great teacher for sure and sort of shut down any fear of the ocean.”
Coming up for air
Growing up in Streaky Bay, a surf haven tucked away from anything close to a city, Josiah recalls a simple, quintessential childhood. “It was just beach, surfin’, fishin’, skating, making your own fun,” he explains. While he didn’t learn to surf, a sport that draws so many to his hometown, until he was 14 – he took to the swell like a seal. Naturally gifted, Josiah progressed from surfing four foot waves, to 20 foot waves, in a matter of months. “I remember the first (big wave) session I ever had…I got smoked and nearly thought I was gonna drown,” he explains, likening the experience to being trapped inside a washing machine, or getting hit by a car.
Shaking it off
“I was crying, at 15 years old, saying ‘take me back to the boat, I want to go back to school!’ But (dad) was just like…’get your breath back and we’ll get another one,’” he recalls. “While I was still crying he towed me into the next wave. I pulled up and got this huge barrel, got spat out, and then I was just crying with joy. I was like ‘yes, I want to do this for the rest of my life!’.” By 18, Josiah was graduating high school with a Billabong contract. “It was a very surreal feeling for me, because being from a small country town, where my world was bike jumps and fishing and camping with my mates, and then all of a sudden I was getting flown over to Hawaii, or Tahiti, or the United States to go to surf competitions,” he explains. “It changed my outlook on life, and where I thought I could go, it sort of built up the limit.”
An addictive pursuit
Surfing, for Josiah, is a “perfect addiction”. While riding the high is perfectly healthy for the mind, body and – in Josiah’s case – his soul, what goes up inevitably comes down. “I’ve had wipe outs where I’ve swallowed a heap of water…your body goes into this just sudden reaction, where it’s fitting and got to get back to fresh air,” he explains. Josiah pauses then, struggling to put words to the sensation of being pinned down by the equivalent of 410 tonnes of water. How do you articulate the visceral reaction of being trapped in a place that is made to suffocate you?
“A part of your brain kicks in, it’s like ‘if you don’t relax, you are going to drown, so there’s no point in fighting it."
The statement is laced with a menacing reality - it’s fight or flight, survive or die. There’s madness, then, in paddling out knowing you could have the weight of 60 elephants holding you under water for minutes on end. “(But) you get that perfect hit of dopamine from, say, the rush of surfing a big wave and then you get spat out and you’re in the safety of that channel and you’re cruising back, and you’re sort of like, coming back down,” he shares. “Then you are out in the ocean, and it’s just like a beautiful place to be with your friends…it’s sort of relaxing, and calming, and super special, and then you just go round and around in that cycle for… six hours, until you have exhausted your body.” What goes down, comes up again.
I feel a lot more at ease (when I am near the ocean), like settled - if I know the ocean’s not too far away. Josiah Schmucker
Josiah in the ocean.
A global coming of age
By 23, Josiah was exhausted. What he loved about surfing – the soul of the sport – was being clouded by the “localism” of the Eyre Peninsula surfing scene and the demands of sponsors. “(While) I was doing it to make myself happy, having to have it documented and if it wasn’t performing up to scratch…I just didn’t deal with that very well, it didn’t really sit well,” he explains. He wanted to get back to surfing for the love of it, quietly, without the audience. So, he walked away from the professional circuit and spent years living out of a suitcase, hopping across countries. But he couldn’t “fathom the idea” of living away from the ocean long-term. “The longest time I’ve [spent inland] was three months snowboarding in Canada,” he shares, adding sheepishly “that was just an experiment, but I was still thinking about surfing in Vancouver."
The cliffs of the Eyre Peninsula.
Seeking out the big blue, Josiah landed a gig as a chef on a luxury yacht, hopping from island to island – country to culture – learning about seasonal ingredients, native flavours and perhaps, most importantly, what food meant to people in different communities around the world. He travelled to find himself again, and in a way he did. Away from the eyes of the world, and his sponsors, Josiah rediscovered a long-held passion for cooking, that he put on hold to pursue surfing greatness. “That was pretty much the defining point of me chasing a career in the culinary arts,” he reflects.
Josiah opening From Salt & Soil.
From Salt & Soil
Now 32, Josiah has experienced a lot of change - a lot of riptides and breaks and swells. But, throughout it all, there has been one constant: nature . It is this companion, the ocean and the earth, that inspired him to start up his own food truck – aptly named ‘From Salt & Soil’. It’s a place where he consciously crafts food for the community he calls his own, inspired by those he visited on his travels.
From Salt & Soil has gained a cult following.
“That’s what I really love about cooking and food in general,” he explains. “It brings people together. To have a morning like this, where three or four friends rock up to get a coffee and hang out and chat and socialise…I think it’s such a beautiful thing to be a part of, and to get to give that experience as well.” Working alongside his fiancée – Bek – the pair have quickly built a cult local following, turning sleepy seaside towns into a hive of coffee craving fiends the moment they swing open the server’s window.
From Salt & Soil has gained a cult following.
“Cooking doesn’t quite give me the rush like surfing does, but it definitely gives me the calm at times,” he says. It also gives him an office with an ocean front view and affords him time to pack up shop and hop in the surf when the weather is kind. Quietly, without fuss, fanfare, or photography. But perhaps most of all, this travelling food van bursting with nature, nurture, and life, has given him purpose. He is creating food that “is also medicine for the body”. A fitting calling for a man whose Hebrew name means ‘God supports and heals’.
Returning to the Eyre Peninsula
Pulling up to a viewpoint, along a stretch of coastline just outside of Elliston, Josiah hops out of his old ute and wordlessly pads barefoot out to the cliffs’ edge. Looking down past his feet, at the scene below – where the cliffs give way to the churning mess of frigid sea sent straight from Antarctica – Josiah’s voice takes on a note of reverence. "There’s nothing between Antarctica and us,” he muses. Being this close to the sea, with the thunderous rumble of the ocean drowning out any other head noise, Josiah is calm. His shoulders drop, just slightly. Contentment floods his expression. His brows – so expressive – relax above his honey-coloured eyes.
I think naturally it goes back to…we’re in the womb, we’re swimming around in water, and then I just find being in the ocean so calming, so relaxing.”
“Even being on it (the ocean) fishing, it’s just natural. It just brings me clarity, and the beauty of it is just, it’s amazing…I just feel lucky to live near it.” The Eyre Peninsula is known as the Seafood Frontier, and it is a frontier of sorts still to this day. It’s the place where shark cage diving was invented. It’s home to the infamous Cactus Beach – a remote break any surfer worth their salt has completed a pilgrimage to. It’s also home to Australia’s – and thought to be the world’s – longest continuous cliffs, formed when Australia separated from Antarctica millions of years ago. This frontier is also home to the Nullarbor Plain, a vast landscape four times the size of Belgium.
Standing on the cusp of this frontier, looking out at an oppressive blanket of ocean, Josiah says the “raw ocean smell” will always remind him of home. “The mornings where there’s a bit of dew and like sweet eucalyptus trees or walking to the surf from the carpark and you can smell the salt bush and hear the rumble of the Great Southern Ocean,” he shares. “I’ve tried living overseas…I just didn’t find everything that I needed in that one spot,” he says. “It might have been lacking the waves, or maybe the people, the food…just…there was always something that was better, I thought, back here.”
Visiting the Eyre Peninsula? Be sure to kick-start your morning with the smell of sweet eucalyptus and fresh coffee grinds, by paying Josiah and his fiancée Bek a visit. You can find their food truck by checking out their socials, From Salt and Soil.
