“It’s in our blood.” Some of Ethan Ewing’s earliest memories are of being pushed onto waves at Main Beach on North Stradbroke Island/Minjerribah.
Home to about 2,000 people, including the Ewing family, North Straddie became a training ground for Ethan, even if he didn’t know it, with the island’s sandbanks and rocky points copping the unpredictable Pacific swell.
Trying to keep up with his older brothers, Curtis and Brody, instilled a need to constantly push and evolve his surfing from a young age, laying the foundation for his powerful rail work and old school style.
With his reputation on tour as a fierce competitor and one of surfing’s most technically refined stylists, we headed back to Straddie to reflect on what the ocean has given him and the beginnings of a surfer who, by all accounts, had it in his DNA from the start.