Early Beginnings
My deep passion for the ocean began with my father's love of the ocean. While nowadays most people see him as a keen sailor and the guy who usually wins the local regatta's with Kermit, his well loved and maintained timber boat, he's always loved body surfing and throughout my youth was always taking the family to the beach. When we moved closer to the ocean in 1971, each morning we would go together for a surf before school/work. During the early 70's, a series of huge cyclone swells that pounded Cronulla's beach's initiated me to the buzz of riding larger waves. The storms were big and they washed away the beach retaining walls, half of the North Cronulla Park and pretty much all of the beach itself. Always curious, i managed to find my way outside on some of the cleaner days and to this day I still remember the awe and amazement that i felt when i pulled into my first 8ft barrel at the age of 14. It was pre legrope days and i spent the rest of my morning swimming against the crazy currents to get back to the beach. But I was barely thinking about getting back to the beach... I had just experienced something that was beyond description and there was no turning back....

The very first surf movie i saw was Alby Falzon's Morning Of the Earth when it played at the Cronulla Community Hall was . Between that and Kevin Naughton and Craig Peterson's planetary wanderings that appeared in my Surfer mag subscription, my vision of surfing crystallized. It was the the magical journey of seeking out perfect waves in remote locations...

Bali
A solo trip to Bali at the age of 17 in the mid 70's was life changing for me. Three tubes on my first wave at Uluwatu sealed my love affair with the magical peaceful island, it's waves and it's people. Over the years I've spent extended periods in Bali and used it as a base for explorations into the remoter corners of Indonesia. It was actually here in 1981 that i won my only major pro event, the Bali Om Pro.

Contests
I was never really into the contests. It all just started as a fun thing to do with the other kids from school. Even though my heart wasn't really into it, I had a couple of satisfying moments. One of my highlights were surprising myself and everybody else by making an unmake able barrel and taking out 4 times world champ MR on my way to 3rd place in the 1978 Coke contest. Doing it on a board that i had shaped myself only made it sweeter. I was also pretty happy to be the first goofy footer to win a contest at serious sized Sunset Beach in the Hawaiian 1979 Sunset Beach Pro Class Trails. Head judge Jack Shipley was also impressed and his statement that...

"Jim Banks rewrote the book on backhand surfing at Sunset Beach" Tracks 1979

meant more to me than actually winning the contest.

Hawaii
I really enjoyed my North Shore of Hawaii seasons through the late 70’s and early 80’s. It was a great arena for adventure and exploring the limits of surfing. My curiosity often found me paddling out on days when no one else would and taking off on waves that no one else would. World title winning surfer and occasional mentor Wayne 'Bugs' Bartholomew didn't miss much and his quote in ASL mag was recognition that my exploration hadn't gone unnoticed. 

”Banks is something of an enigma in big wave riding circles.  He attacked the Pipeline like a true warrior, he’d paddle out as though every session were his last, and considering his approach to the world’s deadliest intersection, every session could easily have been his last.  On a good west day at Pipeline, the pecking order, starting with Lopez, would jockey within a very tight, take off zone, but sitting a good forty metres inside of this elite pack was Banks always. …..Bugs, ASL 1996

Wandering Off...
In 1981 after winning the Om Bali Pro and probably at the height of my professional surfing career, I wandered off, pretty much walking away from my top 16 tour ranking and the whole scene…

i actually found winning a major event to be a kind of empty feeling and nothing like the satisfaction i get from finding great waves and scoring epic tube rides. I'd had enough of trying to surf for someone else and it was time to return to my passion of seeking out remote barrels. In those days the surf companies couldn't get their heads around it and so for the next 10 - 15 years, my meagre surfboard business and penning the occasional piece for surf mags pretty much self funded my wanderings to some of the worlds most challenging and remote waves. Once again Bugs nailed my curiosity and passion for solo exploration and the large canvass's that the bigger waves offered....

“if you ever pull up at some remote surfing break and see a lone figure out amongst mountains of white water it’s more than likely to be Jim Banks”  Wayne Rabbit Bartholomew

Throughout the ‘80’s, while pro surfing consumed the attention of the surfing world, I was spending long sessions by myself in remote locations exploring the possibilities of where me and my boards could go on a wave. I had an amazing time and spent years surfing waves like Grajagan, Desert Point and giant Uluwatu by myself or with just a couple of fellow explorers. My wandering didn't go totally unnoticed and in ASL mag James Elder noted...

“Jim Banks is a real explorer. He makes his own boards, heads off to Indo, stays in primitive housing, learning the language and customs of the locals and carves up anything that comes his way. He’s his own man, easily recognised by the gleam in his eye.” …James Elder, ASL annual 1990

In the mid 90’s Jeff Hornbaker asked me to help film the first Quiksilver Pro at G Land. i think for a lot of the pro's at ththe relentless walls of Grajagan opened their eyes to a different level of surfing. After the contest, myself and a couple of other stayers scored epic Speedy's. Kelly claimed that a tube ride of mine during these sessions was the best tube ride that he’d ever seen.

Nowadays....
These days, i'm still making quiet sojourns to remote corners of Indonesia and the North West Aussie desert to rekindle my passion for long, deep tube rides, larger canvass's and the ongoing development of the boards to match them. As life goes on i am realising more and more what is truly important, how special is to be able to experience surfing amazing waves in remote locations and that at the end of the day, the only thing I'm going to take with me are the memories and feelings in my heart.

These days, when people ask me what i do, the answer is easy....

I surf....