The perfect break

At home with surfing great, Taj Burrow.

Surfing legend and Audi owner, Taj Burrow, has built an extraordinary career and a house to match, right on his home break at Yallingup on Western Australia’s rugged coastline.  

Ben Smithurst  

Frances Andrijich

12 January, 2018


The southwestern corner of Western Australia is a paradise but it is also raw: lean and jagged, hi-fi colour under a monochrome sky, ocean cold and alive with giants. Giant waves! Giant whales! Crayfish like coffee tables! The world’s biggest sharks! 

Taj Burrow is Western Australian surfing’s biggest ever star. He was never going to be anything else. 

“Mum surfs – she still surfs,” he says. “Even when she was pregnant, Mum would find pods of wild dolphins and swim out to them in the middle of the ocean. She would get to know them and even give them names – like ‘Long Scratch’ and stuff – because she would become so familiar with them, and they remember her, too.”

“It’s kind of scary, because Western Australia is pretty synonymous with shark attacks. Later in my life I would get scared for her, but she would just come in buzzing so much that I couldn’t get angry with her for swimming so far out. She loves it.”

Burrow surprised the world’s surf media with a midyear retirement in June 2016. He’d qualified for the ASP World Tour aged 17 in 1997, and had spent two decades as a world title favourite; every kid’s favourite surfer. 

“Taj’s career is defined by incredible surfing, sheer innovation, but most importantly, fun,” gushed Surfer magazine, the US bible of the sport, at the time. “The Aussie may never have gotten his world title, but he likely enjoyed his career more than anyone – even those with 3 or 11 or any number of golden cups.” 

His was “one of the most exciting careers surfing has ever seen. He got covers. He won events. He made films. He was Taj, and he was amazing.”

If the universally admired veteran is irked by his eternal bridesmaid tag, it’s never shown. Remarkably, in pulling the pin on a professional surfing career spent pinballing between the world’s most perfect waves, Burrow has somehow managed to have even more fun in retirement. 

For one, there’s more time for his beloved Audi RS 4 Avant. “That 2006-2008 era was the last when they made it as a manual and I’ve always been a fan,” he says. “I bought one in Sydney and shipped it over probably five years ago and I love it! It’s just a little manual and it’s a weapon of a wagon.” (When he was still on Tour, and away most of the year, Burrow says he would “lock it in the garage and hide the key – everybody was eyeing that thing off!”)

More consequential was the arrival of his first child. 

"Taj’s career is defined by incredible surfing, sheer innovation, but most importantly, fun."

"That was the goal, to be able to check the surf from every room – that’s what I told the architect I needed!"

Two years ago, Burrow and his wife, model Rebecca Jobson – formerly of Australia’s Next Top Model – greeted the arrival of a genetically blessed bundle of joy called Arabella Rose, now two. “Being a dad was 99 percent of the reason I retired from the Tour,” he says. “I struggle to look after myself on a long flight, let alone have a child. It stopped me in my tracks! 

“I just wanted to transition into that next chapter, to slow down a little bit, because my life had been so hectic up until that point. I like to be at home and settled. The southwest of WA is such a special place on the planet to me, and I absolutely wanted to spend a lot more time here. 

“And having this nice house … when I was always on the move, I’d only get a fortnight in it here and there. It felt kinda like a hotel. Now it’s a home.”

But not just a home. A home to die for. The Holy Grail. 

Gone are the days when even the most successful professional surfers were forced to subsist on post-competition career of shaping (maybe), joining the queue at Centrelink or (worse) repping a former sponsor’s sunglasses startup. With reported career earnings of US$1.48M on top of lucrative sponsorships, Burrow was well placed to set up his dream home, even as he plied his trade at beaches from New York to Namotu, Fiji. 

Burrow’s castle sits in prime position on Yallingup Hill. Visible from his lounge room, where today he pads about, barefoot, is what the 39-year-old calls “my favourite wave in the whole world”. It’s a grinding sand-bottomed right, called Rabbit Hill. “That was the goal, to be able to check the surf from every room – that’s what I told the architect I needed!” Burrow guffaws. 

Burrow grew up nearby, on a farm property between Yallingup and Dunsborough, a town about 10km east. When he was 12, his expat American parents bought a house on the actual Yallingup Hill – “the holy grail for a surfer” – and suddenly little Taj could run across the road to surf before and after school. “I was pretty excited with that move,” he grins, “and I haven’t left before or since.”

The surfer took possession of his current block about 13 years ago and “went through hell to get it.”

“The lady owner was proposing auctions, and then she’d change her mind and say, ‘No, make me an offer’, then she’d say, ‘No! I’m not selling it altogether!’ Then she’d call and say, ‘Make me another offer’. Then, ‘No, I’m going to have an auction’. I said, ‘Bloody hell! Whatever you do, just let me have a crack at it’. 

“Eventually I got my hands on it, and it was the best day of my life.”

Six years later he remodelled. Now, he says, he’s “never moving”– happily ensconced in a post-retirement career that’s surprised Burrow by being even busier than before.

“Oh, it’s funny,” he says. “I though I was going to have so much spare time once I retired, but things have gotten out-of-control busy.”

There’s travel, including fun trips when he maps a swell coming somewhere like Indonesia or Tahiti or Hawaii. There’s other surf photo trips, and junkets to engage key retailers, for his sponsors, who’ve stuck by him. (“I just check in with local surf shops and kids surf contests, say, up and down the east coast of America, have a beer with everyone and talk stories – I’ve got heaps of good stories, so it’s a fun gig!”). There’s fatherhood, obviously. And there’s also the small matter of his own beer, Honest Ale, recently launched with a couple of mates by the nearby Black Brewing Company in Margaret River – just 10 minutes from home.

“It’s a really good quality beer – it has amazing flavours … we’re basically just around the West Oz lifestyle, where you’re fishing, camping — anything like that. I picture you with an Esky, splashing around… it’s just the perfect beer for us [over here]. It’s been really fun.”

Big sharks. Big waves. A big life on Tour. An even bigger life in retirement. 

Welcome to paradise. 

"Big sharks. Big waves. A big life on Tour. An even bigger life in retirement."