34-year-old Joshua Dixon’s body was found floating off Crusoe Island. Photo: Gold Coast Bulletin
On New Year’s Eve, a man named Joshua Dixon grabbed his surfboard, told his family he “just wanted to go for a surf,” leaped off a 25-foot jetty into rough seas, and disappeared. It was the last time his family would see him alive.
Dixon was a 34-year-old from Upper Coomera on the Gold Coast in Queensland. “Why he chose to throw himself and his surfboard off the end of the 250m long jetty more than seven metres above the water,” wrote Nicholas McElroy of the Gold Coast Bulletin, “has baffled police and lifesavers.”
Dixon’s death is a strange and tragic story–according to witnesses at the time, the surf at the end of the thousand-foot-long spit wasn’t even surfable. Even if it was, Dixon’s board was much too small for the conditions. “As to his reasons for going into the surf, we can only draw assumptions,” said water police search co-ordinator sergeant Tony Nelson. “The conditions were extremely difficult and many surfers would elect not to go in.”
Dixon was found floating off Crusoe Island, 15 miles north from where he disappeared. “On a south swell the Spit is really hairy,” said Darren Clark, president of the North End Boardriders Club, to the Gold Coast Bulletin. “It is just way too wild, and we avoid the Spit when it is like that.” Clark went on to say that surfing the Spit in those conditions just “doesn’t make sense.”
Although Dixon wasn’t an experienced surfer, he opted to head to the end of the jetty, a place not commonly used by surfers. According to the GCB, most surfers in the area paddle out either from the beach or from a rock wall about a half mile north. According to reports, Dixon jumped off the jetty at 6am on New Year’s Eve, and police and lifesavers began searching diligently for him just afterwards.
Our sincerest condolences to Dixon’s friends and family.
