I first saw surfing when I was 10 years old, gazing out of my bedroom window overlooking Dobroyd Head on Sydney's North Shore.

It was May 24, 1974, and a cyclone was battering the coast of Australia, creating some of the wildest conditions the east coast had witnessed in living memory. Little black dots made big, arcing tracks down the faces of waves and back up into the foam. I was hooked.