The Don was waiting there for decades in a dim and cobwebbed alcove at Burford Reinforced Plastics in southern Queensland, waiting for us to wake up to ourselves. The Don... through the gaudy Echo Beach years it waited, salvo after salvo of polka dots fired at it but it refused to topple.
There’s barely a break in development from Coolum to Cabarita. ‘It's going to look like California one day,’ says the driver. Concrete, industry, brick-veneer, shopping centres, roofs as far as the eye can see.
It was a typical summer Sunday at Warriewood Beach. The midday sun blazed down as the northerly airstream ripped across the surface of the ocean, anointing the air with the coolness of the sea.
It seemed he’d waited hours for this very moment. The man introduced himself as 'Nicko', he considered himself a local to the spot even after driving three hours to get here.
"He swung his board like an axe." This is how a reporter described the groundbreaking style of Australian surfer Nat Young. The year was 1966 and people were beginning to use shorter, lighter boards that made for more agile surfing, which this nineteen-year-old took to their upper limits.