In autumn, 2001, a light westerly was blowing as I checked out the break on the northern point of Toowoon Bay. It was the sort of day that evoked memories of my younger surfing experiences, the ocean temperature just starting to become brisk and the feathering of a breaking wave confirming the offshore breeze. It was time to challenge my sixty-four-year-old body against this hollow left hander with my new longboard. 

I paddled out.

The closer I came to the break, the larger it seemed. I was nervous as I positioned myself for a perfect take-off. Critically, though, I hadn’t taken into account the subtle sideways current that moved me closer to the rock ledge just below the surface.

A swell built up behind me and I thought, this is it, as the old familiar adrenaline rush hit. I paddled hard and felt the board lift as the wave pushed me forward. This was one purler of a wave!

I looked down.

Water was being sucked off bare rock and I was heading straight for it. Gathering all my forty years of surfing experience, I realised there was nothing I could do, so I grabbed the rail of my board, leaned as far left as I could, closed my eyes and muttered, pleasegodpleasegodpleasegod. For an atheist, this was a final gasp before I became a thin film across the rock ledge. I waited for the inevitable, feeling the board accelerate beneath me.

Nothing. No agonising scrape across the barnacles, only a sensation of increasing speed. I opened my eyes and there I was, halfway across Toowoon Bay with a young surfer, eyes wide, staring at me. 

He said ‘Maaate, you were so far inside that wave I thought you were never coming out.’

Neither did I.