In Australia surfing was for the oiks. It was always rebellious. And sadly it was for a long time a bit unreflective and macho and anti-intellectual. Unlike other sports it was essentially a youth cult, like rock and roll. But like rock and roll its people grew up.

We rise to a challenge and set a course. We take a decision. You put your mind to something. Just deciding to do it gets you halfway there. Daring to try.

Surfers travelled and opened up and changed. It became more mainstream, less of a cult. And it diversified. On any given day in the water now I'll meet three generations of surfers, male and female, everyone sporting a different craft. I started surfing in the 60s and I can tell you it's infinitely more diverse. It might be more crowded but it's also more interesting.

I've been a writer and a parent since adolescence, it feels like, and I'm still making both gigs up as I go along. I did both in different forms of isolation - too young by conventional standards, too far off-grid culturally and geographically. So my experience is probably too specific to be useful. None of us do this stuff the same way. We just try to endure and press on, I guess.

Surfers are the canaries down the mine. Those of us who surf spend more time than anyone soaking in whatever the sea has become. We're suspended in consequences, you might say.

The beachcomber goes looking for trouble, everything he finds is a sign of trouble. The writer is the same; without trouble he has nothing to work with, so he picks over the tide line, over the bits and pieces of people's lives with grim fascination.

I went to school for 12 years, and uni for four, but I learnt more about human existence in the 30 hours it took my first child to be born than I did in all those years of study.