Past tense offers authority, distance, and present tense offers emotional immediacy.
It's impossible to imagine what Australia would be like without surfing.
People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.
There is nowhere else I'd rather be, nothing else I would prefer to be doing. I am at the beach looking west with the continent behind me as the sun tracks down to the sea. I have my bearings.
People are fools, not monsters
We are all part of that global traffic and I think that the effort to make yourself understood and to be not a problem for anyone or to hide your own particuarly is a mistake. I think people will and do value individuality.