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(waves crashing)

(seagulls cawing)

(birds chirping)

(bubbles popping)

(gentle music)

- [Mick] I always thought that life was a matter of choice

and you made decisions based on acquiring knowledge,

and making that decision, and then rolling the dice,

and going with it, giving it your best shot.

I never thought that there was an overall plan.

I thought life was just a series of accidents,

some good, some bad.

(mellow instrumental music)

My first experience with the death

of a loved one was my Dad.

Since then, I've buried around

20 of my family and close mates.

But life goes on and on each occasion

I quickly came to terms with it.

After all, you're meant to bury your elders.

That's the way it is.

Passing on the baton.

But it doesn't always run to script.

Accidents happen.

Fate intervenes.

But it always happens to someone else.

Always some other poor bugger.

However, fate had decided it was now my turn.

(bubbles popping)

(gentle music)

There comes a moment in any journey,

the moment it dawns on you that it's coming to an end.

Growing old's a bit like that.

How did you end up here?

What if you'd gone there?

Why did that happen?

Did you have any say in it or was it all in the hands

of a higher power like God, Allah, even fate?

On my journey, the biggest influence

wasn't divine intervention or happenstance,

but the direct result of a choice I made.

Not only did that decision change the course of my life,

it taught me the core values I hold to this very day.

I learned humility, to show respect,

the joy of living in the moment.

That having mates is a gift of pure gold.

But most of it all, it taught me that

it wasn't always sunny and offshore,

that sooner or later in your life,

probably when you least expect it,

you're gonna be mowed down by rogue waves.

(soft instrumental music)

My Dad was a Royal Marine and he met my Mum here

in Hobart towards the end of the Second World War.

Dad was 24, he came from out near the Welsh border

and had a bloodline to Romany Gypsies.

Mum was a 20-year old local girl.

She was a fourth-generation Tasmanian.

Mum and Dad's union resulted in me being born

in early 1947.

We had very little money and the upbringing

was more about satisfying your needs

rather than trying to pursue your wants.

Most of our daytime activity was spent

playing in the rivulet or Knocklofty Terrace,

or a big adventure was to catch the big trolley bus

down to Nutgrove Beach where we spent the day swimming.

You always had the sense that it wasn't just about you,

that you were part of a bigger thing

and that bigger thing was the place in which you lived.

Dad's life was adventurous to the extreme.

He signed on on the Royal Marines when he was 16,

and not long after the war broke out

and he was sunk three times before he was 21.

In 1945, he was in a flotilla waiting for the land invasion

of Japan and ended up in a place called Hiroshima.

Four days later he was moved out

and moved to a place called Nagasaki.

And it's something he never recovered from.

(gentle piano music)

I had heroes in my life like Tarzan and Superman,

and, as a teenager, Mikki Dora.

But Dad was my biggest hero.

But I'd have to say that I never wanted

to be like any of my heroes.

It was something Dad instilled in me

that you don't wanna be like everybody else.

You've got a special gift and you are you.

It's important in life that you, as much as possible,

become the master of your own destiny.

You've got to cherish the things

that you hold dear to you, hold them in the moment

because you never know what fate has in store for you.

His overriding message was that

it's not so important what happens to you.

The most important thing in your life

is how you deal with it.

(gentle instrumental music)

I didn't have a very good childhood.

I received a lot of joy and love and happy times

but there was an overall shroud of darkness in our house.

My parent's relationship fell apart

and Dad left home when I was 12.

My schooldays were a reflection

of what was happening at home, really.

And then when you throw in a bit of puberty,

and I was the only boy in a class

with 49 girls for three years.

Safe to say that I wasn't really focused on the blackboard.

So left school at 15 and my Mom, through family connections,

acquired me a brilliant career in the Accounts Department

of the Hydro Electric Commission.

It was an absolutely mindless job.

I did that for a while and then a mate of mine,

he'd gone to work for a finance company

and he rang me one day and said,

"Interested in changing job?" and I said, "You bet."

So I end up working as a repo man.

I got a car and 80 bucks a week it paid.

And I got shotguns pushed into my face.

I've got abused, punches thrown at me.

(tires rumbling)

It certainly taught me a lot about the cost

of borrowing money and what can happen to your life

if fate intervenes and something unexpected happens.

It can go pear shaped pretty quick.

(mellow electric guitar music)

After Dad moved out of the family home,

my Mum filed for divorce and subsequently met another man.

When Dad received the news that Mum was

to remarry, he couldn't deal with it.

As a result of his war experiences,

he suffered from mental health problems his entire life.

The news of Mum remarrying was too much to bear

so he killed himself when I was in my mid-teens.

(cheery music)

I was a competitive swimmer up till then.

I actually did quite well.

I was a backstroker, and in 1963 I ended up

in the trials for the Tokyo Olympics.

Came a very admirable last in my event. (chuckles)

I'd just come back from the Olympic trials

and a friend asked if I wanted to go

and see a movie about surfing.

Another one of those incredibly defining moments

in your life, which at the time was just

a spontaneous reaction.

(guests chattering)

Need a ticket for the surf movie please.

Thank you.

There I went in and sat down in the State Picture Theater

as an aspiring Olympian and I stood up a surfer.

(electric guitar music)

Up on the silver screen, there was freedom, fun.

No one telling you what to do.

I saw people just having loads and loads of fun.

When I told my Mum that I wasn't swimming anymore

and I was gonna be a surfer, she was horrified.

I might as well have told her I was gonna be a Hell's Angel.

Never quite saw what I saw.

There was a way I could express myself.

I could stay fit.

I was discovering the place in which I lived.

I was with friends who were inspirational.

Showed no fear, did crazy stuff.

They weren't in the mold of a normal teenager

in the 1960s, that's for sure.

Some of those relationships went on to become

both the most meaningful and enduring of my life.

Mates I lived and laughed with.

Mates I buried and still grieve over.

(thrilling music)

Through my surfing life and exploration of the island,

I developed a very, very strong attachment

to my island home.

I'm quite patriotic about where I live.

It played a major part in who I am today,

that appreciation and respect for where you live.

That understanding that life is not just about you,

that you are intrinsically connected to your surroundings,

and how you interact with those surroundings

plays a large part in who you are

and whether you're content or not.

So without realizing it,

I suddenly had found the best teacher I ever had in my life.

(birds chirping)

(waves crashing)

Surfing was different, totally different

than anything else I'd been involved with.

I mean, it's called a sport, but it's not a sport.

It's more ethereal than that.

Describing surfing to somebody is like

trying to describe sex to a virgin.

They've got nothing to compare it to.

(waves crashing)

A lot of us are probably more naturally gifted at it

than others, and fortunately I was one of those.

I found surfing and the balance aspect very, very easy.

When I was on the surfboard, I was in tune.

I was in rhythm.

I was of the wave, I was not riding the wave.

I was of it.

(thrilling music)

And the best surfers, the best dancers,

whether they're doing tangos or waltzes, doesn't matter,

they just look good.

Because, they're connected, connected to that wave.

The beauty is that no two waves are ever the same.

Each wave is an individual just like us.

It's only when they feel the friction

of the bottom that they stand up and eventually break.

The art of surfing is that very last gasp

of that dying wave, that's when a surfer

picks her up and starts dancing.

It's a death dance for the wave.

That's a really beautiful thing.

And when you look at it in that sort of term,

it's very spiritual.

Most surfers who become addicted,

you find them very spiritual people.

They...

There's another element to them.

An understanding, a knowing.

And I think that comes from those moments

when you're actually riding inside of the barrel of a wave.

The rush that you get out of that is enormous.

Hard to describe.

And when it's over, it's surreal.

You begin to wonder if it even happened.

(birds chirping)

(waves crashing softly)

One of the beauties of surfing in Tasmania

is there are not many people, in more ways than one.

It's probably one of the salvations of the island.

Not many people live here.

Not many people up to this point in time want to live here.

Most people seem to think living in Tasmania

is like living in a rusty old fridge from the 1950s and

not many of us were gonna enlighten anybody from outside.

We didn't want anyone living here.

That's one of the things about surfing, it's selfish.

It's hedonistic.

It's all about getting the rush.

It's because, it's a finite resource.

There's only so many waves,

and the more and more surfers there are

the harder and harder it is to catch waves.

Winter was the worst time, so damned cold.

Eight degrees, freezing.

Not a nice place to be in the winter,

particularly as a surfer.

And I think it was in 1974 that I first escaped.

I went to Hawaii and then went across

to California and Mexico.

And I was hooked, that was it.

I was a traveler from that moment on.

There was a place in Indonesia that Aussie surfers

had discovered the year before.

A rather unknown place, it was called Bali.

(upbeat rock music)

So in 1975 I went to Bali and

in those days Kuta and Legian were just tiny little isolated

villages and in between was nothing but rice paddies.

Rented a room off the locals, lived with a local family.

The best surf was out on what they

called the Bukit Peninsula.

It's a rather holy place called Uluwatu.

And from the Uluwatu Temple you had to trek your way

down over these open paddocks along cliff tops

and eventually, after about half an hour,

you came to this cave and there was a bamboo ladder

that you had to climb down.

There might have been 20 surfers there

from all around the world.

People just starting to get into the know of Bali.

It was a magic place.

The culture, the people, the surf, it was just fantastic.

For the next five years in particular

I kept going back to Bali every winter

and spent the whole winter up there,

but word got out and slowly it started

to get more and more crowded.

So I decided to leave Bali at that

and went on to explore other parts of Indonesia.

Lombok in a dugout, aboard a freighter

to islands off Sumatra.

Sailed a yacht to Southeast Java.

Pretty hedonistic.

(upbeat music)

In 1970, I was then selected as being part

of this finance company's future management team.

I was moved up to Sydney and then spent a couple of years

as a systems auditor simply to learn the protocols

of lending money and collecting it.

(man shouting)

Moving to a place like Sydney was exhilarating.

It was exciting.

I'd never seen anything like it.

Then I started to see it in another way.

Coming from a place like Hobart

where I'd had this incredible, strong connection.

It was really nothing like that in Sydney.

There were too many people.

It was crushing, overpowering.

Anything I could connect to was simply buried in concrete.

I was being asked to sell my soul to an institution

and in return I got loads and loads of money.

I got to sleep with my secretary, get fat,

and when I seriously thought about it.

It's not what I wanted.

It's not a way that I saw myself living and being happy.

I walked away, left the company,

left the big city lights and just got lost for a while.

(gentle guitar music)

And then one day this friend of mine rang me and

said, "do you wanna go on a road trip for the weekend?"

I said, "Yeah sure, where are we going?"

He said, "Oh, let's rock up the West Coast."

We ended up on King Island,

which is a pretty interesting road trip.

(cows mooing)

Spent a year sharing house that was off the grid.

Pretty much hippy existence, with this Czechoslovakian guy,

and the three of us worked in a mine.

Essentially we just worked and slept, and went surfing.

There were four surfers on the island.

It's a magnet for swell and it's got fantastic beaches,

and conditions made it such that the island

was just covered in magic waves.

I spent a year out there and after I'd saved enough money

I thought, I had a yearning for change

and so I caught a plane.

Flying across Bass Strait and I remember looking

out the window and seeing the Nut at Stanley

and suddenly I realized that I was coming home.

(guitar music)

I had enough money from working at the mine

to buy six acres of land down near Clifton Beach

so I did that, then I met a girl.

Within two months of meeting Robyn, we were married.

A month later we started building a house.

And it wasn't so much a house.

It became our home for the past 40 years.

There's not many people live there,

and the only services in the immediate area are a surf club,

a lawn bowls club, and a cemetery,

which pretty much sums up the sort of place I live,

and it's everything I want, everything I need.

Couldn't be happier.

Very lucky man.

Right place, right time.

Life goes down another path.

You don't even know.

Don't even know you left the highway.

In lots of ways I was a late starter.

I didn't get married till I was 30.

Our one and only son Tim was born when I was 40.

But we made the decision to only have one.

There's a poem, which talks about raising kids

and that you're actually nothing but an archer.

And your children are from you but are not of you

and they're like arrows.

Your role is to, when the time is right,

to pick up that arrow and release it.

And your duty is to release it in the best direction.

When it's let go, you admire it's journey

and trust that you've done things

up to that point as you should.

And raising Tim was a bit like that.

I was very, very conscious of not forcing him

into my lifestyle.

And if he wanted to surf, it had to be of his own volition

not because his Dad wanted him to.

In the late 1980s, I'd been surfing the Southwest Wilderness

for quite a while, for probably about 10 years.

And I had a friend down one year from Queensland

and he wanted to go, and then Tim piped up, he was five,

and said he wanted to come along.

And I said, well, okay, you can come along,

but there's a rule here.

There's no whinging when it turns to crap.

Things get bad, that's it.

You just shut up and soldier on, okay?

Okay, deal done.

(upbeat rock music)

He probably spent so long sitting on

that bloody beach that he just,

he picked up surfing through osmosis.

By the time it was his turn, and he decided that he wanted

to do it, that was very, very special.

I'd passed the baton on.

It was in good hands and from what I could see

Tim was gonna carry it for a long, long time.

In surfing terms, I could've died there and then

and been quite happy.

Yeah, that was special to hand that sort of

way of life on to your kid.

(waves crashing)

I always had this ritual.

I'd walk out of the surf, no matter what it was like.

I'd always turned and faced the ocean.

- [Man] Whoa-ho-ho!

- [Mick] The traditional surf god was called Hui.

And I always thanked Hui for the day.

I always paid my respects.

That's way I lived.

I always tried to live in the moment,

not get too far ahead of myself.

After each surf, I tried to treat it as if

that was gonna be my last surf ever and one day it was.

After 50 years, just walked away.

That was that.

Regrets, none whatsoever.

(engine humming)

Surfing kept me young and fit till my 60s.

I got to travel around the world extensively.

I've had some of the most fantastic times

in my life in Indonesia.

Remote islands that had never seen white people before.

We'd rocked up in a boat and surfed for days.

We were gods.

We left a surfboard for them at the end.

And they knew we were gods.

Those kids now are probably surfing their life out.

Fantastic, fantastic.

I mean how greedy do you wanna be?

How many rides on the Big Dipper do you want?

I'd had enough.

(mellow guitar music)

(birds chirping)

I drifted through a lot of jobs until the early 80s

when I landed a sales position in the film industry.

In many ways, it was like surfing.

I'd always considered surfing an art form.

Self-expression with no rules.

Capturing the moment.

Whether you make a film or a wave,

it all comes down to what looks good.

I ended up making over 100 documentaries.

Mostly about people and their interaction

with the natural world, mountain climbing, tiger hunts.

Worked on Japanese documentaries.

Even a feature with Fuji Films.

(upbeat music)

But my proudest achievement was

with the Tasmanian Aboriginal community.

I was lucky they openly welcomed me into their world.

In return, I helped tell their stories

and taught their kids how to tell a story.

I developed very close relationships

with quite a few members of the Aboriginal community.

I hold that time very, very dear to me.

They taught me a lot and I learned a lot,

particularly relationship with place,

what they call on country,

and I got to learn what it meant to them.

- [Cameraman] What do you reckon, Buck?

- Fantastic, beautiful place.

- [Cameraman] Wanna buy it?

- Buy it ?

(laughing)

You g to make a bite? - Is that an option?

- [Cameraman] You wanna put in a land claim?

- Put a land claim?

(laughing)

- [Mick] In many ways, I see the problem

of disconnection with country a universal one.

Modernity's wrecking havoc on everybody's relationship

with the natural world, not just the Aboriginals.

(mellow music)

(birds chirping)

In 2008, I suddenly found myself in hospital.

I'd endured a six-inch split to my aorta artery.

Initially, my chance of survival appeared pretty slim

and full recovery slimmer still.

Fortunately, after a few weeks,

I moved out of danger and was sent home.

I was far from well though and popping pills like a junkie

but at least I was home.

A week later, I was back in hospital.

Something else was wrong.

I now had a serious mental health problem to deal with.

Rather than getting better, I descended into a dark abyss.

Mick Lawrence had become a complete stranger to me.

I was both lost and scared.

So I went back to my GP and told him

I was bailing on my pills.

"But why?" he said.

"Because they're destroying me.

"They've got me on the road to nowhere."

"Okay, but I need to tell ya, this may not end well.

"It may be time to get your board back out of the shed."

I thought about it, but back wasn't the way I wanted to go.

(waves crashing)

I called mine The Tardis.

It was like a surfboard.

Instead of standing on it, you sat in it.

Similar, very, very similar to a surfboard.

So I had no problem with the transition.

My problem was, as my GP warned me,

your biggest danger is yourself because

if you don't control yourself you're gonna blow yourself up.

You'll die out there.

(soft guitar music)

Now, I'm not a good listener.

I never have been.

So it's pretty amusing that I'd discovered the secret

of not blowing myself up by listening.

And that came from the cadence of the boat

moving through the water.

It's just like a mechanic can tell

when a car's in tune, you can just hear.

The same with a boat, the same with a surfboard.

You know when it's running sweet.

I quickly discovered that once I got into that cadence

I could paddle for three or four, five hours

and not even break into a sweat.

Within the space of a few months,

I was paddling around home, around Storm Bay.

I was clocking up about 100Ks a week

and I was feeling great.

Physically, I was feeling great,

and I knew I had turned a corner.

Trouble was, I didn't know how to do what was for my head.

Bloody dog.

(suspenseful music)

(birds chirping)

I've never been a stranger to the black dog.

As a kid, there was always one at home.

Wasn't mine, belonged to my Dad.

So when he turned up in my backyard,

it was a real kick in the guts.

'Cause I thought I'd buried the mongrel with my Dad.

There he was, staring me in the eye,

tongue hanging out, panting, glaring at me

with those bloody eyes, and I was scared.

I just hung in there and hoped that

by getting myself physically fit

the mental bit would look after itself.

But it was a tough time.

I couldn't tell anyone about it.

I couldn't tell anyone.

I don't think many blokes can.

And it's...

I think moments like that, when you realize that

even though you're surrounded by family and friends

and you live in a beautiful, peaceful place

where everyone's friendly,

ultimately, you're on your own.

And you've gotta sort it our yourself.

That's what I did.

It wasn't as hard as I thought.

I remember paddling up this inlet.

And suddenly in front of me I could see a platypus,

and he was just gliding across the top of the water,

so I stopped paddling and just sat and watched.

And then suddenly he realized that I was in his space.

He freaked, he dived, he disappeared, he ran away.

And I suddenly realized that that was the answer.

That was the way to deal with the dog.

I just have to deny him space.

(birds chirping)

There's a lot of similarities between surfing and kayaking.

You're on the water, working in harmony

with a finely-tuned water craft.

It requires the same sense of balance,

maneuvering, gliding, accelerating.

I guess the biggest difference is that

with surfing you're focused on the wave.

With kayaking, you're not riding a wave.

You're riding a place.

(solemn music)

It was only when I stopped surfing that I realized that

while we surfed all these iconic places

it was only ever about the wave.

The place just happened to be where the wave was.

Sure, we appreciated where we were

but it was just the backdrop for the main act.

With kayaking, place dominates.

You're part of the bigger thing.

Part of a much bigger wave.

Not so myopic.

The other big difference is the rush.

The euphoria you gain from the experience.

Riding a wave is usually short, intense, exciting.

(waves crashing)

Full of adrenaline.

Kayaking, however, moves to a different rhythm.

It's prolonged, more laid back, tranquil.

You still get a rush, still taste the adrenaline.

But it's a rush for the spirit, not so much the body.

(engine humming)

Ask a surfer what he does and the response

will be ride waves, of course, but that's a delusion.

When you really think about it,

surfers spend very little time actually surfing.

At best, you might catch 10 waves in an hour.

A long wave lasts 30 seconds, if you're lucky,.

So five minutes per hour hardly counts

as wall-to-wall adrenaline.

(gentle piano music)

With kayaking, the rush lasts

for as long as you remain in the zone.

(wind rustling)

It's certainly a more humbling experience.

Whereas surfing tends to massage the ego,

kayaking simply massages the soul.

I remember surfing the Southwest for the very first time

on my own.

It was quite large and challenging to surf.

And if I'd been there with my mates,

I would have been charging.

I would have been frothing.

But I wasn't, I was scared.

And it took me two or three sessions

before I felt anywhere near at ease.

(feet lapping water)

And it probably took me four or five solo trips

before I found that, not only did I enjoy that solitude,

I thrived on it.

(somber music)

(birds chirping)

(water splashing)

There's a fine line between solitude and loneliness.

For me, the key to being comfortable

with solitude is being comfortable with yourself.

I'm lucky, I've always enjoyed my own company.

Never missed or feared having no one else around.

Not sure whether this is fine judgment

or a dose of good luck.

You can see where the tides come in.

Apart from stupidity, your major enemy is the weather.

Fortunately, I knew the enemy well.

I knew its capacity, its behavior, its signs.

Knew when to go and when to stay.

I was comfortable with all that.

Surfing also taught me to stay calm in a crisis.

To think my way through, that panic can kill ya.

So falling back on myself didn't phase me at all.

(birds chirping)

In the natural world, there are no human ideals

like equality, rights, justice.

Out there when it all goes pear shaped,

you're simply left with the consequences.

It is what it is.

And as alien as it might be, you can't sue nature.

The other thing about nature is that voids never last long.

Rejuvenation follows destruction as night follows day.

It's a natural order of things.

Unfortunately, the human world isn't like that.

There's a part of us that loves

coming up with negative stuff.

Loves supplying fertile ground for our dark side.

I found the best way to deal with these negative forces

was to fill the void with what's happening around you,

become part of the place.

That's the thing I learned about the dog.

It thrives on being the center of attention.

And once I stopped giving it attention,

it began to lose interest. (Tasmanian devil wailing)

Started to leave me alone.

That's when I found things began to turn around,

when I got a chance to find myself again.

(upbeat banjo music)

Birch's River.

More creek than a river.

Not often I get to paddle off the map.

So I think I'm gonna turn round.

Look.

I might even be on the Pocrocker River.

I might even be lost.

I don't know about this.

(gentle electric guitar music)

It sounds a bit weird, but I actually enjoy being lost.

Where am I, who am I?

What makes you tick?

What tips you over?

(waves crashing)

I like the process, searching, finding answers.

Becoming unlost.

(birds chirping)

For the next five years, I threw myself

into exploring the Southwest wilderness.

I started in the mountain lakes

and then worked my way down through

the various river systems,

into the harbors and out onto the coastline.

Usually I had no plan, just drifted.

And then I started to focus on Port Davey.

Of all the Southwest, this was it.

This was the spot.

(upbeat instrumental music)

How amazing.

So you've taken this

all sorts of places, rivers. - Yeah, I have.

But only since we came to Australia.

'Cause we bought it specially for Australia and New Zealand.

(lips blowing)

- [Mick] A very personal relationship with your kayak.

(laughing) - We're intimately acquainted.

Well, the great thing about this is,

when you're portering this thing,

I can just slip straight into the rucksack

and actually wear the whole thing up above my head.

It just stays on my back.

So I just put this on basically

and wear the kayak on my back. (laughs)

- [Mick] I don't mind telling ya. I reckon you guys are nuts.

(laughing)

- [Woman] No.

- [Mick] Well, happy trails.

- Thank you. - Thank you so much.

- Thanks, Mick. - Yeah.

And you remember the directions, don't you?

Turn left to Antarctica.

(laughing)

Hey, with no wind that thing goes!

- [Man] Easy!

You can even wear the thing!

(Mick laughs)

Coo-ee!

Burnie!

- [Mick] That was a wonderful period in my life,

a time when I was in almost constant state of contentment.

And why shouldn't I be?

In a space of five years, I'd cheated death,

dealt with a dog, and found a new passion.

It was the second major crisis in my life.

I'd given it my best shot and

I thought I'd handled it quite well.

Thought my Dad would be proud of me.

But it was also a time when I became a bit of a hermit,

not that I'd turn my back on my surfing friends,

just that our paths seldom crossed.

(upbeat rock music)

Even though my board gathers dust in the shed,

I'm still a surfer.

Still the go-to forecaster for Tim and his mates.

They were living large, exploring new frontiers.

In many ways, it was like watching my life

replayed in HD.

Up until now, life here has managed to fly under the radar.

But things are changing.

The world's seen what we have and they want a slice of it.

What's more, our leaders are more than eager

to serve it up to them.

I see tourism as a potential Trojan Horse,

a gift to be treated with great caution.

Either way, our way of life is being challenged.

And it's not just in the surf.

(waves splashing)

Then I was offered a job as a wilderness guide.

Greg was an old surf mate of mine who ran three days tours

from a standing camp at Port Davey.

He's a master storyteller who really knew how to deliver.

It was more like being on a surf trip

with no surf than a guided tour.

- [Woman] Out here on the rocks really.

- [Man] Here we go, here we go, look.

Here he is.

(people cheering)

- Whoa! - Hey!

- [Woman] Oh, whoa!

- [Mick] Even though it's very relaxed,

we cram a lot into a day.

Cruise around offshore islands,

stroll through ancient forests, climb some mountains.

(mellow instrumental music)

(birds hirping)

(birds trilling)

It's a great job but I do have some reservations.

I saw what tourism did to Bali and I'm very mindful of that.

That place is now a zoo.

This place is undergoing change as well.

Slowly, but it is changing.

It's all to do with people.

In the time since I was born,

the world's population has trebled.

And if you look at it from another perspective,

that means in the 70 years that I've been alive,

my personal space has been reduced by a third.

And that's frightening, that's frightening.

I mean, even here, we live on this big rock

surrounded by a moat, you'd think we're immune,

but we're not.

And that's our biggest challenge.

Not just for the Southwest, it's the challenge for Tasmania.

We've got to understand that not only do we need

to protect the place, the space as well.

(electronic music)

(waves crashing)

(birds chirping)

With the approach of summer, things couldn't have been better.

I was still stoked with kayaking.

The guiding season was about to start.

Tim and the love of his life, Kaitlyn,

had just bought their first home.

And for the first time in my life,

I thought about being a grandfather.

I was on cloud nine, living the dream, I was.

(mellow guitar music)

It's an exclusive club that no one,

no one deserves to be or wants to be a member of.

The ceremony involved a traditional surfer's sendoff

and Tim's partner Kaitlyn and I

carried his ashes down through a guard of honor.

Over 200 of Tim's surfing friends.

Tim's mates followed us out and formed a circle.

Together we held his ashes aloft

and scattered them to the breeze.

(waves rushing)

I call them rogue waves.

They come outta nowhere, at any time, from any direction.

Sometimes there's only one.

Sometimes endless sets.

And when they hit, they drag you down

into the deepest depths of despair.

It'd be very easy if you just gave in

and rolled over and said I can't take it anymore.

I don't think anyone could blame you for that.

My Dad, he couldn't work it out.

He rolled over, he gave up.

(propellers humming)

(engine humming)

A few days after Tim's service,

I had my first camp for the season.

Back-to-back camps with a three-day break in between.

(gentle instrumental music)

So I decided to stay at the camp during the break.

Spend some time on my own

in the place I felt most comfortable.

That was the very bottom.

That was three days of torment, anger,

pain, unrelenting pain.

I couldn't even think about the future.

To me now, the future was gone, no longer existed.

It wasn't there.

Not a place to visit, not a place to think about.

But I also found that instead of living in the moment

I spent most of my time living in the past

because the past is the only place that Tim was.

Solitude had been replaced by a bit of loneliness.

The natural world no longer provided solace

and I had absolutely no idea where I was going to find it.

(birds trilling)

(somber music)

I've always strived to be the master of my own destiny.

Probably one of Dad's legacies.

But I'm now beginning to wonder if

such an idea is even possible.

That the elements are overwhelmingly stacked against you.

That we're nothing but flotsam on the stream of life.

(water running)

I remember being on the Franklin River,

a beautiful place called the Big Fall.

I was sitting there when I noticed an area

of limestone bowls about a meter high.

And I soon realized that they'd been formed

by floodwaters spinning small rocks around

and around on the bedrock,

slowly but surely grinding the bowls deeper and deeper.

A process that had been in train

since before the arrival of Man.

(somber piano music)

It made me understand how completely insignificant I was

in the broader scheme of things.

The stark reality was that ultimately

it all came down to a collision of events

over which you have absolutely no control.

How many floods rolled over the top of you in a lifetime.

(insect buzzing)

One of the joys of being a father is

the handing on of knowledge,

the guiding, the nurturing.

Sharing in somebody's else's life

and just observing and participating in the joys,

and helping during the bad times.

(waves crashing)

That's probably the biggest loss,

having that focus in your life.

And trying to gain a new focus

has taken up the last six months of my head space.

So I've decided I out of all that to join the local board riders club

and offer just to help out in the contests

and the nurturing of the kids in their surfing,

and surfing skills and even life skills.

There's a whole gaggle of little six, seven, eight,

10-year-old, 12-year-old kids out there

who get a lot of joy out of hanging out

with one of the original pioneers of the thing

that they love doing, surfing.

(mellow music)

Half a century ago, surfers were tribal.

A loud, loose, politically incorrect boys club.

Today, there's three generations

and a lot of them are females who rip.

The tribe of yesteryear has evolved

to be more aware, more inclusive.

Still tribal but has a deeper, broader sense of community.

Kids sharing waves with their grandparents.

That's a beautiful legacy.

In my time of need, I was overwhelmed

by the way my community reached out.

We all have a story and when I listen to others

I begin to get my loss into perspective.

There's always somebody worse off

and you don't have to look far to find them.

Ironically, those who've been dealt the cruelest of hands

are often the ones who complain the least.

The ones who just get on with it, give it their best shot.

Having friends like that helped get me

through some pretty tough times.

(gentle piano music)

Being alone, that was the biggest hurdle.

That's when I was most vulnerable,

when the emotional demons came out to play.

But I was never really alone.

I had Atlas, my grand-dog,

happiest being I've ever known.

He leads a simple life.

As long as he's fed, sheltered and loved, he's content.

His attitude introduced a more balanced,

less emotional perspective,

one that made me realize that whilst I had

suffered a huge loss, I still had the basics.

I was still fed, sheltered, still loved.

That's been a significant lesson.

Focusing on how much I had, not how much I'd lost.

(gentle music)

When I looked back, I've certainly had a fortunate life.

I coulda been born in any number of hell holes.

Instead I was born in a place most can only dream of.

I've also been blessed with a long, meaningful marriage.

Experienced the joy of having been a dad.

I'm part of a caring community, surrounded by close mates.

It's been a great journey.

But not all journeys are plain sailing.

Sooner or later, fate's gonna throw some rogue waves at you.

And when they hit, you wonder how you're going to survive

let alone cope, but you do.

Even if it's a constant struggle, you do.

That's the thing with rogue waves.

They're just a part of life

that we all have to deal with.

It's just that for some they're eight foot,

for others they're 80.

The sobering thought is, there's more out there.

They're not done yet.

I often wonder how different my life

would have been if 60 years ago

I hadn't made that simple decision to see a surf movie.

Yet another question with no answer.

However, if I had my time over, with one obvious exception,

I wouldn't change a thing.

I mean, what'd be the point?

I never wanted to grow up anyway.

Not about to start now.

(gentle instrumental music)