However, as pertinent as that one moment may be, it is likely that there is more to our lifelong addiction than a single event.Most of us will also have romantic memories of fully immersing ourselves in the culture from a young age. Enthusiastically adopting the lingo, the fashion, the music we most associate with surfing, and of course, the imagery from magazines and surf movies burned into our grey matter as powerfully and permanently as that mental clip of our own first wave-riding experience.

“Images are so powerful,” says Hollywood actor and surf coach John Philbin. “The power of cinema and images. When I was growing up, I saw ‘Endless Summer’ in black and white in my living room. And‘Five Summer Stories’ and ‘Big Wednesday.’Those movies changed my life.”

At 62 years of age, Philbin has cemented himself a place in surfing’s rich cultural canon, as well as in that of another, potentially equally fanatical society. Before he landed himself the role of Turtle in the1980s cult classic ‘North Shore’, Philbin played Amos, a young man on the eve of his 19th birthday who is about to be sacrificed to “He Who Walks Behind theRows” in Fritz Kiersch’s terrifying 1984 film adaptation of the Stephen King short story ‘Children of the Corn’.

“All I used to do growing up before surfing is watch horror movies”, he says.

Philbin fell in love with acting in highschool, a passion he took with him into college at the University of Santa Barbara.In 1980, following the death of his mother to skin cancer, he moved to Los Angeles and began studying theatre at the University of Southern California alongside some now well-known actors, among them Eric Stoltz and Ally Sheedy.

In 1983, Philbin landed his first movie role starring alongside Patrick Swayze in‘Grandview USA’, …

WAYNE CLEVELAND IS THE FIRST TO ADMIT THAT HE IS NO CHOIRBOY.

For 16 years he ran a drug smuggling operation that netted him millions of dollars, occasionally recruiting young surfers into the fold to serve as mules, until the long arm of the law caught up with him.

By his own account, in 2022 he is a changed man. On paper the Wayne Cleveland story reads like a classic tale of redemption. But in the context of a modern society is redemption really attainable? Can a leopard really change its spots, and even if it does, will society accept its recompense, or are we too quick to brand offenders criminals for life despite their efforts at self-improvement and the absence of criminal activity in their recent past?

At the conclusion of a massive, long weekend of swell on Australia’s east coast, Brad Sterlings at down with Cleveland to discuss the details of his rather sordid past, and to examine society’s willingness to accept that someone like Wayne can really be reformed.

When the ‘Bra Boys’ documentary was released in 2007, the world was introduced to a side of Australian coastal life that few knew existed. Located a few kilometres from the Sydney C.B.D, Maroubra was an urban jungle where homes, apartments and infrastructure spilled towards the beach. A massive stormwater drain was the marker for one of the most frequently surfed waves. Maroubra was, for most of its life, proudly working class and home to a seamy underbelly of crime, drugs, and violence. Long Bay jail is just up the road and in the rough and tumble beach culture many wore a ‘holiday to the Bay’ as a badge of honour.

“On one side of the street they’ve got million-dollar properties”, says Cleveland. “Rich on one side and the …