Before Cheyne Horan became the ‘Kid Dynamo’ of surfing’s nascent pro-tour, he was the Australian skateboarding champion and a star member of the Coca Cola skate team. In 1976 the Coke team toured Australia, doing shows for the suburban masses in malls across the continent. Alongside future pro-tour colleague, Robbie Bain, Cheyne and a crew of hand-selected teens would jump, slide, and spin for crowds of cheering groms dosed up on soft drink. Eighteen-year-old, Stacy Peralta, who was amongst the world’s best, joined the team for a couple of the exhibitions. “I remember skating with him in South Australia, and he was just doing these speed lines, like going real fast,” enthuses Cheyne over the phone. “Where we were into doing, like, hooks in the pocket, like surfing and turns in the pocket…”

Cheyne’s skateboarding origins were a little more street-punk than the slick act he later had to maintain with Coke. He built his first skateboard in woodwork class at Dover Heights High School and bought a pair of first gen’ polyurethane wheels from Bondi’s local tool sharpener who had a side gig in skate products. Before Coke insisted on shoes, Cheyne preferred to skate in bare feet, and tricks were more urban anarchy than boy band choreography. A favourite bit of improvised fun for Cheyne and his four-wheeled gang was to find an abandoned car and make board straps out of the seatbelts. The same car would then serve as the prop for a trick. “We’d ride along the roof, jump onto the bonnet, and then off the bonnet, onto the road or wherever. And then we’d set something up as we went down, either a garbage bin or a box or something, to jump over the box.”

Skateboards were high value items for struggling kids from Bondi, ...