A phone call to Albi Falsan never fails to leave the spirits soaring.

On this particular morning, however, I'd caught him after a

session at Crescent Head that proved transcendental, even by Albi standards. Paddled out at dawn,

water dropping from his fingers like molten gold, head-high spinners the length of the point,

his only company, quote, the mushrooms, a group of old salts who surf

Crescent every morning at first light, surfing like a rocket into the setting moon, backlit by

the rising sun, Albi 75, threatened to break apart into his constituent, physical, and spiritual

forms. Albie first surfed Crescent back in the early

60s. He was part of the first convoys north out of Sydney, turning off the Pacific Highway

with little more than a few whispers to go by, stumbling onto point breaks like Crescent, posting

up under the Panda Nuce, and just letting the days melt away into the sun.

As a surfer who grew up on the North Coast, 25 years after this gold rush,

I suffer frequently from a form of generational envy.

It's not hard to feel I completely missed the boat.

The last time I was at Crescent, I couldn't even find a car park on the point and parked

two blocks back from the beach. The morning I called him, Albi was having none of this. I just keep

saying to people who go, you should have been here five years ago or 10 or 20. I go, sorry, but for me,

it's just as good, if not better. Everything gets better if that's how you see life. It's a state of

mind. I mean, the journey isn't the journey. It's the inside one. I think surfing makes you aware of that.

Albie drives beside the Belmore River to get from his place down to Crescent. He's been doing the same

drive for 50 years now.

And once he gets caught on the straits and starts passing the dairy farms and honesty boxes,

...