Bustin Down the Door

Watched a surf documentary last night titled Bustin Down the Door, which explains how a bunch of young Australians and South Africans (Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholamew, Shaun Tomson, Mark Richards and co) single handedly turned the surfing world on it’s head and helped to start what is now a billion dollar surf industry.

The film depicts how these brave, young colonial surf warriors circa 1975, traveled to Hawaii; with only the bare necessities and began their quest to make a living out of the thing that they loved most, surfing. Professional surfing at the time was non-existent and the competitions that were held in those days, only gave away a can of spam as the final prize!

For me Rabbit, now the ASP (Association of Surfing Professionals) president, for some reason, was the standout of that generation. I think that it is perhaps because of his brazen approach and the confidence that he had that “this is what he was meant to do”, which was even described in a self worded analogy, comparable to that of Muhammad Ali .

I had the chance to meet Rabbit when I was a bit younger. When the ASP used to roll into town, Billabong would often organize a meet and greet for the groms (young surfers) to meet their surf heroes; and while the other kids would line up to meet the heroes of our time; guys like Kelly Slater, Rob Machado, Andy Irons and the Hobgood brothers etc, I seemed to be the odd one out and the only one to recognize him in the crowd.

Rabbit at this point was the Billabong contest director; it had been over 20 years since he had been in the lime light and seemed quite flattered that I recognized him. Because I was the only who had gone up to chat to him, I had the opportunity to find out first hand what contest surfing was like back in the day.

What I really took away from this movie and from talking to Rabbit was that; these guys, didn’t let the fact that people thought they were ridiculous stop them. Because professional surfing was not yet a tangible concept they paved their own destinies by doing everything to make it a tangible concept.

Even if you're not that into surfing, the underlying message to break the norms, live ones dreams and to become the master of ones own destiny, makes it a must see.