RealSurf began life in 1995 as the Collaroy-Narrabeen surf report. In 1996 I registered the name RealSurf and for awhile I was calling it the Realsurf Collaroy Narrabeen surf report. As more people started to email me reports, I decided to just call the site RealSurf.com.

The whole idea for the site came to me shortly after moving to lovely Collaroy Plateau. Since starting to surf in ’69, I’ve been in the habit of checking the waves daily. Just before launching the site, I’d decided to learn a bit about HTML, so one day while scoping the surf situation, it struck me that I could share my check-out efforts with others if I had a web page…

As well I was keen to do my bit to decrease greenhouse emissions, so I thought if I could spare people a trip to the beach on the dud days, it might help.

And so the site was born.

A year or so after I began posting my reports, I got an email from a bloke who drove from Avalon to Manly every day to catch the ferry to work. He offered to post a few words to me so that I could put them on the site. (Back then I was changing the original html of the page every day). I was stoked, and that started a great friendship that continues to this day. The bloke in question is Roger Sayers (aka the Goat).

In due course a few other folks made similar offers and before long there were half a dozen of us sharing our reports on the site. Most of the original contributors have moved on to other things, but it’s rather cool that a couple of our earliest regulars (Leo and Brian) are still bobbing up from time to time – or, as in the case of mighty Matt from the Central Coast, filing almost as often as your correspondent.

to be continued…

How we looked in 1998 (thanks to the wayback machine!)