Recently we have been inundated with pictures of young Australian men about to go off to fight in the first world war.

When we look at these fit young men we do so knowing what they could not when the pictures were taken a century back: how many of them would die, how many would be maimed, physically and mentally, and how many would be consigned to a premature old age of regrets, haunting memories and trauma.



They look at the camera assuredly, dressed in their new khaki or best civvies. They hold themselves proudly, with raw, almost boastful, physical confidence. War, of course, is the most potent reality check – the great leveller of masculinity – for young men who may believe in their immortality.



While the centenary talk and images of waste and tragedy proliferate at the moment, it’s wonderful to take a journey into the more recent past of young Australian blokes who, rather than willingly head off in their columns of thousands to fight a war, drop out to go surfing.



Arcadia – Sound of the Sea, a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, tells part of the story of the men who pioneered the surfing counterculture (on the water, in lifestyle choice, in literature and film) that came to grip Australia at the height of another imperial war, Vietnam.



Nat Young, a founding father of Australian surf riding, said: “By simply surfing we are supporting the revolution.”



And revolt – quietly, persistently, by dropping out, living by the water and wave riding – they did. This was surfing on the cusp of the commercialisation that would irrevocably change the sport, professionalise it and arguably dissociate it from its nomadic beach lifestyle fundamentals of sustainability and environmentalism.



Arcadia is a collection of photographs by John Witzig, the founder of the Australian surf magazine Tracks, and co-founder of the later SeaNotes (a surf mag for grow-ups that encouraged greater political and cultural discourse). It also features artwork by Nicholas Harding and film footage by Albe Falzon, Tracks co-founders.



Ted Spencer on the beach 1968. Photograph: John Witzig/Collection of the artist

The black and white photographs have it all: corkscrew blonde curls, agricultural beards, windcheaters and cords, chunky cable knits and Kombis galore. Hipsters in Brunswick Street, Braddon, West End and Surry Hills, take note: these guys paved the way for you. Long haired hounds – not least Wiitzig’s Afghan, Abu – are ubiquitous. But the oh so sweet context is always nature: the bare foot on the lichen-covered rock, the house built for $3 in the rugged dunes behind Cactus, South Australia, the bounty of a farmer’s market on the table in the surfer’s cottage, the gnarly banksias framing the swell. And yes, of course, the line-up – be it a Noosa, Angourie or elsewhere – and the crowds of people and dogs on the steps at Bells over Easter.



It’s an exhibition that reminds me why I’ve loved surfing for more than 35 years and why, despite my aching joints, creaky neck and my ever longer boards, I still do it (or at least try to).



Surfing, for me, remains the ultimate commune with nature. I was a kid with my first fibreglass board when Witzig and Young, Falzon, Harding – and all the other pioneers who aren’t named or represented in Arcadia – were leading the counterculture. I admired them from afar, through the pages of Tracks, a publication my mother saw as so terribly subversive and lewd that it was confiscated.



Some kids hid their stick mags. I hid my copies of Tracks where Mum couldn’t find them.



Bells steps circa 1975. Photograph: John Witzig/Collection of the artist

At my school, too, Tracks came up against the censor constantly. Somehow some well-thumbed donated copies made their way into the library. But the librarian, a man with a firm view of how to mould the minds of young men, imposed his own redactions.



Articles about dope or sex would be clipped and removed (to where, we never knew), while the occasional photographs of women wearing precious little would be judiciously, skilfully censored through the application and removal of sticky tape. Ripped off, like the skin under a swiftly pulled Band-aid, would be the nipple or risqué bikini.



I never surfed anything like the blokes in Arcadia, nor lived as adventurously. They were pioneers in every sense. The images of the Cactus house, including one with a man in overalls, his child out the sandy front and a woman in a long skirt by the outdoor stove, are truly resonant of a Tom Roberts colonial bush family.



But friends of mine, schoolmates, followed the Tracks and SeaNotes example by living good lives by the sea, and chasing their dream waves across the continent and around the world. I admire, perhaps envy, them for their modest but determined purpose, focus and lifelong connection with nature.



Arcadia is a welcome trip down a lane that is full of my memories of surfing as a young guy. It’s one that reminds me why I was happy to stand in the shallows last summer rather than surf myself while coaxing my little girl to stand on her board for the first time.



Arcadia is a reminder, too, that as we commemorate the harm that came to a legion of Australian men, that so many from a generation that followed burnt their draft cards and chose to go surfing instead.

