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Whatsapp Former surfing World Champion Layne Beachley in action in France in 2002.

This summer marks a century since surfing reached Australian shores, shifting our cultural focus squarely to the beach. To mark this anniversary, as well as International Women’s Day, Sunday Extra speaks with surfing pioneer and seven-time world champion Layne Beachley about the pivotal year in her life: 1980.

The Jackson family dominated music charts globally, Azaria Chamberlain’s disappearance from an Uluru campground transfixed Australian audiences and John Lennon was shot at the entrance to his New York apartment.

The year was 1980 and the life of eight-year-old Layne Beachley (@LayneCBeachley) was thrown into disarray when she learned that the family she’d grown up with near Sydney’s Manly Beach were not her biological relatives.

‘There’s so many years that have defined me,’ says Beachley, but admits it was this deeply moving experience that was source of her drive to achieve multiple surfing world championships.

I have a natural, wondrous attraction to surfing because I deeply love it. I love how it makes me feel, I love what it does for me mentally, physically and emotionally.

‘My dad sat me down and informed me that I was adopted. That truly defined history, I mean, it defined my future,’ she recalls. ‘I felt abandoned, I felt rejected, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I felt like I was unworthy of love.’

After recovering from the initial shock, Beachley re-emerged with a greater sense of clarity and purpose.

‘It actually drove me to want to become a world champion,’ she says. ‘Quite honestly the thoughts that I had were, “Well if I’m not worthy of love, who’s love am I worthy of?" And I’m not going to go through life defined by the negative, I’m going to turn it into a positive.'

Beachley was a talented athlete and enjoyed a number of sports throughout her childhood and into her adolescence. ‘I was deeply passionate and very competitive about a variety of things: tennis, cricket, soccer. Obviously I wasn’t motivated by money, otherwise I would have stuck with tennis,’ she laughs.

A grommet from the age of four, Beachley threw herself into surfing, even though the sport was a male-dominated sphere hostile to female participation. Not one to be deterred, she embraced the taunts and exclusion thrown at her out on the waves and used it as fuel for her already fierce ambition.

‘What those challenges presented me with was once again an opportunity to choose, to make a decision: do I cower, do I put my head between my legs and go in crying or do I, you know, stand up and fight?’

In surfing she found both a professional future and an outlet for her creativity. ‘It enabled me to express myself as a woman and it enabled me to actually identify with how I fit in,’ she says.

‘There’s no deeper, burning desire in human consciousness than to belong and so I felt like I truly belonged in the water, regardless of the hostility that I encountered.’

After earning six consecutive world championships between 1998 and 2003, Beachley achieved her final victory in 2007 before retiring from the sport the following year. Her affinity with surfing and the ocean continue to this day.

‘I have a natural, wondrous attraction to surfing because I deeply love it,’ she says. ‘I love how it makes me feel, I love what it does for me mentally, physically and emotionally. I still actually participate in the sport every single day. It’s a natural and very necessary part of my being and my life.’

The Year That Made Me: 1980 Listen to Sunday Extra to hear former world champion surfer Layne Beachley talk about her life.

And what of Beachley’s adoptive father, the man who told her the truth as a child? Have they remained connected into adulthood?

‘He is my rock in my life. He is my number one fan, he’s the proudest dad in the world. I still speak to him a couple of times a week; I catch up with him once a week. He lives just down the street,’ she says.

‘Dad and I have always been very clear and supportive and unconditionally loving of each other. Even though he’s not a biological father to me, he’ll always be my dad.’

Of course, that doesn’t mean she hasn’t at times been curious about the identity of her biological family—especially her mother.

‘When I was 24 years old, I started searching for her and I found my original birth certificate and that informed me that she was 16 years old when I was conceived and 17 when she gave birth to me,’ says Beachley. ‘She was from Scotland, obviously her family had migrated here, probably in the ‘50s.

‘I didn’t know where she’d moved on to but that was enough information for me to be satisfied with the fact that it was just the wrong time. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time for her.’

Reflecting on her experiences as an adopted child, Beachley believes full disclosure is the best course of action, even where children are concerned.

‘I don’t think anyone ever is truly ready for that knowledge, so my advice to anyone that adopts children is to be very upfront, transparent and honest with them from the beginning because it’s up to the individual how they deal with it.

‘I didn’t internalise all of this information, I was willing to share it with people because I find that when you go through challenging times, if you silo yourself, if you become this little island, then it actually prolongs the pain and suffering.

‘I like to put my hand up and ask for help and share my troubles and challenges.’

Sunday Extra is RN’s live Sunday morning broadcast, looking to the week ahead and also incorporating Ockham’s Razor and Background Briefing.