Surfing was born in the UK, when, 50 years ago, a quartet of Aussie teenagers sailed with their surfboards over from Sydney

For a sport that has the air of a perpetual teenager, it could be forgiven for quietly ignoring this rather middle-aged birthday. But British surfing will celebrate its 50th anniversary on Saturday overlooking the Cornish swell.

From salty old veterans to sharply styled youngsters, the British surfing community will gather as the sun goes down on a headland by Fistral Beach in Newquay, Cornwall, where, it is now claimed, the modern board-riding boom was launched by four young Australian life-savers who sailed from Sydney in 1962 with the first fibreglass surfboards seen in Britain.

The coming-of-age event is part of a growing fascination in the roots of British surf culture, which this year has seen the launch of a national surfing museum, the revelation that Edward VIII may have been the first British surfer, albeit in Hawaii,, a 240-page history of British surfing and the launch of a lottery-funded oral history project to capture the memories of UK surf pioneers.

Like any good golden jubilee party, the bash will be steeped in nostalgia, and the Newquay town authorities are screening The Endless Summer, the classic 1966 surf documentary that charts the journey of two Californian surfers to Senegal, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and across the Pacific Ocean to Tahiti and Hawaii.

The movie's stars never made it to chilly Cornwall, but Bob Head, John Campbell, Ian Tiley and Warren Mitchell did. The consensus is growing that the arrival of these Aussie teenagers sparked the pastime's development into an industry and professional sport in the UK now valued at over £120m a year.

The four young Australians sailed on the SS Arcadia from Sydney to Tilbury docks in 1962 and crammed what are thought to be the first fibreglass surfboards ever seen in Britain into London taxis and onwards to Cornwall. They came in search of life-guarding work but, in their time off, amazed the Cornish locals with their ability to swoop 30 yards along an unbroken wave using their Malibu boards, a feat impossible on the British wooden planks.

"The impact was pretty tremendous and we ended up having quite a following," recalled Mitchell this week. "My beach was Watergate Bay, which was leased by the council to Ralph Doney, and after our shift, around six or seven o'clock, he would ask us to perform on our surfboards. He would sell Cornish pasties to the people who came to watch, and our payment would be a couple of pasties."

Mitchell was just 19 when he arrived in Newquay, but the four professional lifeguards were credited with dramatically reducing the number of fatalities, which totalled 19 the year before. They were also an exotic addition to the otherwise staid family holiday scene in Cornwall. Newly surfaced photographs show curious locals gathering on the cliffs to marvel at the Australians, their colourful shorts and 10ft boards.

"We worked hard, but the party side of things was great," said Mitchell, now 70 and retired in Derby. "Someone would come along with a keg of beer, we'd roll it down the beach and set fire to all the driftwood. That sort of thing was unheard of, but it became synonymous with us. If you wanted to do something different, you'd go down and have a beach barbecue with the Australian surfers."

They set the template for a surf culture in the south-west of England that has become a mainstay of local economies such as north Devon. There, the small group of breaks around Croyde and Woolacombe alone attract more than 40,000 visitors a year. They inject more than £50m into the area annually, according to a report funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Industry sources estimate that half a million holidaymakers try the sport for the first time every year, while the same number are regular surfers. There are around 30 surf shops in Newquay alone.

"Newquay has a lot to thank surfing for," said Eve Wooldridge, manager of the Newquay Business Improvement District. "Surfing is worth more than £70m to the Cornish economy alone, and is an integral economic force in Newquay, where hundreds of businesses rely on the sport. For this reason, I think it's fitting that we're honouring 50 years of surfing here in Newquay, where it all began."

But, during that first summer, the Australians had Cornwall's Atlantic swells to themselves. A few months into the season, Campbell wrote a letter home to Surfing World magazine in Australia where the waves were rather more busy.

"Conditions haven't been too crowded here with about six of us spread over 11 beaches," he wrote drily.

Their presence had a powerful impact on young locals in the coming years.

"In 1963, I was there, an 11-year-old kid starting stand-up surfing with a handful of men in Newquay bay," said Roger Mansfield, author of The Surfing Tribe, a history of British surfing. "It was an amazing thrill in the moment and, as it turned out, a life-forming experience for me. The elder surf-riding peer group, who befriended me, had not been riding the Malibus for more than a year. My research, more than t40 years later, has confirmed that 1962 was the critical formative year, both for Newquay and several other significant North Cornwall communities."

The local council thought the Malibu boards were now an essential piece of life-saving kit and commissioned half a dozen from local lifeguard Bill Bailey. Bob Head began to make them, too, and it was the beginning of 50 years of steady growth that has transformed Newquay and other towns in Devon and Cornwall into surf cities.

"The Aussie guys sparked something in 1962," said Chris Power, the former editor of CARVE surfing magazine. "They had been riding these Malibu boards since an American demonstration team from Hawaii and California came to Sydney for the 1956 Olympics. One of the beaches they went to was Avalon where the four guys were based. When they came to Cornwall, there were thousands of people splashing around on wooden bellyboards. When they saw the Australians riding along the waves for 30 or 40 yards, they thought, Wow, we want to do that."