There’s clown-like joy in Kyron Rathbone’s voice when he sees a friend paddling into a monster wave near Marrawah on the rugged West Coast of Tasmania.

“OH NO! GO! GO! GO!” he screams before following through with what’s best described as a yodel of unrestrained laughter.

The friend was 300 metres away with white-water the size of a house rumbling behind him. His friend had no chance of hearing him, but when Kyron’s adrenaline is flowing, he just has to express himself.

Baby Kyron with his mum Tammy and surfing father, Chris. ( Supplied: Tammy Rathbone )

Kyron comes from Burnie on the north west coast of Tasmania where the waves are usually small and the adrenaline set to a strictly low dose.

Somehow, he grew up to thrive on the sort of experiences most of us would recoil from or not survive.

In the last year he has lived through the world’s biggest ever tropical wind storm, then surfed the waves that were generated by it just three hours later. He also made the cover of the world’s biggest surf magazine and other magazines around the world riding an enormous barrelling wave in Tasmania.

Kyron surfing a river wave, generated by a super-moon tide, in the jungle of Borneo. ( Supplied: Abdul Abdilibah )

In the same year he has surfed a river bore or ‘tidal wave’ through the Borneo jungle where saltwater crocs waited for him to fall and, of course, was hit by lightning in the process.

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Listen Duration: 1 minute 53 seconds 1 m 53 s Kyron explains what it's like to surf 42 kilometres down a river into the jungles of Borneo. ( ABC Northern Tasmania: Rick Eaves ) Download 883.6 KB

The rest of the time he just rode the world’s most frightening surf breaks like Tasmania’s own Shipstern Bluff and Pedra Branca, often on a stand-up paddle-board just to add to the danger.

Laughing at danger comes naturally to the 34-year-old and given the choice of the adventure or the couch, he will always 'go'.

Kyron hanging on in the clutches of a mutant wave at the notorious Shipsterns Bluff, Tasmania. ( Supplied: Andrew Chisholm )

However, the biggest challenges this extreme adventurer has faced in the past year were things in which he didn’t have a choice, like the cancer death of his best friend Alistair Snooks.

“My stepdad, my mum’s partner was sick at the same time so they both passed away within a month of each other,” Kyron said.

"It just leaves me speechless when I think about it. You know, Alistair was just an absolute legend and to pass away at 33-years-old just sucks.”

Kyron admits his own way of dealing with the loss was, ironically, to run. To keep moving, keep surfing, keep pushing his own luck.

“You can’t hide from it, that’s why I do what I do because you just never know when your number’s up. People die doing big wave surfing but then people die in car accidents, people die in their beds,” he said.

Kyron with his friends Al Snooks (left) and Zeb Critchlow (right), last year. Al died aged 33, after a fight with cancer. ( Rick Eaves )

Kyron spends a large part of the year based in the Philippines where he is engaged to local pro-surfer Manette Alcala.

They live simply on the paradisiacal island of Siargao, less than a kilometre from one of the world’s more perfect surfing reefs, Cloud 9.

They teach tourists to surf and ride stand-up paddle-boards as well as make videos for them. When the surf is extreme somewhere, Kyron has sponsors who are only too happy to get him to where he wants to be: in harm’s way.

Kyron and his fiancee Manette at their simple home in the Philippines. ( Supplied: Madonna Alcala )

“Surfing the river bore in Borneo was like a dream. The wave just keeps going, pushed by tide, 42 kilometres into the jungle. You can ride a wave for a half-hour at a time, until you’re exhausted,” Kyron said.

“The first email I got said basically it’s a saltwater croc-infested river and we can't find anyone else to do it.

“They had heard that I might have a bit of a screw loose and would I try it. I said absolutely!”

The trip nearly ended badly when Kyron blacked out after a lightning strike; but the images of Kyron surfing the river once again had him in surfing magazines all over the world.

Back in Burnie, Bass Strait rippled listlessly but local surfers with their heads inside surf magazines were comforted that one of their own was ever more a surf star.

Kyron rides stand-up paddle boards or SUPs, which are heavy and dangerous, where others wouldn't dare. He is the only surfer to have done it at Shipsterns Bluff. ( Supplied: Ed Sloane )

In November 2013, a lot of those same people were more frantically trying to contact Kyron and Manette as the super-typhoon Haiyan closed in on the Philippines.

The storm produced the strongest winds ever recorded, over 300kph, and was as big as the archipelago it was about to pass over.

All that remained of the local school after Super-Typhoon Haian in the Philippines. ( Supplied: Kyron Rathbone )

On the island of Siargao, Kyron and the Alcala family had no choice but to stare the thing down for a full five days before it finally hit.

“We’ve been evacuated left, right and centre for tsunamis over the years so super-typhoon was just another thing to deal with,” Kyron said.

“Everyone was freaking out. It was about five days before when people started saying it looks pretty serious but they’d already called off all boats and there’s two flights a week to our island. There was no chance of evacuation.”

The people of Kyron’s village headed to the hills and bunkered down. Fortunately the eye of the monster storm passed just to the north.

Rooves were lost and the storm sounded like a jet engine just above their heads, but the local damage was minimal, especially compared to the total devastation of islands only 90 kilometres away.

With no chance to leave the island, Kyron did what Kyron does and surfed the huge and powerful waves that the storm had generated, just three hours after it passed.

Kyron's best friend in the world is his mum Tammy, who has no reservations about her son's extreme doings. ( Supplied: Katrina Springfield )

At home near Burnie, Kyron’s mum Tammy enjoys every word that filters back about her boy’s deeds. Amazingly, she doesn’t fear for him, doesn’t worry. She is happy that he is thriving.

“She is the biggest legend in the world, my mum. She’s my best friend, she’s my biggest fan, my only fan,” Kyron said with a laugh.

Next for Kyron is free-diving, which entails learning to hold one’s breath in the ocean depths for as much as five or even seven minutes at a time. It can help in surviving a wipeout on the world’s biggest waves.

Just another challenge for Mum Rathbone to take in her stride.