Rusty Miller has led a rich surfing life. The US-expat, now Byron Bay native, has, amongst other things, been a US surfing champion, had an audience with the Duke, taught Elle McPherson to ride waves, and was there the day Uluwatu was first surfed. He was involved in surfing's initial flirtation with big business, and also present during the birth of Country Soul.

Rusty's life reads like an aquatic version of Forrest Gump, his travels inadvertently intersecting with many of surfing's Big Moments and crossing paths with it's brightest personalities. His story, however, isn't a work of Hollywood fiction, although the scriptwriters could very well have used him for inspiration.

As much by chance as by design, has Rusty Miller's place in Surfing's History been assured, and I recently chatted to him about two such moments. The first, a photo of him at Sunset Beach that, literally, became his calling card...

Swellnet: Who took the photo Rusty? (see pic. 1) Rusty: It was taken by Dr Don James. He was a dentist from Los Angeles and he was one of the original fellows to go out in the water with a proper 35mm camera. Being a dentist, it makes him sort of an engineer, so he made a plexiglass box which had o-rings so he could adjust the lens and it was properly sealed. He'd paddle that out on a large surfboard at Sunset Beach and sit in the channel and shoot into the peak, as he did for that photo. Incidentally, that shot won a Kodak photo award. At the same time he took a series of photos and printed them in large format and sold them in Surfer magazine.

But the photo went beyond the surf industry, didn't it? There was a beer that was popular in America then, Hamms Beer, and they used the photo for one of their ads. So it was put on a billboards all over America. It was on these 70 x 40 [feet] billboards next to freeways all over. Hamms Beer was a beer from Washington state and the slogan was 'it's the water that makes the beer taste good'. The fresh mountain water. So they used a photo of a wave.

It was funny cos I was lifeguarding in those days, and one of the places I lifeguarded was Carlsbad. And right at the back of my tower where I worked was a big poster of me. I got teased no end for that! But nowadays you go to the Gold Coast and see huge pictures of Fanning or Kelly and think nothing of it. I guess those billboards were the beginning of all that.

And there's another fellow in the photo? That's Miki Dora. That was the era that Miki was surfing for Hollywood. He was actually doing the stuntwork for Ride The Wild Surf, the first Hollywood movie on surfing, Those red and yellow shorts are the ones that they wore for the stuntwork for the movie.

Miki's thing of course was being a purist - a surfing purist - and on the billboards Hamms put a big mug of beer right where Miki is. A big mug of beer!

How did Miki react to being erased from the photo? He hated it! To him it was symbolic of commercialisation and how surfing was being sold out. You know Miki's trip? He was the number one challenger to surfings commercialisation and, to Miki, that was very symbolic of the commercialisation of surfing. Yet if he thought surfing sold out then, what about now?

But that's what I'm proud of actually, that that is Miki Dora paddling up the face.

It's been a very enduring image, why do you think that is? I really don't know. It just became one of those icons. It's funny, you don't think about it at the time, I was just there and it happened and yet that photo is still around. Like I always say, I could be a famous nuclear scientist, travelling the world, and people would still know me from that picture.

There's something weird about my trip though, because there's another iconic image that I'm part of. I was in Morning of the Earth, the movie, and that orange and brown logo that was used for Morning of the Earth, well, I'm the guy in the left hand side of the picture.

No way, I had no idea! Yeah, that's Steve Cooney and me on the reef at Ulu's. I went with Alby Falzon and David Elfick to Bali. Alby found Ulu's the day before so we all walked out there again, came upon that little valley and walked down through the cave. That was the first time, as far as we know, that anyone rode Uluwatu. When Alby was filming us he took that photo. If you see the film it's when Steve Cooney and I are walking out on the reef with our backs to the camera.

Steven was basically the feature surfer and I was the elder. Steven was 15 and I was 30. I'd just come back from the Islands so they played me as the big-wave expert. Except to me that was quite a test, cause all my mates weren't around - Joey Cabell, Mike Doyle - that I always surfed with in Hawaii. I was by myself and more or less responsible for Steven, so we went out for the first surf at Ulu's not knowing what it was like.

I only got about five waves in Morning Of The Earth though. It mainly featured the younger surfers of the day.

Well, you're assured of your place in history Rusty. What are you doing with yourself now? I live at Byron Bay, I've got two girls, Courtney and Taylor, and I teach surfing. I do, what they call, personalised surfing instruction. I also produce and publish Rusty's Byron Guide which is in it's 27th year. It's stories about the spirit and feel of Byron. We do a run of 65 000 which is a respectable print run.

To book a surfing lesson with Rusty, or just to ogle his amazing gallery of photos visit his site. Or if you are interested visit Rusty's Byron Guide.