Matt Formston is blind, and grew up on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. A documentary on his life, The Blind Sea – which builds to him surfing the largest surf break in the world – will open in 100 theatres around Australia this weekend. I talked to him on Thursday.

Matt Formston grew up with Narrabeen Lake as his backyard. Credit: The Blind Sea

Fitz: What was your childhood like, and at what point did you realise “I’m going blind”?

MF: It was great. I grew up with Narrabeen Lake as my backyard, so my life was filled with swimming, fishing, footie, hiking, biking and surfing. But when I was five years old at St Joseph’s primary, the nurse took me from the classroom and asked me to describe the pictures on the back of the door. I thought it was some kind of competition, and did my best, but I couldn’t do it. They diagnosed me with something called macular dystrophy, which ended up with me becoming totally blind in my central vision, and about 3 per cent clarity in my right eye and 1 per cent in my left eye, just on the very edges.

Fitz: What approach did your parents take?

MF: They never told me I was blind – or at least they never told me I was different. The world was telling them, “Your son’s blind, he can’t stay in the mainstream school, he can’t still play football, he can’t surf, he can’t cycle”, but they insisted I could and would do all those things, and I adapted. In football, I was a very good tackler and when I switched to rugby union, when I was 11, I of course played flanker … on the blindside.

Credit: The Blind Sea

Fitz: Boom-boom. Folks, he’s here all night, try the veal! But I mean this seriously, how – with 3 per cent vision – do you tackle the opposing halfback when he takes off and – I’m not being funny – runs the blind? How do you work out how to tackle him round the ankles when you can’t even see those ankles?

MF: Well, I played roles that worked to my disability. So in rugby league, I played hooker. I was always picking the blur of white ball up off the green grass from dummy half, and running and passing. Then, as flanker in rugby union, I could sort of see the blur of the ball from the halfback picking it up, so I’d just go for him. I would get penalised a lot, and never be on the good side of the referee, but I was just good at that role, just being the disruptor. And if I missed the halfback I’d just keep going to where I reckoned the five-eighth should be, and smash him.

Fitz: I gather you were a bit of an angry young man off the field, too? Were you angry at being blind?

MF: No, I was angry at how I was treated. From high school onwards, kids would walk up to me in the playground and say, “How many fingers am I holding up?” But they’d always do it just far enough away that I couldn’t grab them. You know, I’m on the school footy team, I’m a good student, good athlete, but still had these kids picking on me and got into a lot of fights – and when I caught the kids holding up the fingers, I ended up breaking a few fingers. That was my way of dealing with it.

Fitz: So where did surfing come into that?

MF: Well, I’d been in the water my whole life. And growing up in Narrabeen, Dad was pushing me into waves, and my mum and elder brother are pushing me into waves on my boogie........

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