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Matt Formston paces the car park at Lennox Point in far northern NSW like a sugared-up kid waiting to pounce on the end-of-party lolly bags. Many goals have been set during the COVID-19 pandemic, some quickly broken, others set in stone. Formston has been dreaming of surfing enormous barrelling waves. He wants to stand inside a 10- to 15-foot screamer – for some arcane reason, surfers firmly adhere to imperial measurements – with a curtain of water curling over the top of him, the ocean spitting and snarling at the temerity of his intrusion.
Even in the madness of youth, when broken limbs are laughed off more readily than in middle age, there are no guarantees when a human flings themselves down the front of a big wave. In Formston’s case all bets are off: he’s nearly 95 per cent blind.