IT’S one of the most recognisable logos in surfing.

It’s the paw print of a Sumatran tiger and it belongs to Newcastle surf legend Peter McCabe, now 60.

Known to his friends as ‘‘Grubby’’ – a name that’s stuck since his days as a nipper at Nobbys Surf Life Saving Club – McCabe was one of the founders of the Indonesian surf scene.

His Trade Winds surf shop – run for a time with his good mate Warren Smith – was an East End institution in its day. In a case of the wheel turning full circle, McCabe’s boards will soon be for sale at The Junction’s Sanbah surf shop, owned by Smith’s son, Rhys.

It’s a good news story, but one that has been dampened by publicity surrounding a surf documentary, Sea of Darkness, that features a period in McCabe’s life he would prefer was forgotten: an 18-month stretch in a New Caledonian jail for his part in a 1980s’ cocaine smuggling operation.

He was caught with two other old Indonesian hands, Mike Boyum, an American who ran the first surf camp at Indonesia’s Grajagan, or G-Land, in Java, and a New Zealander, Jeff Chitty.

As McCabe told the Newcastle Herald this week, it was his only brush with the law and something he hoped was finally ancient history.

‘‘I haven’t [had] so much as a speeding ticket since then,’’ McCabe said. ‘‘I was involved but I didn’t do any actual smuggling. We got busted – it happened.

‘‘I did my time and I paid back everyone who helped me financially with the legal fees and other costs to get out of that mess.

‘‘I hope everyone realises that the person you are at my age is not the person you might have been when you were younger.’’

Rhys Smith is overseas at the moment but his father, Warren, said that his old surf-shop partner was an ‘‘unbelievable waterman’’ who was ‘‘in his element in Indonesia’’.

Looking back to that time 30years ago, Smith had no idea what McCabe was up to. He recalled how their business relationship fell apart after McCabe was jailed, and how it took some time for the friendship to repair.

As it happened, the bust coincided with Newcastle City Council’s decision to put $30,000 into a surf contest, leading to   Smith’s long association with Surfest.

Today, the world’s best ‘‘free surfers’’ can make a good living being filmed chasing the best and biggest waves on the planet, but in the 1970s, when McCabe’s talent flowered, it was contests or nothing.

 ‘‘If you look at Peter as a competitive surfer in his prime, I personally wished he would have pursued competitions a lot more,’’ Smith said.

 ‘‘But having had the pleasure of surfing with him in Indonesia, and seeing what he did in waves of size and consequence, he was in his element, and he didn’t need competitions.

‘‘He never sought anything beyond the best waves and the best surfing he could achieve on those waves.

‘‘When I think of Peter, I think of all those Indonesian kids clustered around him –  him teaching them to surf, and everyone, I mean everyone, knowing who he was.

 ‘‘Gerry Lopez was the king back then but when it came to Indo, even he knew that Peter could out-surf him.’’

Noumea, Smith said, was ‘‘a hiccup in Peter’s life and he moved on’’. 

‘‘All I want is for him to have the respect he deserves as a person as well as a surfer.’’