Born in South Africa and raised in Port Elizabeth (renamed earlier this year Gqeberha), an hour's drive from the famed break of Jeffreys Bay, Anderson was already a sponsored surfer when he moved with his family to Newcastle, aged 15, in 2003.

His younger sister, Philippa, has made surfing her life too, but while she has carved a career for herself as a competition surfer and now a surf coach, Craig sensed another path fairly early.

He says he felt early on he was "never the best surfer in the water", and lacked a taste for the aggression and hassling that is part and parcel of contest surfing.

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But his unique and inimitable style (poetry in motion would not be an exaggeration) and his freakish ability to launch and spin a board high into the air and land it again with catlike grace and agility have let him to carve his own path to surfing success, away from glare of competition.

When surf writers describe this singular goofy footer (standing right foot forward) "arguably the most influential free surfer of all time", nobody really argues.

At 33, he is no longer the young prodigy. More the mature product on top of his game.

Still willowy thin with startling good looks framed by a trademark shock of curls, he's a man in charge of his own surfing career, no longer beholden to a career-owning corporate sponsor, and with a clear vision of the image he and his film-making collaborators are after as they move from country to country, from wave to wave.

The body has taken a few knocks.

Those stratospheric punts might land back in water, but aerial surfing takes a notorious toll on the knees and ankles of even the best.

Then there's the hard sea floor lurking under his favourite South Coast slabs, or the razor sharp coral of any number of Indonesian breaks, where a loose-limbed Ando, in boardshorts and sometimes a flapping shirt, stands deep inside the barrel of a spinning eight-to-10 foot wave for section after section, looking casually at the heavy-water mayhem exploding around him as though he is, literally, taking a walk in the park. Or that was the case, until a certain virus made its presence felt.

Thanks to COVID border closures and grounded airlines, Anderson is adjusting to life in one spot.

Instead of hanging out in tropical Indonesia or "freezing in a van" in pursuit of surf in Ireland and Iceland, Anderson is often as not at home with his fiance, Eloise Boughton, doing most of his surfing at Merewether and surrounds, with the occasional foray to the NSW South Coast where he and a coterie of friends can chase "heavier" waves in rural isolation.

He has also bought into a beer company, Steel City, which was unveiled in April as with a roster of Newcastle Knights legends as shareholders, along with Anderson and his Merewether pro-surfing mate Ryan Callinan.

At the time, the Newcastle Herald's acid-tongued columnist Paul Scott hoed into Steel City's "flowery marketing waffle" and its "commercial of blokes in hi-vis and hard hats doing steely things in factories", but managing director Oliver Semken says the product has been years in the building and that Anderson had been there "from the start".

As beer drinking is not unknown in the surfing world, having Ando and his Merewether Surfboard Club brother-in-arms Ryan Callinan as brand ambassadors alongside the Johns brothers and Danny Buderus and Kurt Gidley won't do them any harm.

And it's a side-play to his main business interest, which is a surf and skate clothing brand, Former, which Anderson and his American free-surfing buddy Dane Reynolds formed with US skateboarder Austyn Gillette.

While competition surfing is still the pinnacle of achievement for the sport's best - and that's increasingly women as well as men - Anderson says he grew up admiring those who broke out of that mould.

American Rob Machado, still ripping at 48, was an early free surfing totem.

New Zealand-born, Aussie-based Dave Rastovich, now 41, is another.

And the most out-there of them all, Tom Curren, who had 33 top-tier contest wins and three world championships under his belt before Rip Curl let him loose on The Search in the early 1990s, creating a series of films celebrating "the true spirit of surfing" in places Curren said he would never have seen if he'd stayed on the world tour.

Surfing has always had another, more esoteric side to it, and as surf industry backers realised they could still get value out of some of their biggest stars off the beaten track, rather than in man-on-man combat in surf competitions, the sponsored free surfer was born.

And the concept fitted Craig Anderson like a glove.

Initially, though, he was signed to surf brand Quiksilver - which with Rip Curl and Billabong make up the original big three Aussie surf sponsors - to compete.

Mark Richards surfed for Quiksilver and when Anderson signed on as a teenager the roster was headed by surfing's Greatest of All Time, 11-time world champ Kelly Slater. Slater left Quik in April 2014 after 20 years to start his own brand, Outerknown.

Reynolds and Anderson left less than two years later.

Quiksilver was having financial troubles at the time.

It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in September 2015 but by the time it emerged from bankruptcy protection in early 2016 the mercurial free-surfing duo were gone.

"I'd been there for the good times and it was time to mix it up and try this different sort of thing," Anderson said.

"We were confident about it, but we really didn't know how hard a slog the rag trade would be!"

He laughs as he says this, but it's been a baptism of fire for Former's owners.

"It's starting to take shape now, but for quite a few years we were being hands on with no experience in the clothing industry.

"We really didn't know what we were doing.

"We were struggling to find good manufacturers, going from China to Bali then moving it back to China, trying to manage all of that.

"When we first started we were very conscious about what shop our products sat in, all the visual identity.

"Every tee-shirt, I wanted it to look a certain way and I didn't want it to look to mainstream.

"Now I realise you just have to have your staples to sell.

"I feel like it will really hit its straps in the next few years but it's always been a passion project as much as anything. I wasn't in it to make huge amounts of money."

Reynolds and Anderson climbed - or should that be "aerialled" - their way to the top of the free surfing tree with their individual and explosive combinations of high-performance surfing, attitude, and that indefinable but indispensable quality known as "style".

No two surfers ride the same way but Anderson has such a unique look that he's instantly recognisable on film and almost impossible to mistake for someone else even in still photography.

And it's not just the trademark long curls.

It's the intrinsic style he brings to every element of boardriding, a loose-limbed, casual grace that means he is easily one of the most stylish surfers of all time.

And unlike competition surfers stuck on almost identical "modern shortboards" - three-fin thrusters with the occasional four-fin or "quad" - Anderson lets loose on a kaleidoscope of craft, riding twin-fins and even current versions of the original single-fins, as the mood takes him.

Surf writers trip over themselves trying to describe his look, to capture his essence in prose.

Think I'm exaggerating? Try this from Surf Europe magazine: "The most beautiful, aesthetically pleasing rider of a surfboard the world has ever known", with "an innate understanding of line and form not seen since Michelangelo".

In the internet age, everyone gets to share their opinions, and the Encyclopaedia of Surfing says "not everybody appreciates Anderson's style and approach; online comments and forums have at time savaged him as overrated and over-commercialised".

"But the surfing public mostly fell in love with Anderson, in much the same way they embraced Rob Machado, another thin, long-haired surf-stylist" who, as we have seen, is one of Craig's inspirations.

It's safe to say that very few of his critics will ever surf at anything like his level of ability and commitment.

Like the public commentary about him, Anderson says his surfing style is something out of his control, that once he takes off on a wave it all "becomes a bit of a blur".

Veteran surf-film maker Jack McCoy, who used other filmer's footage of Anderson in a recent clip he did for Paul McCartney (called Slidin', available online), says the essential difference between Anderson and most surfers is the way his back leg dinks in behind his leading knee, "streamlining" his stance.

"He never looks uncomfortable," McCoy says in the American drawl that is still with him 50 years after he moved to Australia from Hawaii.

"He is always stylish and style is king in surfing. The Hawaiians have always valued style and they see that in Craig."

Anderson says he did a lot of competitive gymnastics as a boy before surfing took hold, and says his father would "give you a long spiel about that being the big influence" - especially where balance is concerned - but he's not sure.

"It's a strange thing," he says. "I always get asked about style but I hate talking about. In my opinion it's so out of your control."

At the same time, he knows his unique style - and his aquiline good looks - are a point of difference in marketing terms and part of the reason why he's been able to carve out such a unique path for himself.

Philippa agrees that her brother doesn't like talking himself up, so I asked her for some observations.

Like him, she thanks her parents for their support.

She remembers "always running down to the beach trying to keep up with Craig and his friends" when she was "the annoying little sister".

A driven surfer too.

Signed to Rip Curl at 14, she is as determined as ever after half a lifetime in a competition singlet.

"We had very different approaches to life and surfing but as the years went on and all his movies came out, I really saw how much talent he had," Philippa said this week.

"It was like he was there right next to me the whole time, but when I saw him on the big screen and knew how hard he'd work to nail every single clip, I was like 'Wow, my brother is legit one of the world's best surfers!'

"To this day I'm mind blown with the stuff he does, and the way he stays true to himself within the surf industry, which I personally think is a hard one to do.

"We have very different approaches and our own life goals outside of 'surf, compete, win', but we both share that love for surfing."

Both have a sense of community.

For Philippa it's the joy of seeing people stand on a board for the first time, as she and her crew take them through the steps at Philippa Anderson Surf School at Nobbys.

Craig, like many high-profile surfers, has lent his name to environmental campaigns, including Surfers For Climate, one of the agitators against the PEP-11 project torpedoed this week by the Prime Minister.

"I would love for people to think a little deeper when they take a dive in the ocean or ride a wave," Anderson says. "Surfing is such a selfish pursuit that I think people get caught up in it, including myself sometimes.

"Line-ups are busy and everyone is out there for different reasons, but it's great when you see people sharing and hooting and having fun or finding some solace."

And solace is what Anderson finds in the isolated coast of the Great Australian Bight, even if a camera is watching his every move.

Some of his first magazine shots came with veteran Newcastle photographer Peter "Bosko" Boskovik, who Anderson describes as "very instrumental in the beginning".

Digital technology, the GoPro camera and the drone have made it harder for Bosko's generation to make a living shooting surf, and some days it looks like there are more filmers than surfers in the water.

Surf films and their shorter modern offshoots - the clips and "edits" that dominate the craft nowadays - have cemented Anderson's global fame.

He did a string of films with US filmer Taylor Steele whose 1992 title Momentum married hi-fi surfing and punk rock and revolutionised the genre. Castles In The Sky in 2010 was the first.

One of Steele's crew, Kai Neville, struck out on his own. Lost Atlas in 2011 was the first a string of acclaimed Anderson/Neville collaborations that included Welcome Elsewhere in 2016 and an Anderson favourite, The quieter you are the more you can hear, another Indonesian sojourn, in 2019.

Another surfer in that orbit, Tasmanian Dion Agius, has also branched out into film making.

Their recent collaboration, Dark Hollow, premiered at the Civic Theatre in April when the surfing circus came to town for the Rip Curl Newcastle Cup.

Full of Anderson's insanely beautiful surfing, interspersed with moody land shots and surreal images of underwater kelp beds, it's the perfect example of why people still argue whether surfing is a sport or an art or something essentially undefinable.

While that's just a slice of his surfing CV - which besides countless magazine articles includes an arty 120-page book titled Craig by Aussie photographer John Respondek - one wave he caught at the cutthroat Mentawi Island break No Kandui is perhaps his most celebrated moment so far.

After a big party at G-Land in Java to help Newcastle great Peter McCabe celebrate his 60th birthday, Anderson raced 1800 kilometres to Karangmajat Island off the Sumatran coast.

Not only had he "never seen waves that big and perfect and rideable", he took to the water at the height of the "swell of the century", as it was dubbed, on a board just 5'4" long.

As Stab surfing magazine - another prime outlet for Anderson imagery - says, that session launched the Hypto Krypto into the sales stratosphere, and it's still a Haydenshapes staple, in various sizes and fin formations, six years later.

No wonder Cox calls Anderson his "design muse".

"I guess that wave at Kandui is something to hang my hat on," Anderson says.

"At the time I thought nothing of it, but looking back at pictures of it now it's pretty strange and surreal. that picture I do find it pretty strange and surreal.

"Kandui has a pretty scary end section where it closes out (into very shallow coral-bottomed water) but you can get out of there if you go fast enough.

"But the first moment of that wave, when you're stroking into a perfect eight-foot wave, with ease, and there's this perfect wall stretched out in front of you. There's nothing like it."

Personally, I sometimes wonder why surfers with the ability and the means to be at home in the Indian Ocean perfection of Indonesian surf ever come back to Australia, and to Newcastle - as much as I love it!

Anderson's answer to the question is this: "I think I just love the community and my family and friends here, and even when I was travelling a lot I felt like I needed to check in and say 'g'day' to everyone, and give dad a handshake or a hug."

"I'll go for a surf at The Cliff when it's two or three foot but surfing in a public place puts me in a different headspace to when we're on the road," Anderson says.

"You don't make every aerial you try but for me it's not about the misses, it's about making those waves and riding them perfectly."

Like many of Newcastle's great surfers he's a proud and active member of Merewether Surfboard Club, as is sister Philippa.

Among many pics of them on the club's Facebook page is one of a blond boy in boardshorts and a wetsuited Anderson, tagged: "An awestruck Jackson Baker casually strolls past Craig Anderson."

That awestruck kid has just made it all the way to the top 36 in next year's World Championship Tour, joining clubmates Ryan Callinan and Morgan Cibilic.

"Craig has always been a huge inspiration to me, growing up as a grom in Merewether, how could you not look up to someone like Craig Anderson?" Baker said this week.

"His style and the way he surfs, it's just so different but so good to watch.

Coming up through the club watching Craig do airs and being so progressive in his surfing really inspired me to progress my surfing into that realm.

"I would always ask him questions about how 12-year-old me could me could learn to do airs and progressive manoeuvres and he always gave me the time and he helped me so much."

So that's our tour through Craig Anderson's world.

Last words to him: "I wouldn't call free-surfing hard work but there is an element of having to perform when everything lines up as well as the creative side and spending months on the road.

"When I was younger I would spend three months on the road, come home for a week or two to check in, then head off again. It was such a blast, and it still is when hitting the road.

"The unknown adventure, reading swell charts like a maniac, thinking you know what you're going to see and experience but it's never quite how you imagine it.

"People see a dreamy lifestyle in beautiful locations but it does come with a bit of weight and pressure when the conditions line-up - or they don't - and the cameras are turned on.

"It's something that I think of here and there, until I get to my feet and that's where it goes blurry."

The "blur" again. Craig Anderson, surfing as if his life depends on it.

Which, when all's said and done, it does.

MORE NEWCASTLE HERALD SURFING COVERAGE HERE

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