Georgia Matts has saltwater in her veins. She was seven when she learned how to ride a wave at Wollongong's City Beach, her father keeping watch in the water with her.
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Born into a family of surfers, her early holidays were ideallic affairs organised around some of the world's best breaks.
But as the years and the waves have rolled on, Matts, now 27, has felt less at home in the sea.
She refuses to surf on weekends. The rest of the time, it's become something she says she has to pump herself up to do.
Somewhere along the way, she came to see that the surf was not the great, carefree leveller it seemed to be when she was little.
Women are not always treated well in the water, she knows now. And then there is "localism", a water-borne brand of territorialism, a sometimes ugly concept tangled up in rubbery notions of respect and entitlement.
"I understand the concept that locals deserve respect, but they don't deserve every wave and they don't deserve to treat other people poorly," Matts said.
"I also struggle to get waves because the men think I'm going to fall off and stuff it up, so they'll just [take the wave]."
On a trip north earlier this year, Matts said she was "chased out of the water" by a local sufer who deliberately pushed his board down a wave at her, knocking her off her board.
"I go surfing as an escape, but it just made me want to hide my face," she said.
For Matts, the issue came to an ugly head most recently earlier this month at Coledale Beach.
Matts says a teenage boy was repeatedly pushing to the front of the line ahead of her and other surfers.
When she at last took her turn, the teen went too. He fell off and called her a "stupid c---", Matts said, and later splashed her with water when she returned to the line.
As she went to depart the beach, Matts reported the encounter to the teen's father.
"His dad just turned around and said, 'he's a local boy', as if, because he's a local, he deserves to get all the waves, and I guess that's an excuse to talk to people in that way."
"That's all he said, then he walked to his car. As he was getting into his car I yelled out to him, 'so you think it's OK for your son to speak to women that way?' and he just shook his head and drove away."
Matts, a filmmaker and photographer whose women-in-surfing documentary was nominated for 2017 Best Video/Film at the Australian Surfing Awards, says she has been chastised for bringing friends to area surf breaks, accused of causing overcrowding for the locals.
"But I'm copping these messages from people who've moved here from Bondi, when I've lived here my whole life. It makes you ask: what makes someone a local?."
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