We are home, finally. In Hampshire, this morning, the sky is grey, and there is fog lacing the ground, like cotton wool.

We left an Indian Summer a week ago to visit the Amalfi coast, and we have returned to Autumn. The sky is raining red, rust leaves. The drive is carpeted with them.

When the children were growing up, the gloom of the winter months was mitigated by visits to Oz: we packed our cozzies and headed to the airport at Christmas or Easter for family, sun and surf. It is the history of our family.

Sometimes, though, we were unable to swim because of king tides – where storms at sea made the waves massive and dangerous. In the Easter of 2007, king tides hit the Illawarra coastline. The waves washed across the beach and into the carpark. Youngsters skidded, upright, across the sodden sand with body boards – it was as if they were riding on escalators across the expanse.

But down at Sandon Point, where the escarpment turns inland and the plains open up, experienced surfers were riding enormous waves – 15 to 20 feet. We heard through the grapevine, and headed down to watch the spectacle on a Sunday afternoon. The riders were being loaded onto the waves with jet skis to avoid the crushing white wash.

There was a coming of age film in 1978, when I was 16, called Big Wednesday. Great surfing mates grow apart, as they age and take different paths, but they reunite for the ride of their lives, one last time, for the perfect swell. The film was written by surfers as a tribute to their years growing up in Malibu.

Shaun, my brother, was a keen surfer, and a lot of my male friends surfed. My sister in law, Wendy, was a surfer, at a time when not that many women surfed. She carved the waves with the best of the boys. And she had their respect. I am afraid it was like that – sexism on the waves.

I was not really the Baywatch type. Too fair! I burnt, went brown and then peeled. I was not a surf chick. But I loved the sea, and I appreciated the skill involved in riding a wave without falling off and being pulverised.

I love the fact that my children love the Aussie surf. And feel at home swimming and body boarding in the great Aussie waves.