MEDIA

Thirty years ago, a lone bearded man on a surfboard paddled himself into the path of a 500-foot long, nuclear-armed warship in Sydney harbour and grabbed hold of the giant bow as it steamed past. The media pack, sent there to document a display of American military might, wound up instead with an iconic image of lone protest. The surfer was Ian Cohen: he later became a Greens politician, and perhaps more than anyone else he cemented the notion that surfers would mobilise to protect the environment.

The Protestor

Some would call Ian Cohen a professional protester and political activist in Australia. On Monday he and his surfboard took a five-minute ride on the bow of the USS Oldendorf as it entered Sydney Harbour - a trick he also performed a little over a week ago in Brisbane.

​

Yesterday he was in Canberra protesting outside the Federal Treasury Building about the World Bank destroy rainforests in Third World Countries.

Ian Cohen was waxing his surfboard on a Sri Lankan beach in the direct path of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Ten years on, the former NSW parliamentarian remembers the event and recovery operation that left him traumatised and killed more than 200,000 people across south-east Asia.

  The politician who said too much will return to the scene of the crime tonight. There'll be music and comedians at a fund-raiser for Ian Cohen at the Suffolk Park Progress Association hall, just south of Byron Bay.