The 49-year-old, who is competing in the Australian Indigenous Surfing Titles at Bells Beach this weekend, has a life story that should have made him a household name. From romancing the granddaughter of a world leader to starring in a Hollywood movie and doing time in a Japanese prison, he has ridden life's waves. He's still standing up.

"He pushes the boundaries of everything, whether it be surfing, partying, telling yarns, living life, whatever it is he's always next level," says good friend and fellow surfer Tom Avery.

Page grew up in a rough Wollongong housing project in the 1970s and developed a sharp wit that has served him well and earned him a reputation as one of the funniest men in professional surfing. He says he had a lot of emotional issues as a kid and that surfing was his saviour. "Surfing was somewhere I could go for four or five hours day and let everything else work itself out," he says.

He qualified for the pro tour at 17, and now says of that feat: "There are only six guys a year that qualify for the ASP [Association of Surfing Professionals] pro circuit and there are probably 10 astronauts a year that are legitimate enough to go into space."

At first he felt he didn't belong on the circuit. "I felt like a ring-in," he says. "I was very young and it didn't make sense that I was there with all my heroes and now I was surfing with them. I questioned what I was doing here, but before I knew it I was beating them."

In 1987 he was chosen to star in Hollywood movie North Shore. His biggest tour win came a year later when he won the Pipeline Masters in Hawaii. Page was flying; lapping up the rock'n'roll lifestyle of the tour.

But in 1992 his lifestyle caught up with him. Japanese customs officials found an LSD tab in his wallet. He was arrested and spent 60 six days in a Japanese prison, half of it in solitary confinement. He was released to discover that the ASP board had suspended him from competition for 18 months.

Things got weirder. Four months later, while on a visit to a sponsor in France, he became romantically involved with the granddaughter of then French president Francois Mitterrand. "My life contrasts have been absurd, from jail in Japan to sitting in the presidential palace in four months," he says.

Things are a little more sedate these days, but Page remains a big name in the Indigenous surfing community. "Robbie has always been an elder for these fellas here," Avery says. "Growing up we always look to elders for guidance for our culture and education and Robbie Page was on the World Tour of Surfing and as young surfers that's the thing you want to do."

Page reflects on his life with a mixture of pride and astonishment but he's not done yet. "Surfing has been there for me and now I wanna be there for surfing and everyone that's involved with it," he says. "That's the number one thing to show the young kids, that if you go surfing everything will work out better for you."