World surfing champion Joel Parkinson’s house ransacked while he was saving the wretched during cataclysmic floods, “Some people just want to do bad. We rescued 30 to 40 people each as well as six dogs, three cats and some chickens!”

“All day I’d been helping people who were close to losing their lives and their houses and I came home to that," says champ.

It ain’t all palm trees and water so warm you feel like you’re sloshing around in mammy’s womb up there in northern NSW and the Gold Coast

There’s a dirty undercurrent of violence and ruined people with veins peeled open by the spike, brains scrambled by booze.

I lived there ten years, got beaten unconscious, attacked with a glass bottle by a famous shaper (the swing missed me and hit pal), got picked up on the street mid-fight with a drunk girlfriend by undercover cops who pulled her aside and told her, “You want us to hurt him? We can hurt him”, houses broken into, cars stolen, usual.

It didn’t surprise when Stephanie Gilmore got belted by a homeless schizophrenic junkie in the stairwell of her apartment in Tweed Heads in 2010.

Nor did it surprise when Mick Fanning came on the radar of a stalker who broke into his joint and sent him letters accusing him of pedophilia while also confessing her love. 

Today, biz as usual on the GC, when Joel Parkinson, returning from another day rescuing the wretched from floodwaters described as “one in one-thousand years” from homes around nearby Tumbulgum and Murwillumbah.

Parkinson, who is forty, came home, found the garage door open and his wife Monica’s car gone. 

“All day I’d been helping people who were close to losing their lives and their houses and I came home to that,” the 2012 world champ told the Courier Mail.  “There were so many people out there trying to do good but some people just want to do bad. We probably rescued about 30 to 40 people each as well as six dogs, three cats and some chickens. We went to one farmhouse that I thought was one-storey the water was so high. But it was actually two storeys and I was jet skiing over their cars to get to them. We yelled out ‘is anyone home?’ and this four-year-old kid in a life jacket answered the door. We grabbed him, his mum and the dog and got them out of there. Another guy was up in a treehouse with all his supplies.

How bad was the flooding?

“I’ve never seen the Tweed River looking like that … it was angry,” Parko said. “I don’t think I can look at the river the same any more.”