The death of his father, Luciano, hit hard, and by the French leg of the 1992 tour, Occhilupo was hitting out at anything and everything, including himself.

The details in his 2008 autobiography Occy: The rise and fall and rise of Mark Occhilupo stop you in your tracks. Kelly Slater recalls despair as one of his childhood heroes tried to fight him in the street. Barton Lynch, the 1988 world champion, says: “He tried to spear me in the head with his board.”

Occhilupo later buried his boards in the sand during an event at Hossegor, France, to save lugging them back to his hotel, only to have a tractor run them over the next day.

“It’s hard, no doubt,” Occhilupo says of his willingness to tell these stories and confront his past behaviour. “And you do ask, ‘Where do you draw the line?’ about what you tell and how deep you go.

“There’s a movie company that is trying to do my whole life, and it’s … it’s a big project. I’d love to tell everything that way without freaking people out too much.

“To come out the other side and live the way I do now, to feel the way I do and approach things now, it took me all that drama to find it. I’m lucky that I’m here to say that.”

When Occhilupo retreated from tour life, the music stopped – what he refers to as his “Elvis years”.

Hiding away from friends, family and the world, his daily routine consisted of 12 hours of sleep, Coco Pops, chicken, chips, VB and daytime TV.

Days of Our Lives was a daily ritual as Occhilupo simply withdrew from the world. Long-time mentor Gordon Merchant, boss of sponsor Billabong, paid Occhilupo the whole way through in the hope one of surfing’s most charismatic talents would eventually return.

But at a peak weight of 105 kilograms, Occhilupo was too self-conscious to wear the brand’s boardies, instead opting for size 40 Best and Less kit for his daily venture to the chicken shop next door.

A similar funk had engulfed Occhilupo when he first returned from Hawaii. But after France, he disappeared from the world for 18 months, and to this day, still wonders exactly why.

“Why I got so far down, I still don’t know that I can really answer that question,” he says. “Mentally, we still don’t know so much about the mind and I like to think I’ve worked a few things out now. It took a while, but I’ve matured a bit. But it runs a little bit in the family.

“Mental health just wasn’t talked about much back then at all. I like to think I have helped a bit in that area and now those conversations are a lot better. Back then it just wasn’t a conversation and that wouldn’t have helped me at all.”

So Jack McCoy did. He wasn’t alone. Merchant, Occhilupo’s family and partner at the time, Bea Ballardie, were all instrumental in what came next.

“But Jack was the one that picked me up,” Occhilupo says.

At Merchant’s request, McCoy took the fallen star in on his West Australian farm. Then he took Occy on the road, put him in the water and on film.

Did McCoy believe in plus-sized Occhilupo before the man himself did?

“That’s the best question I’ve heard in the hundred-odd interviews we’ve done together,” Occhilupo cackles.

“Yes,” McCoy says simply.

“Occy arrived in the west with no confidence. We’d walk up a beach, miles away from everyone because he didn’t want anyone to see him. I’d drag camera gear for a kilometre to film him.

“And the thing is, he was still large Occy, still carrying weight, but he was still ripping! I had the stills and photos to prove it and with an extra few kilos the spray from his big carves and snaps was going a few feet higher and farther.

“He had to have someone who believed in him. I’m happy to say I filled that role. I didn’t bullshit him, though. From the heart, I thought he could get back on the tour.”

Through WA deserts, exotic Indonesian islands like Sumba, the kilos came falling off and Occhilupo came roaring back.

With McCoy’s cameras rolling, The Occumentary documented the revival as surfing’s first feature documentary. Then 29, Occhilupo fought his way through 11 straight heats to surf the final of 1995 Pipeline Masters – the sport’s most iconic event – against Slater.

“That was my lightbulb moment,” he says. “After making that final at Pipeline, that was it. I truly wanted to be back on tour and I knew it.”

Merchant remained wary, and wasn’t the only one to caution Occhilupo against chasing the pressure-cooker environment of pro surfing again. It had turned Billabong’s prized talent into a couch potato once. Would he survive if it happened again?

“I understood it,” Occhilupo recalls of his conversations with Merchant, who urged him not to pursue the comeback. “But I was not having it.”

So Occhilupo went and did it. He ploughed through a year of qualifying and returned to the tour in 1997. When he won the Bells Beach Pro in 1998, his first tour win in 12 years, he dedicated it to his late father.

And then in 1999, the stars aligned. First-round exits at Snapper Rocks and Manly were offset by a third-place finish at Bells, before mid-year triumphs at Teahupo’o, Tahiti, and in Fiji.

Always one for superstition, a rainbow emerged over the mountains at Teahupo’o just as the siren sounded on his victory.

So too, the inclusion of the fearsome Tahitian break, Fiji’s Cloudbreak and Mundaka in Spain in the calendar, all barrelling left-hand breaks that suited Occhilupo’s surfing down to the ground.

“I didn’t have any fingernails left,” McCoy laughs. “Or toenails either.

“It got down to something like 200 tour points between him and [fellow Australians] Mick Lowe and Mick Campbell [in Brazil]. The way the maths worked out, if they didn’t get through their heats, then Occy would be unbeatable for the world title.”

On October 16, 1999, that’s exactly what happened.

Occhilupo won the heat he needed to, took his coconut and disappeared while first Lowe and then Campbell went down.

At 33, he was the oldest world title winner in history (since topped by an evergreen Slater), with a couple of stories for the road as well.

“That night we went out to dinner – Billabong put on a party and I was still in the contest the next day,” Occhilupo recalls.

“So we got home after midnight and there’s this kid in our room and he’s stealing our passports. He had our passports in his hand and if we hadn’t caught him I would’ve been stuck in Brazil for two weeks, with a trophy and not much else!

“I still had to get back out there and surf the next day. I’ve paddled out and said to my opponent Peterson Rosa – who’s a good friend – I said, ‘Don’t worry you’ve got this heat’.

“He thought I was trying to psyche him out. But I’m there saying, ‘Mate, I can’t surf, I’m still drunk, I’m still celebrating’.”

Twenty-five years on, Occhilupo and McCoy are celebrating again, touring the remastered Occumentary up and down the east coast and pulling into the Orpheum Cinema in Cremorne on May 10, telling untold tales and sharing never-before-seen footage.

Occhilupo kept competing past the age of 40, the first to do so on the pro circuit, and announced his retirement one year, only to keep going the next.

He’s had his issues since, but has been in a good place for several years and is a vocal advocate on mental health issues.

“This is a good year for me, too – it almost feels like a testimonial year,” he says with a laugh, with Billabong releasing a new line of “Occy” boardshorts 30 years after he was too large and too self-conscious to wear them.

“What Occy managed to do was considered impossible,” McCoy says. “It’s truly one of the most inspirational and wildest stories in Australian sport.”

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