When I went to school last century my mates and I were of the opinion that being a professional surfer was the world’s best job. This is because we had absolutely no idea what pro surfers actually did. When I became a journo on a surf magazine I discovered that most pro surfers live hand-to-mouth, chasing the contest circuit from country to country, bunking down 10-to-a-room in tenement-like conditions while awaiting their inevitable first-round defeat at the hands of someone like Kelly Slater.

After that they scrounge around searching for ways to cover their costs. Not the world’s worst job, I’ll grant you, but far from the best.

Still, we weren’t far off the mark. What my mates and I were dreaming of was the so-called “endless summer” – a way of being able to surf great waves all year round and not have things like reality get in the way. Believe it or not, such a job does exist. It’s called free surfing and if you’re unhappy in your job, you should stop reading right now.

“The job of the free surfer is to go out and surf for the cameras,” says Gary Dunne, team manager for Rip Curl. “These are extremely talented elite surfers who, for certain reasons, simply aren’t suited to competition – perhaps because of their temperament or their style of surfing.” Instead of making money from their contest winnings, free surfers are paid by surf companies to travel the world, surf great waves in exotic locations and get photographed doing so. “They truly live the dream,” Dunne says. “And in living that dream they get coverage for the brand that sponsors them.”

The world’s big surf companies (Quiksilver, Billabong and Rip Curl) maintain a small team of free surfers, who are paid between $50,000 to $200,000, depending on their profile and experience. Most are on fixed-term contacts, usually two years, after which they must show how much coverage they’ve generated.

“These guys are basically committed to surf,” Billabong’s Simon Barratt says, “to inspire people during free-surf sessions, to go on editorial and video trips to great wave locations around the world and come back with good material.”

So, is it as good as it sounds? “Yeah!” says Dylan Longbottom, who has been a free surfer with Billabong for 10 years. “When I tell people what I do they look at me and go, ‘You can’t be for real".

Now living at Kirra on the Gold Coast, 32-year-old Longbottom grew up in Kiama, where his surfing was shaped by powerful reef breaks. “I did the whole competition thing when I was about 20 years old, but it never suited my style. I was more used to pulling huge moves in big waves, so I couldn’t perform in 20-minute heats in crappy little surf.” Having bailed from the contest scene after two years, Longbottom now surfs as part of the Billabong Adventure Division. “I’m much happier inside,” he says. And so he should be. In the next year he anticipates travelling to Chile, Tahiti, Fiji, South Africa, Portugal, Spain and France. “Most trips are one to two weeks. It depends on the swell. Billabong has a full-time meteorologist whose job is to predict exactly where the best swell is going to be anywhere in the world.  When he spots one, we head off.” The company organises tickets, translators, ground transport and covers all expenses (naturally), “plus boats, jet skis and helicopters if we need them”.

Longbottom has made his name in big surf, but another Billabong free surfer, Dave “Rasta” Rastovich, is running a more “left field race”.  Based in Brunswick Heads, the 26-year-old Rastovich spends eight months of the year travelling, following storms and swells from Japan to Polynesia, usually in collaboration with filmmakers and photographers. Last year he appeared in Sprout, a film by Californian surfer and film director Thomas Campbell, who is part of the Beautiful Losers, an underground art movement in the US. Sprout was “just for fun”, he says; “just to contribute to the general stoke of humanity”. But he also helps out with projects such as 2005’s Wave of Compassion, a two-part documentary made in conjunction with Surf Aid International, which highlighted the issue of malaria in Indonesia. Then there’s Rasta’s recently released debut film Life Like Liquid, a freeform tribute to surf, sound and “living spontaneously”.

“I surf every day, usually on my own,” he says. “I’m not anti-social or anything, I just prefer the ocean’s company to large groups of people. I like to get away from the human world of contraptions and concepts and to feel small; to feel the fact that we are a tiny but integral part of this whole thing on the planet.”

Right on, Rasta.

In many ways, the free surf phenomenon is an “envy industry”, not dissimilar to fashion or real estate, both of which thrive on selling dreams. Just as we all lust after that waterfront mansion, everybody -well, every surfer – has at some stage fantasised about being a free surfer. One of the first surf companies to realise this was Rip Curl, which launched its Search concept as a potent marketing tool in the early 1990s. The Search took surfers to places that had never been surfed, capturing the cultural landscape as well as the waves.

“The Search is amazing,” says 21-year-old Rip Curl surfer Lee Wilson. “We just came back from a three-week trip to Tanzania, where we were the first people to surf this wave in the middle of nowhere. It’s all about the adventure.”

When not surfing in Tanzania or near his home on the Gold Coast, Wilson can be found in that renowned surfers’ paradise, Bali. “I’ll just get up in the morning and check where the best surf is and then surf and film all day, trying to get the best clips we can get.”

The lucky bastard can’t even nominate his best trip. “They’re all incredible. Chile was good; we did a film there recently. One day you’re in the city and the next you’re in some incredibly beautiful spot, surfing.”

Does life get any better? “Ummm,” he says, with infuriating indifference. “I guess not.