Bronte Beach is a mere 250 metres wide, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in beauty. Its bottle-green breakers – which can be wild and dangerous – are wedged between two sandstone cliffs in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. To one side are the Bronte Baths, built in 1887, and behind it lies a swathe of bushland filled with paperbarks, she-oaks and wattles.

Bronte, and its sister beach, Coogee, are also home to a new surf education program that is changing young lives.

On Saturday mornings over the summer months, the participants in the Dippers program – many of whom are neurodivergent and often terrified of the beach – are gradually encouraged, week by week, year by year, to put their toes in the sand or dip their hands at the water’s edge. With equal doses of patience and encouragement, they may learn to relax enough to put their face in the water for a few moments.

For Moorebank mum Chloe Alder, taking her two sons, Harley and Jasper, to Dippers has been life changing.

Chloe first noticed Harley was different when he was a toddler.

“He would obsessively open