Lifeguards watch over Sydney's famous Bondi Beach. (Will Burgess/Reuters)

A star of Australian reality television series Bondi Rescue survived a broken neck in a surfing wipeout on Sunday.

Strong winds and heavy rain along the coast of New South Wales brought down trees, left 9,000 homes without power and resulted in the closing of two highways.

The weather also resulted in one of the year's biggest days of surf in the region, and 30-year-old lifeguard Kobi Graham was charging the waves on Botany Bay south of Sydney with group of professional surfers.

When a huge waved pounded the coast, Graham was thrown, head first, onto a reef, cracking two vertebrae in his neck.

Graham was airlifted to hospital where he is now in stable condition awaiting surgery.

From his hospital bed on Monday, he told Network Ten that he was lucky to have avoided paralysis and death.

"All I was thinking was — hoping, praying — that I had movement because I had these really severe shooting pains down my arms," he said.

His brother, Aaron Graham, said the injured surfer instructed rescuers how to stabilize his neck.

Network Ten is the Australian broadcaster of Bondi Rescue, a series that follows the daily work of lifeguards on Australia's famous Bondi Beach.

With files from The Associated Press