Welcome to the
Kneeboarding website of Simon Farrer, Australia.
My aim, and the aim of
this website, is to help promote the sport of kneeboarding through films
and encourage, motivate and inspire people and return to the art of
kneeboarding, encaputuring a group of surfers that love what they do and
who embrace the true spirit of surfing, having fun!!
Throughout the 1980’s and
early 90’s I felt starved of kneeboarding footage with only the odd surf
film showing glimpses of kneeboarding, post George Greenough films.
In the early 1990’s, my
now wife Rebecca, and I, started filming and collecting footage both
locally and overseas along with
footage shot by other photographers.
In 1993 I travelled to
South Africa for the first World Professional Championships. Not only
was this event healthy for the sport, attracting much needed media but
it also allowed a true international field to really spread their wings
and open their eyes to different approaches to surfing, styles and
techniques.
On this trip I bought
along with me a 30 minute tape of footage that we had collected over the
previous 2 years, stuck some music on and very basic titles. The first
showing of this tape was in Capetown 2 weeks after arriving in South
Africa at a house of a very unique individual kneeboarder/rap artist,
Bobby Rossouw.
Bobby throughout the 2
weeks had deliberately pronounced my surname every possible way ending
up with “farrow” which then turned into sparrow due to my skinny legs!
After watching this 30
minute tape with a house full of kneeboarders from New Zealand,
Australia and South Africa it was quite obvious that footage of
kneeboarding brought energy and excitement into the room. At the end of
this tape Bobby jumped up and began to give a rap rendition of the past
2 weeks that had gone down.
The one thing that did
stay strong in my mind was Bobby finishing up by saying “The Sparrow Has
Landed” on our shores. Since that moment Bec and I have had a passion
for documenting kneeboarding and the people that ride them.
The Sparrow had stuck and series of movies have now been made.
I have been surfing
kneeboards since 1980. Throughout 16 years of competitive kneeboarding,
I reached number 1 rankings on more than one occasion in Junior and Open
events in regional, State, Australian and World rankings both in Amateur
and Professional levels. During these 16 years and beyond allowed me to
travel the world competing and free surfing, introducing me to a broad
range of styles, board design and personalities within our sport.
