"Ballet on a Surfboard," Tony Pratt's review of Midget Farrelly's 1965 book This Surfing Life (released two years later in America as The Surfing Life) ran in the February 21, 1965, edition of the Sydney Sun-Herald. This version has been slightly edited.

We have underestimated the surfboard rider. He is a modern mystic, a perfectionist, a striver for the impossible. His ultimate goal—the perfect ride on the perfect wave—in unobtainable. Yet almost every day he searches his impossible search, wheeling and gliding in energetic ballet among the waves.

Why? Where is the fascination of it? Midget Farrelly has an explanation:

It happened once at Currumbin  . . . I was sliding off the peak into the deep water when suddenly I felt I could keep going and going, pushing on and on as though there were no end to it anywhere. You go into oblivion. Suddenly all your life is there in this long, long, stretched-out wave; you’re removed from the past, everything that has been on your mind has become immaterial. Nothing matters any longer but you and the board and the wave and this instant of time.

Even if he were not a champion, it is obvious from this extract why Farrelly is the high priest of surfing in Australia. He is articulate. He can convey the thrill of the sport to other people. He can put into words what many surfers can only feel or talk about to each other. (Surfers have a special word for the exhilaration of the instant on the wave, Farrelly's "oblivion." They call it being “stoked.")

Farrelly is an individualist. The nature of his sport, its emphasis on individuality in action and style, helps make him so. In this way, he typifies the general attitudes of the surfboard rider. He dislikes crowds and prefers not to join clubs or take part in surf riding contests. When he does enter contests he usually does not enjoy them.

The best is to get away on "surfari" to one of the further beaches for some quiet waves with a few friends—but not too many.

Like most surfers, Farrelly has a feeling of ownership about the wave he is riding. To have his performance spoilt by others on a wave is a real disappointment. This is a selfish attitude perhaps, but understandable. Once again Farrelly represents the surfer’s general attitude when he writes: “I like to be the only fellow on the wave because then there are only three things to think about—myself, the board, and the wave. “But if there is another fellow on the wave I have to think about five things—myself, the board, the wave, him and his board. It just clutters things up and is no fun at all.”

For surfers, surfing is important. Some of them make it their life. They work six months of the year to earn enough money to surf full-time for the next six months. After a day in the water, there are post-mortems on the beach, and discussions on how a particular wave could have been ridden better. The next time out they strive for improvement. There is always something new, something different. There is always a more difficult maneuver to be tried, another kind of wave to be ridden.

“You’re all the time learning how to do things," Farrelly writes, “discovering better ways of surfing and more ways to enjoy it. You never become so good that there’s nothing in it for you any longer. In fact, you keep making it harder and harder for yourself by trying to do more.”

Farrelly himself seems to have grown to a sort of surfing maturity. His present style of riding (functional surfing) attempts to use the wave, not challenge it. Many of the older surfers are attempting the same things, leaving the more flamboyant trick riding of their younger years for the days when the surf allows nothing more.

Farrelly admits the basic thrill of the sport is speed, the speed that is part of every wave. But this thrill of the speed for itself alone eventually palls. "What gives me the greatest kick is to be completely in control of the wave; to be watching the water beside me, to know what it is going to do next, and then to make the right move at the right time."

For the functional surfer, the successfully ridden wave is a real achievement. The surfer has merely done whatever was necessary, with no tricks or acrobatics, but he has done it so well and so fast that it is really something to see.

Farrelly’s book was written in conjunction with Sydney journalist Craig McGregor. It includes the usual “learning to ride” chapter and just about everything the reader would like to know about surfing. There are also chapters on wave formation and surfboard design, a short history of the sport, and a very necessary glossary of surfing terms.

But the book is most enjoyable when Farrelly is writing about himself and his own attitudes to surfing, and when he discusses his style and his part in several major surfing championships.

To surfriders, he gives this advice: “You’ve got to regulate, moderate and keep refining everything you do. All the time you keep pushing yourself, trying to push yourself right up to the limit and beyond it. I hope I never reach the stage when I’m comfortable. When you’re comfortable, you’re dead.”

“BALLET ON A SURFBOARD,” SUN-HERALD REVIEW FOR MIDGET FARRELLY'S "THIS SURFING LIFE" (1965)

Subscribe or Login

Subscribe or Login

Encyclopedia of Surfing

History of Surfing

Interviews

Features

The Sunday Joint

Videos

Surfboards