"Midget Farrelly: Man Goes to the Ocean," by Drew Kampion, ran in the March 1969 issue of SURFER. Farrelly was 25, and had just finished runner-up to Fred Hemmings in the 1968 world championships.

Originally it was because I could not resist surfing. I would have had to be completely insensitive to avoid the magnetism of the thing. I surf today for the same reason. I think, basically, we all respond to the magnetism. If anything, for me, it's become stronger over the years.

Do you surf for reasons different than, say, Nat Young or Wayne Lynch?

I am as different from Wayne Lynch and Nat Young in the way I surf as I am different from them as a person. Young has a raw purity about his attack. Lynch has a physical mechanism that is very different from anyone else’s. Wayne is very fresh, and has given goofyfooters a new meaning in their surfing. Farrelly we have seen for years, and he doesn’t seem to get any worse. I’d say that my mission is to do those things most surfers want to do on waves, but I want to add a final touch that is my own, which I will be able to do because I am myself.

So yes, the three of us surf differently, and for different reasons. But take away things like professionalism, silly little contracts, etc, and if the waves are ten-feet, with a light trade blowing up the face, we would each respond in the same way. We would 

What are your views on the Australian identity?

The leading Australian surfers want to be as original as they can possibly be in this unoriginal period in surfing. We don’t find any consolation in mimicking or duplicating trends or popular ideas overseas, other than those that are genuinely functional. I think the California surfer has accepted the fact that duplication, mimicry, imagery is the profitable way to surf. From there, he veers away from purity, originality, individuality. He may strive to be first, but he doesn’t necessarily look for anything else. I feel that California's great period of surfing was terminated when Phil Edwards gave himself over to the idol worship, hero worship thing that swept over California around 1961-'62. The surf media became so powerful that surfers after Phil, including Phil, felt they had to participate. When that happened, California lost whatever soul it had. But I don’t think that will be the end. I think there are many great young surfers, or young surfers who are going to be great, in California now. And while they’re becoming great, I think they’re going to avoid that same pitfall of obsessing over what other people think.


The Hawaiians are a fairly original bunch. They surf in isolation to a great degree, and they have to use their brains. The waves are vicious, savage, overpowering, awesome, and surfers there are truly men against the ocean. I think Hawaiians are gifted more than they know, because their waves don’t allow for the superficial and unimportant aspects of surfing. They’re commercial and they’re professional, like the rest of us. But basically they are fortunate in that it requires pure ability, physical strength, and well-designed equipment to ride the waves in Hawaii.

How important is equipment to your riding?

I spend most every day thinking about my board. I find that I'm influenced more and more by the type of boards that are needed to ride the bigger waves in which I’m becoming more and more interested. When you get into big surf, your equipment can differ as much as a prop-driven airplane and a jet. The speed you travel is so much greater, and this is where the true test is. For the designer, the builder and the rider, your equipment means much more in big waves. It becomes vital to your survival.

I think that there is a formula for surfboards, and the first element that you encounter, the one that keeps cropping up again and again, is speed. People tend to ignore this. They go off on a tangent on a specialized type of board designed for one maneuver only. But speed should always come first; you must accept it and design the board to go fast. This doesn't mean the board should be fast in everything it does. It should be so designed that you can turn, so you can penetrate up, down and sideways. But you must do it fast. Speed is the essence of the whole thing. Without speed, surfing becomes a collection of poses and gestures that mean nothing.

So for myself, I consider speed first, then after I have a basic board—plan shape, profile, and cross-section—I inject into the board those dimensions, lines, curves and all the other necessary ingredients to make the board perform well.

Both, and more. I think people’s appreciation of art, on the whole, is both confused and exacting. So it is with surfing as a sport. To some, it can be measured and gauged; to some, it can’t. You will not convince me that surfing is not art.

Is there such a thing as timeless surfing?

I think so, yes. There are many styles in surfing that originate and disappear. But there are some that, in their purest sense, remain valid today. Phil Edwards, at his peak, is the perfect example. His approach to riding a wave is still valid, although very few people seem to remember what it was. They associate Edwards with certain hand and head gestures, and his three-stringer board. But that was Edwards during the commercial era. Edwards before that, on his old piece of balsa wood, was a master of speed, timing, coordination, judgment, balance, position—all those things that coming together to create perfection on a wave. To me, this made a kind of art, an impressionistic art, art as motion, art as flesh and mineral. Edwards' surfing has stood the test of time. In the course of being interviewed over the years, I often bring in Phil Edwards. I don’t idolize the guy; I don’t think the way he handled his career in surfing was necessarily the right way, but I think that he contributed so much of himself that his wave-riding became artful. Now the photographer may capture a moment of what I'm talking about. But a photo cannot cover the whole concept of Edwards’ surfing. And his surfing to me was art; it was never sport. Never. Edwards is a pathetic sportsman. I don’t think he ever wanted to be one. He was an artist. But you will never see his art hung on the wall, or erected as a mural, or cast in plaster.

Not really. I like to say we [competitors] put our surfing in the hands of our judges and fate; and that’s just about it.

At the expense of sounding ridiculous, surfing doesn’t have a limit, and neither do my goals, nor my ambitions. But surfing will lead me as it will, and perhaps I’ll lead surfing a little. I analyze it, plan it, plot it. I try to experience all the emotions that come from being involved with surfing. So the answer is simple: I’m going to win six more world championships, and I’m going to build the perfect board, make a million dollars, and own a private break of my own. These things are obviously untrue, impossible, ridiculous, unthinkable, because all of those things create problems that the genuine surfer cannot afford. The genuine surfer cannot afford too much fame. The genuine surfer cannot afford to be isolated in his own break. The genuine surfer cannot afford to look after a million dollars. The genuine surfer cannot afford to dominate competition. He becomes an unfortunate, pathetic object of people’s attention when he does. The surfer must be pure, hard, calculating, precise. He must be a combination of a Spartan athlete, a technologist, a futuristic spaceman of the waves. Not so much an image hero, millionaire, champion, and success. This is the psychology he must take on if he is to truly succeed within himself in surfing.

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