Brad Farmer says he’s lucky to be born on the world’s biggest sandbox of our 11,761 amazing beaches and has had the good fortune to leave his footprints on more than most.
He reckons Australia is just one very big beach.
Like all Australians, he has a passion for our nation’s great diversity of beaches and our immense 57,000km coastline – a ribbon of gold where more than 80% of Australians live, work and play.
Brad grew up with sand between his toes in what was a naturally-blessed strip of coast known now as the Gold Coast, where his family first settled nearby in 1842 – long before the glitter strip became famous for its high rises and theme parks.
Since his salty childhood, Brad has spent a lifetime exploring Australia’s and the world beaches and doing everything he can to protect them.
Inspired by the beauty of the coastlines he’s travelled across some 30 countries, he has pioneered new realms of coastal advocacy. Brad founded many not-for-profit groups, like the award-winning Surfrider Foundation, Ocean Care Day and the National and World Surfing Reserves movements.
Now, after a storied life of research, he is one of the world’s leading beach experts and best-selling authors, celebrating the beach lifestyle with his long and authentic affinity with coastal communities.
In his 40 years of voluntary advocacy, from the smallest of threatened beach communities to the Australian Senate as a coastal adviser, Brad is stoked to be working with beaches – where Australians find their ultimate happiness – and the country derives a $40b per year tourism industry.
Aside from the great honour of being an Australia Day Ambassador each year, he was recently appointed Australia’s Beach Ambassador by Tourism Australia.
In 1990, as a young Greenpeace anti-nuclear campaigner in the frozen Soviet Artic, he was imprisoned and interrogated by the then Soviet KGB and released by Presidential Pardon, to resume lighter duties as our foremost beach authority and reviewer back here in Australia.
He believes that while Australia was and always will be the land of opportunity for all, now – more than ever – we are blessed here in the best country in the world, to truly celebrate diversity and our natural heritage.
He loves the great Australian outdoors and the warmth of Australian communities from the beach to the bush, the oceans to the outback.
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