Making the invisible visible.

If you’re up at the beach early on Friday mornings you might have seen a bunch of fluro-clad surfers and wondered what’s going on. And why the fluro get ups?

Well, it’s called Fluro Fridays and local gal Aimee Blacker who runs the Newcastle chapter of Fluro Fridays told us all about it.

Fluro Fridays is for surfers, survivors, and anyone living with mental health issues. The weekly get-together is all about tackling mental health with a simple recipe of saltwater, surfing, and fluro. And everyone is welcome to join in, just don’t forget a psychedelic t-shirt or fluro boardies.

As Aimee explained, it all started in Bondi in 2013 when Founder Grant Trebilco was diagnosed with bipolar. At the time surfing and the ocean were his saviours, and it was then he discovered that one wave was it all takes.

On a trip home to New Zealand, he went for a surf with his friends and family and realised that he just had to tell them what he had been going through. Once he told them his friends started piping up saying, well I have anxiety and I’ve had depression. All these people have things going on and no one is talking about it.

And that’s when he came up with the idea that one wave is all it takes. So he got all dressed up in a business suit, got his board and went surfing. He didn’t know what he was doing at all, people were asking him what he was doing and he said “I’m going to a board meeting”. Four board meetings later, Fluro Fridays was born.

So why fluro? Well, it was chosen to make the biggest, boldest, brightest statement possible. Grant wanted to be unmissable at the beach, he wanted people to notice them and ask questions about what they were doing.

The idea is that the more people ask questions about what you’re doing, the more you are spreading awareness around mental health.