By Phil Jarratt
Whether she’s out in the surf beaming at you when you catch a wave, or propped behind her big lens on the beach, thrilling at every good ride she captures to share with the crew on social media, Fenna De King is a Pacific princess, exuding goodwill every moment she spends in her happy place.
Born in Fiji in 1968, to a British government lawyer stationed there and a Euro-Indian mother, Fenna and her sister Sarah developed a passion for the ocean from a very young age, but the constant moving, as her dad was posted to different outposts of the Commonwealth, played havoc with her childhood.She recalls: “It was really hard meeting people then saying goodbye, and being in schools where you’re not there long enough to fit in. We were in Fiji and Australia more than anywhere else, and we didn’t quite fit into either. I finished year 12 in Fiji (where dad was now a High Court judge), and when we got back to Brisbane where we had a house, I was 18 and I’d really had enough of moving.”
But she’d won university entrance in New Zealand and was headed to Dunedin to do a science degree, so it was soon time to pack a bag again. She lasted a few weeks and came running back to the family in Brisbane. Next it was off to Townsville to study arts and marine biology at James Cook University, but despite the comfort of the warm Coral Sea, she was still homesick, and ended up at Brisbane’s Griffith.
Eventually wanderlust trumped homesickness and Fenna dropped out to work in tourism in the Whitsundays. She spent eight years in Airlie Beach, diving, snorkelling, windsurfing and working mainly as a charter boat hostess, where she met a deckie from Melbourne named Jason. Fenna says: “Hosties and deckies weren’t really supposed to mix, but we broke that rule a bit. We met in 1993 and lived together in Airlie for a few years, then moved down to Mackay. In Mackay our two sons James and William were born while I worked in newspapers selling real estate ads and Jason worked for the radio station, and it eventually got to the point where we had enough real estate to sell up and make a move to the Sunshine Coast about 17 years ago.”
Fenna had been into horses since childhood and had spent many years in dressage and showing, so from a base at the southern end of the coast she worked in a saddlery and the family hit the equestrian trail. But, she recalls: “It was getting so expensive we were thinking about taking up another hobby, and that’s when Jason turned up with a stand up paddle board. We thought we’d just be flat water people, because I had a real fear of waves, and Jason hadn’t surfed since he was a kid, but on the second day I caught a ripple at Cotton Tree and it was so fun. I remember coming up here (to Noosa) and catching tiny waves on a SUP at Little Cove, and then we met people like Josh Constable and just got into surfing, and it became an obsession.
“James, the elder son, tried surfing but he’s more of a skater. Will persisted and at about 14 he started to become quite a good longboarder. I got into photography because I knew what my capabilities were as a surfer, and when it got beyond my comfort zone I’d just sit and watch, and it was so beautiful I wanted to capture it. And then Will got pretty good and looked very elegant on a longboard so I’d take a lot of pictures of him. It kind of evolved from there. Now, if I’m not in the surf I’m behind my camera.”
Jason’s work for his company, Bongo Web Design, is transportable, so the family is constantly on the move, following the longboard comps up and down the coast, always spreading the love, and they recently moved to the Noosa hinterland to be closer to our point breaks. Fenna’s surf photography has improved in leaps and bounds in just a few years, and she now exhibits and has her work featured in surf magazines in Australia and the USA.When I asked her to contribute a few words to accompany a photo feature in a Noosa World Surfing reserve booklet last year, she wrote:
“Who would even have imagined that an insatiable passion for longboarding would uncover a slight talent for photography. Constantly learning, all I hope to do is replicate what I see in front of me – the undeniable beauty of the ocean and all who are in it, radiant in all its colours and textures. This is my happy place.”
See more of Fenna’s work at www.fennadeking.com
