David Simons needed 50 stitches in his head after being hit by another surfer at Snapper Rocks. Picture: Luke Marsden Source: The Courier-Mail
DAVE Simons is the bruised and battered face of southeast Queensland's dangerously overcrowded surf.
Mr Simons needed 50 stitches in his face after being hit by a surfer's board while swimming between the red and yellow flags at Rainbow Bay on Sunday.
The Gold Coast businessman and veteran surfer says he could have easily been killed and is calling for better management of busy beaches to prevent a rising tide of surf collisions.
He also says mushrooming surf schools, many of them run by official surfing bodies, are adding to the overcrowding, creating a 'war-zone' in the water.
Mr Simons, 53, was supervising his 7-year-old son Jake in a junior surfing event at the popular southern Gold Coast break when he was struck by a malibu surfboard.
"I'd come in and was having a swim between the flags and the next thing I copped a fin in the face - I didn't know what the hell had hit me," he said yesterday, recovering at home after his ordeal.
"My face was opened up and I was bleeding everywhere. Jake was screaming, fully traumatised at seeing his dad like that."
Mr Simons said the surfer who hit him alerted lifeguards but then disappeared, not checking to see how he was as he was taken by ambulance to hospital.
"That was pretty ordinary form on his part and I blame him first and foremost for his incompetence and lack of due care," he said.
"He's in charge of a potentially deadly weapon and he's riding it through the flagged area - just no common sense whatsoever.
VICTIM: David Simons needed 50 stitches in his head after being hit by another surfer's board at Snapper Rocks. PIC: Luke Marsden
"But I'd also question why lifesavers allow such a close interaction of surfers and swimmers like they do at a busy spot Rainbow Bay. If they are going to put the flags up, they should be stopping boardriders from surfing through the area."
Mr Simons said his injury highlighted the dangers of surfing point breaks on the Gold and Sunshine coasts.
"The water's becoming a war-zone," he said.
"There was a young kid carted off to hospital with his head split open not long before I got hurt. There are too many inexperienced surfers out there who can't control their boards.
"It's just lucky I wasn't killed or blinded, or that it was Jake, some other little kid or an unsuspecting tourist that got hit."
Mr Simons said too many surf schools were churning out too many inexperienced surfers who were learning to surf at already crowded breaks like Snapper Rocks and Rainbow Bay.
"You have surf schools ... putting thousands more kids into the line-up," he said.
"It's a recipe for disaster."
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