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Lameroo is a term that was used on the surfresearch site to describe a style of wooden bellyboard. The term empire boards has also been introduced by Geoff to describe the round nose bellyboards used in the UK, South Africa Australia and New Zealand .

The Torquay surf club has a board hanging from the ceiling which is labelled a loomeroo - more like a Froiseth shape style board. The league of lameroos was also a popular paipo site.

Here is another theory about the origins of the word: http://www.triggerbros.com.au/rod-sly/

Being naturally gifted with his hands and a perfectionist to boot, he quickly mastered the shaping and glassing and at one stage with balsa off cuts he fashioned a 4’6″x20″ bodyboard complete with laminated cedar twin fins. As was the custom of the day this futuristic slab of balsa was called the “Lou marou” perhaps also the name of a coastal steamer.

Here is the lammeroo:

ShipSpotting.com

© Gordy

Full size with ship name visible http://www.shipspotting.com/gallery/pho ... id=1672234

Bob

Poobah can fill you in on League of Lameroos...he's the first person I heard the term from.

My old website was the League of Lamaroos, spelled with two letter A. I got it from Surf Research Australia:

http://www.surfresearch.com.au/00000166.html

Maybe it's based on a photo caption, or a diary entry. I seem to recall that the term was Northern Australian, but I don't remember where I read that. It might have been somewhere in Surf Research Australia.

In my imagination lamaroo evolved from the rough ride you could get when you hit chop, and bounced like a kangaroo. That's easily way off base. I knew a guy that liked to invent his own words, and then he'd infect the rest of the tribe with them.

Hello Poobah,

The Northern Territory town and the kangaroo theories come from my site - http://home.brisnet.com.au/~bgreen/bgpage/
I think Bob Smith came up with the kangaroo suggestion. This one has more substance - I'm delving further.

Regarding the LoL (which now obviously has a different meaning)- the archives I found this excerpt"

"I'm a buddy of Rod Rodgers, and I live in San Diego. I'm finally going to do my website for paipos, bellyboards, surf
mats, and other alternative prone riding craft. It's a club I call the League of Lamaroos.
I've taken the liberty of appointing myself the Grand Poobah. The aim is to get people together to share their boards and
ideas at paloozas at various beaches throughout the year. Membership is actually for the boards, not the people who
own and manage the boards. It won't cost a paipo board manager anything to have his [and presumably her .Ed] board
join the League of Lamaroos. Just a willingness on your part to share your board (s) on special occasions, and allowing me
to list your name as manager and where (town, city or county) the board currently resides.
One final requirement is that the board have a name. Either formal or nickname. A human name or abstract. It is a club for
the boards after all. Lots of photos aren't a problem.

The website will also feature a section for the "Mothball Fleet". Those are prone boards that aren't ridden,
because they are wallhangers, Ebay sluts and museum pieces, but show up at paloozas so they can be
appreciated for their show and tell value.
The main focus of the League is to track the current activity of prone riding, promote camraderie, and the
sharing of boards and design concepts. Manager e-mail addresses won't be shown on the website (unless you
really insist). Inquiries will have to be routed through me, the Grand Poobah of the League of Lamaroos.

I chose to be Grand Poobah, because I thought the title of Webmaster was way too grandiose. In the context of time, my website the League of Lamaroos was between Rod's paipo website and his paipo forum. A transitional period. My site was focused on photos and board measurements. Each board had its own page. The background was a sort of a hippy dippy daisy pattern. There was an index page that had the boards nicknames listed alphabetically. Once the discussion forum went live and became popular, I decided the world didn't need two static paipo websites. I kept it around for a while for the sake of hosting photographs. Originally the discussion forum didn't have the option for posters to upload photos. but hey it was still a very exciting time....the days of the 1.2 megapixel camera. Woo hoo.

I confess that I poached people from Swaylocks. For example I think I poached Eef from Swaylocks. I came up with the name and concept for the League of Lamaroos while dring home from a Swaylocks gathering in Big Sur. 2003 I think.

I also poached people on ebay. It was easier to do back then. You could even go into old auctions and contact the person that bought the bellyboard or kneeboard.

No surfcraft was too humble for the League of Lamaroos...

cool larry

Poobah,

Shame that same capacity isn't around for ebay sold items. People tell me about boards and when I get to check them, the photos are no longer available.

Poaching seems fine by me. I've directed a few people to the forum, but directed people form here to Swaylocks as well.

It was a good idea you had posting the boards.

Bob

Fun people can usually handle more than one forum in their lives...so don't sweat it.

Nels

I was just checking on Vagabond Surf, and there are still some fossil remnants there. It's also the name of a Facebook Page. Somebody up in Canada.

Yeah, the old vagabondsurf.com site is still sitting out there. The goal is to take it down by the end of the year. I've had that goal for a long time though.

I call "Life Issues" on the subject.

I have technology fatigue, to be honest. Or maybe Jakeleg.

Nels

Nels,

Is there anything on the site that should or hasn't been preserved by Rod?

Jakeleg ? Does it happen often?

Bob

bgreen wrote:Poobah,

Shame that same capacity isn't around for ebay sold items. People tell me about boards and when I get to check them, the photos are no longer available.

Poaching seems fine by me. I've directed a few people to the forum, but directed people form here to Swaylocks as well.

It was a good idea you had posting the boards.

Bob

There is a good chance I have photos from eBay sales if there are some specific ones of interest, at least for the past 8 years or so.

Ebay photo snags...oh, how many of us have done that? I sent Bob a cd with a bunch a few years ago. Board porn! Can't get enough!

RE vagabondsurf...no, that's been really the big hangup in making the site disappear...Rod has kindly shown interest in somehow migrating appropriate content to one of his properties. I lost a lot of the hi-res backup files in a targeted computer hack a few years ago so it's basically whatever is on the site now. That includes all the Wayland material I've had. At the start of this year I was pretty laid up and looked into reanimating the whole site but the software the original site was created with is defunct and the hassles of setting up everything "new" again were outweighed by time and effort it would have taken. Limited time and energy was better spent at the beach.

Rod, if you're still interested, pm me or email me...let's get it figured out.

Nels

Nels wrote:Ebay photo snags...oh, how many of us have done that? I sent Bob a cd with a bunch a few years ago. Board porn! Can't get enough!

RE vagabondsurf...no, that's been really the big hangup in making the site disappear...Rod has kindly shown interest in somehow migrating appropriate content to one of his properties. I lost a lot of the hi-res backup files in a targeted computer hack a few years ago so it's basically whatever is on the site now. That includes all the Wayland material I've had. At the start of this year I was pretty laid up and looked into reanimating the whole site but the software the original site was created with is defunct and the hassles of setting up everything "new" again were outweighed by time and effort it would have taken. Limited time and energy was better spent at the beach.

Rod, if you're still interested, pm me or email me...let's get it figured out.

Nels

Just say when! We can figure out something. I think.

I was just tripping on the Waylo. It doesn't seem like it was really a dozen years ago.

http://vagabondsurf.com/WayloPage2.html

Yeah, a dozen years feels like nothing...in the mind.

And when you consider the average generic "surfer" lasts maybe 3-5 years of dabbling, 7 if serious...

I love the Waylo material. Is he still around, still making paipos?

I believe Roger Wayland has been deceased for a few years now. Nels and poobah would know details.

Sadly, Roger passed away a number of years ago while kayak fishing at Bolsa Chica; something happened and he just slipped over the side, gone in an instant.

Those were fun times...simple questions to him might be returned with photos of projects he'd never mentioned, things he did for fun or on a whim. He made a cool rolling workbench out of a rolling tool cart, mounting a vise and a couple of other things on it. Clean, compact, moveable, easy. Nice kayak "shed" that looked more like a high-end outdoor storage cabinet. Handboards and paipos galore. A paipo that he'd come to after reading tech and science articles...to which I sent him a net snag photo of the space shuttle Columbia at major altitude as it re-entered camera visual field...kind of a pixelated blob but the shape was nearly identical to the paipo. His various attempts at hydrofoils and subsequent reports of failures and successes. Discussions about water issues, a passion of his near the last. Books. Ah well....