When he arrived in the West Sumatran port of Padang, after hitching a ride on a cargo ship from Malaysia, Lance was picked up by a truckload of soldiers and became the guest of honour at Padang’s gala “Tourism Week” celebrations (mainly because he was the only tourist they could find). But it was a small miracle that he made it out to the islands at all. The welcome he received in those remote islands and the wave he discovered altered the world of surf travel forever. Lance Knight was a salty old sea skipper down on his luck, having lost his job and his girlfriend in quick succession, when he decided to check out some islands just south of Nias in search of waves. His chance encounter with a Newcastle sea captain, and the friendship they formed, would change the course of both their lives. He was offered a small land grant and set up a trading shop in the village of Katiet. Pak and his family moved from the Sumatran city of Padang out to the Mentawai Islands in the ‘80s as part of a government transmigration program to disperse the Indonesian population more widely. Pak and his wife Ida would go on to host hundreds of surfers in their basic homestay right in front of the wave that would take Lance’s name.Īnd Pak’s simple act of hospitality, welcoming a stranger who arrived unannounced on their shores in a dugout canoe, represents all that is good and decent in the warm relations enjoyed by Australian surfers and our Indonesian hosts. Pak Hosein, the stately old gent who opened his humble home to surf adventurer Lance Knight in the Mentawai Islands back in 1991, has passed away.

Mentawai family surf camp