Meet The Brazilian-Blooded Snapper Rocks Local Aussies Are Claiming As Their Own

The real question is, which Olympic jersey would he wear? 

Born in Sydney’s Manly Hospital to Brazilian parents, Thomas Carvalho caught his first wave on a friend’s foamy at Freshwater Beach. At 10, Tommy moved back to Brazil as a keen and gifted soccer player. For his 11th birthday gift, his parents got him surfing lessons. “That’s when I became hooked! All I wanted to do was surf, that’s the main reason I chose to follow a surfing lifestyle as I had more fun surfing than anything else,” he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. 

The following year, ‘Tommy’ as his friends know him, returned to Australia and moved to the Gold Coast where he surfed Snapper Rocks for the first time during a HPC (High Performance Camp). “I love Snapper, it can be chaos, but it’s beautiful chaos. You can draw any line you want.”Shortly after he joined the Snapper Rocks Boardriders boasting an alumni of names such as Joel Parkinson, Steph Gilmore, Dingo Morrison, Jay and Rabbit Bartholomew. 

Tommy sings and plays guitar in his downtime while balancing his university studies in Exercise Science at Southern Cross University. He currently works as a strength and mobility coach at Holistic Pro Health, and was recently added to O’Neill’s roster after they copped one too many of his face gouges and decided his board had too much blank space. 

Ladies, gents, they/them/theirs, meet Tommy Carvalho.