Pilbara-raised skate star rolls in to show biz

A young Pilbara-grown skateboarding superstar has joined the cast of Big hART’s newest production, SKATE.

Nixen Osborne, 18, was raised in Karratha and is from a skateboarding family. His uncle, Lee Ralph, was the first pro skater in the Southern Hemisphere.

Osborne said he grew up learning the sport at Nickol West Skate Park and got properly into it when he was just nine-years-old.

“My friends and I used to go to the park in Nickol before it was even completed,” he said.

“We used to get in trouble from the workers, but they ended up helping me out and letting me skate there even though I wasn’t supposed to.”

SKATE is theatre spectacle which fuses skateboarding, percussion and projection dreamt up by Scott Rankin.

Osborne said the show involved a lot of rehearsals.

“We help to come up with ideas that mix with the lighting, plus it all has to be to a rhythm because there’s a sound track, so you have to stay on beat,” he said.

Currently Osborne works for Totem Skateboarding as a coach and mentor in schools around New South Wales, but his dream is to make it on the world stage.

“I would love to travel the world and have fun with it all, that’s my dream,” he said.

“When I’m older that will change, but right now I was to try and succeed as a pro-skater.”

SKATE is being performed at the Cutaway in Barangaroo in Sydney on July 18, 19 and 20.