When a word is so new it doesn’t even have its own Wikipedia page (unlike this word, or this one, or even this one), you know it’s not yet part of the common lexicon.



Planking - the art of lying face-down in unusual public spaces and capturing it on camera - is the favourite new pursuit of Brisbane electrician Richard Litonjua.



And it won’t be flying beneath the radar for too long if Mr Litonjua and his mates have anything to do with it. Already planking is developing into an internet craze with the Planking Australia Facebook group having almost 10,000 "likes".



Mr Litonjua, from Bowen Hills in central Brisbane, is new to the art of planking, having discovered it just six days ago.



‘‘It started appearing from a few Gladstone friends," he said.

"I’m from Gladstone - I saw it on their Facebook pages and had no idea what they were doing.



‘‘One of my friends put a couple of planking photos up and I thought, game on, and decided to research it a little bit."

Mr Litonjua started a Facebook group on Monday, called the Brisbane Planking Assocation, and posted photos of himself and his friends planking on post office boxes and on a train.



The group now has more than 160 fans and plans to get the term into Wikipedia this week.

Planking started to become popular several years ago in Europe and Japan, Mr Litonjua said, where it known somewhat clunkily as 'the lying down game'.



It started to become more popular in Australia after it was recently featured on The Footy Show, Mr Litonjua said.



But the Brisbane Planking Association is quick to distance itself from unsafe forms of the art, an example of which yesterday led to police charges against a Gladstone man (no connection, Mr Litonjua said).

''Don't do anything unsafe, use your common sense,'' he said. ''You wouldn't climb up and do it on the Story Bridge.



''Don't plank on something that’s much too high.''



The Brisbane Planking Assocation, meanwhile, plans to meet this weekend to discuss potential planking sites (''I wouldn't mind throwing a few planks around the Gallery of Modern Art'').



''There's a few shots of us doing it in a park across from the Pineapple Hotel [in Kangaroo Point] and we had basically the whole pub out on the balcony watching us, going 'what on earth are they doing?','' Mr Litonjua said.



''It's all about the photo and being creative and getting a laugh. While you're doing it you're just giggling and thinking, 'I look like an idiot'.''