FULL CIRCLE
Dad was a fisherman and snorkeler who lived in the ocean, not a surfer. From a young age I was always in the water, either at Perth or Margaret River. My mum was quite the entrepreneur and had a catering company. In the early 1960s my future brother-in-law had a 9’6” in the garage. Oh my God, look at that! I thought. I could smell the board, the wax, the resin. I wanted to surf it so badly. To this day I can still smell it.
When I was 12, I wrote away to California to get a book on board making. I bought a blank and started shaping in Dad’s garage, an hour and a half from the beach in eastern Perth. Dad was a carpenter by trade and helped sand my first board; I was getting pretty good with my hands. There were only three surfers at school in 1971, the rest were bodgies, rockers and skinheads. By the time I was in year 11 I had a business selling boards and the teachers encouraged me to put posters up. The entrepreneurial seed was sown and I knew I
