60 YEARS OF AUSSIE BOATBUILDING: THE BOATS OF ALAN GRAHAM
Alan Graham is another of those rapidly diminishing bands of Aussie wooden boatbuilders who has invested his heart and soul alongside his artisan skills in creating wonderful wooden boats. As with many of his peers, Alan is modest and unassuming, and needed some convincing to share details of his boatbuilding achievements.
It all began when Alan undertook an apprenticeship in the late-1950s at a boatyard in Brisbane. He has many memories from those times.
“There were no workplace health and safety laws, and it was common to use woodworking machinery without guards over pulleys, belts or saw blades. I remember assisting a tradesman by tailing out a hardwood plank that he was tapering at one end on a circular saw. A five-foot long sliver was cut off the piece and picked up by the saw blade to be thrown back towards us. It barely missed by the smallest margin,” he reminisces. “My 40-hour weekly boatbuilder’s wage was just under 20 pounds or $40 which equates to one dollar per hour. My, how things have changed.”
During his apprenticeship, Alan designed and built his first boat in 1958. It was a 12ft V-bottom canoe powered by a
