I'm 65 and I've been shaping since about 1956, 12 years old I started shaping and then surfing
was just started in Australia and we were young kids and we were just mucking around
with everything, stripping down boards doing everything and then I was sent to boarding
school for four years and I didn't surf for four years and then since I left school I
was back into it starting and I worked for Qantas for three and a half years when I first
got married.
Flight steward, serving drinks on the plane for three and a half years when I first got
married because making surfboards there was no money so then and I had so much time off
in between flights I'd have like three weeks off so we bought a copy bus and we'd come
to Queensland all the time with I said to my wife let's just move here we moved here
in 1967, 1968 we moved to Queensland and lived in Burley ever since yeah when we first surfed
Burley here early days, three people, no one out, yeah no one around, same as Byron Bay
no one, no one at Noosa, it's just all to ourselves, for a good friend of mine said
the only thing you need to know is how to use your tools, it's like ah if you get taught
out then you're going to a certain style otherwise you don't develop your own personality
right, your imagination.
This and this so different, worlds apart, this sort of foam is more like snow skiing
and water skiing and snowboarding, it's more about being on top of the water, you skate
more right, where that is more in the water, you use edge more and it's far, you can surf
and far lighter, you know you don't have to put as much pressure on it because of the
resistance of it going into the water because it's so buoyant you surf it on top of the
water and then you just, surfing is about displacement right, the harder you push the
foam into the water, when you let go it's right, so because this is so resistant going
into the water, it has so much speed because it doesn't want to go into the water, so when
you push into the water the resistance almost goes like a rocket, like I ride nine foot
carbon wards and, also with the carbon because it's so stiff it springs steel, it's like
the springs on your car right, you push it down as soon as you let go, so you push the
carbon water to turn, as soon as you release it, and off it goes, it will have a longer
life, no the new rocker fish we're making is even narrower in the node, the wide point
is in a different spot than say your fish here, the big fish, the wide point is a little
bit further forward, in the rocker fish the wide point is in the middle, so this one here
is six foot, it's a five foot nine fish, three inches to the nose to make it six foot, and
that's what the point is, but if you were to go in here to be like a normal fish, takes
a little bit out of here, just a fraction out of here it takes, but tail exactly the
same, a little bit more roll underneath, twin V and then a concave in here, but through
here a little bit more roll, I just surf long boards, no foot all rounders, I've got a like
a sort of like a semi gun nine foot four, but it's four inches thick, a little bit more
pointed in the reef runner, a little bit more drawn out of the tail, so I can surf really
hollow waves on it, the thickness is so I can paddle in, as you get older like me, my shoulders
are going my back shot, if I do physio, every two weeks I go to a physio to get a massage
and adjustment, and he's been telling me to swim backstroke, every morning if there's
no surf, I just go swimming and swim backstroke to get my shoulders rotating and I do a lot
of yoga, special just sluts to the sun, just basically stretch it, so you're stretching
your back, you've got to surf as long as you can, it's such a good sport, it's beautiful,
it's just you're out there in the ocean and there's nothing going, oh this is really
nice you know, it's just someone out there going, oh I've got it, I've got it, I've got it.
