The Father Of The House

The Father of the House. It's an honorific used in many institutions: print-making, parliament, to denote the oldest or longest-serving member. The person holding the title is expected to use their experience to mentor and guide those who are new to the field. With fifty years of shaping experience behind him, plus having trained many generations of surfboard shapers, it's a title that can also be bestowed on Murray Bourton.

For a shaper whose business is so closely associated with the Gold Coast, Murray Bourton’s life started far from Queensland’s sun-kissed strip of sand. These days, Cobden is considered the heart of Victoria’s dairy industry - it’s the home of Western Star Butter after all - but back in the 1950s it was a two-pub town amidst the patchwork of green paddocks that made up Victoria’s south-western farmlands. It's also where young Muzz was born.

“Just cows, cows, and more fucking cows,” is how Muzz describes his childhood hometown.

Despite his fondness for bovines, the Bourton’s weren’t farming stock. Bourton Senior owned a bric-a-brac retail store selling all manner of items: fishing rods, guns, crockery, TV sets, almost anything could be found on the shelves of their store. It was somewhat of a forerunner to the modern supermarket and townsfolk came to rely on it, especially the returned WWII servicemen who were given land down that way and knew as much about farming as young Murray did.

“Dad was always helping people out, showing people how to use things, or being generous when money was tight,” recalls Muzz, and it’s tempting to see how his Dad’s community spirit would influence Murray’s own commercial enterprise years later. That may be the case, or then again it may be the storyteller overplaying his hand, but what can’t be argued is another influence that was passed from father to son.

“Cobden is twenty miles from the coast, and he loved to go down there fishing. I’d tag along and I grew to love the ocean too.”

However, the ocean south of Cobden is not as inviting to kids as the Gold Coast, Sydney, or even Torquay. The 150 kilometres of coastline between Port Macdonnell and Cape Otway is Australia’s Shipwreck Coast, named with good reason as over 240 wrecks are strewn along the rocky shore. The coast faces into the Roaring Forties and is mostly cliffs; it has no natural harbours and only a few safe anchorages to spare a stricken vessel.

Even in this wild corner of Australia, where the water is cold and the ocean inhospitable, surfing got an early toehold. Before he got his license, Muzz would cadge lifts from Cobden with older surfers, including Keith Halford who was a few years ahead of him at school.

“Keith was the first one surfing down that way. This was the early-1960s and I was alien to it, but because I gravitated to those guys then I started surfing too. I wasn't a bad surfer, so they didn't mind taking me with them, meaning I got free rides everywhere and hung out with the older guys.”

At left, the view from Port Campbell pier with teenage Muzz taking in the windswept lineup, while at right are a bunch of likely lads sporting Victorian surfing fashion du jour: roll-neck sweaters, too-short jeans, and gym boots. Furthest left is Keith Halford, then David Bourton, Muzz is the grinning imp in black, while Jeff Arnold is furthest right.

Keith’s name pops up often in Murray’s story, as both moved to the Gold Coast and worked in the surf industry. Muzz with boards, Keith with fabrics, first with Bang Bang clothing company and later with Headworx. At one point, Murray was also a partner in Headworx though that’s all decades into the future. When the two teenagers began surfing, the industry was in its infancy: the boards were crude, wetsuits and legropes non-existent, yet there were waves to ride and so Murray and Keith and a few other local kids rode them. For the record, Muzz reckons he and his mates were the first to lay tracks at Gibson’s Steps - which was one of his dad’s favourite fishing spots - and also at the left off Massacres, later called Lynchy's Left though this was well before Wayne ever surfed it, though he can’t say the same for the most famous wave on the Shipwreck Coast.

“No mate, in fact I’ve never surfed Two Mile. I remember we used to go up the rifle range and just watch it on these mega days when the waves were twenty or thirty feet high, just roaring, and we'd look at it gobsmacked. We’d imagine what it might be like but never dared to go out there.”

Instead, Port Cambell pier became the Cobden local’s local, though they often roamed along the Great Ocean Road, sometimes as far as Port Fairy, Portland, or Warrnambool, where Murray met a young Maurice Cole. Similar to his relationship with Keith, MC would feature in Murray’s future as their lives diverged then intersected many decades later when they both worked at BASE, the now-defunct shaper’s collective.

Approaching his twenties, and after a short stint in Teachers College at Ballarat when he’d hitch back home on weekends, Muzz started getting itchy feet, driven in no small part by the nature of the Shipwreck Coast.

“It can be beautiful, but it’s also really hostile, and also really, really fucking cold in winter.”

At first, Muzz moved to Torquay, working odd jobs in a phosphate factory and a metalworks just to keep surfing. He did a few trips north and got a sense of how easy beach life can be when it’s warm. Not to put too fine a point on it, but as Muzz says: “It was those fucking south-westerlies that set in from April to November - that’s what drove me north. It’s a long time to sit down, look at dreary skies, and be stuck inside.”

In 1969 he was driving down a street on the Gold Coast and had a sudden revelation: “I just thought to myself, ‘I'm home’. For the first time, I've got something in common with everybody here. They're not beer-drinking farmers and they're not skinhead-fucking-rockers looking to beat me up because I had long hair.”

Goodbye Massacres and Gibson Steps, hello Rainbow Bay and Palm Beach.

But he didn't go straight to the Goldy. That'd be too simple. Muzz first spent some time in Angourie with Paul Woods, known to all as Rooster, a good mate from Western Australia. Rooster was in the WA surf team that had come over to surf at Bells and the two hooked up and set the compass north. Having worked at Jacko Surfboards in Perth, Rooster knew a bit about making boards and he shared his knowledge with Dennis McPherson who was just getting his operation going at Palmers Island. "I'm a country boy at heart, and that was a warm country environment that I should have settled into." Instead, fate propelled him even further north, though whenever the soundtrack to Morning of the Earth comes on, Muzz shows his sentimental side and wonders about what could've been had he stayed at Angourie and become a point regular.

But let’s not overdo the fantasy bit. During this stage of Muzz’ life, there are equal amounts of shadows as there are rays of light. First was a marriage which delivered two bundles of joy - Summer and Skye ("Hippie names," chuckles Muzz) - followed later by a not-so-pretty divorce. Second was a brush with the army that, courtesy of amateur theatrics, ended with a physical and mental discharge. Third was a criminal charge for selling a matchbox full of marijuana with the judge demanding Muzz repay his debt to society with eight months behind bars - a path that old mate Maurice Cole would follow a few years later, though his ‘debt’ would be two years.

When 1969 ticked over to 1970, Muzz found himself in a new decade, living in a different state, with a better climate. Reinvention was the order of the day, so he considered a new skill-set too: surfboard shaping. Problem was he couldn’t shape and had no-one to teach him.

A quick stint as a ding fixer with Graeme Merrin ended when the factory burnt down in suspicious circumstances, and then Murray fell in with Ross Hillier who was the older brother of one of his friends.

“The deal was this: I’d work hard while Ross would swing in a hammock all day, then at the end of the week we'd go halves in the takings [laughs]. Basically, I was the picaninny running around doing all the stuff.”

“Still, it was the start I needed and I thank Ross for that.”

The next few years were Murray’s ‘sponge’ years, spent soaking up all the knowledge he could, from Gordon Merchant’s rails to MP’s planshapes, applying them to his own designs and seeing how they worked. He was still a fringe shaper amongst the greats of the era, yet from a non-descript shack in Fingal he started a board brand called Mars Bars which later evolved into Pipe Dream surfboards, a label name that may as well have been describing Muzz’ lofty shaping ambitions.

Photos from the shaping bay wall, all taken during the early-70s, as you can tell by Murray's clothing and hair care. The boards were all MARS, and the two at right were sprayed by Keith Halford who, in an era led by spray artists such as Martyn Worthington, Shane Egan, and Jim Davidson, showed himself to be an equal talent.

One of the first surfers Murray sponsored was Jeremy Oxley, a hot young Kingscliff surfer who in 1975 became Queensland's state schoolboy champion, though most people would know him as the lead singer of the Sunnyboys. “Guy Ormerod was another early test pilot, and a talented one too. Guy caught the eye of publishers Bruce Channon and Hugh McLeod when they were looking north in order to decentralise Surfing World, which had become Sydney-centric."

For one feature, Bruce and Hugh took Guy up to North Stradbroke Island where the water colour complemented the blue spray of Guy's board. However, it wasn't the only thing about the board that stood out. With Bruce taking water shots among the Main Beach peaks, Guy came roaring down the line looking to give him a face full of rail spray. Just before it arrived, Bruce pulled the trigger. The resulting shot, which ended up a centrespread - removed and taped to countless bedroom walls - included a nose to tail Pipe Dream spray on the bottom of his board. "The spray leapt off the page. It was the cutback that put my brand on the map."

If Guy's cutback brought attention to the Pipe Dream label, it was Chappy Jennings who forced everyone to sit up and take notice. James 'Chappy' Jennings, moved from South Australia to the Gold Coast while just sixteen-years old and immediately fell in with a group of heavies, literally. Sponsored by Quiksilver, he was cast as the jockey-sized sidekick to Gary 'Kong' Elkerton. Along with Rabbit, they made Kong's Island together, and also travelled widely. "At Pipeline and G-Land - where he got nicknamed the General for ordering everyone around - he arguably became Kong's equal."

In 1982, while in Hawaii filming for The Performers, Chappy pulled into a huge Pipeline cavern as photographer Don King swam tight to the reef. Using manual focus, King nailed the shot which, again, became a double page spread, this time in a 1984 issue of Surfer magazine. Years later, a roll call of surfers including Shane Dorian, Mark Healey, and Kohl Christenson would nominate it as their all-time favourite Pipe shot.

Muzz says that he and Chap are still mates to this day, however we've jumped ahead of our story and also misrepresented where Murray's head was at during those early years of Pipe Dream. You see, though we've been talking about famous surfers riding his boards - which is the accepted way to market a board label - young Muzz wasn't totally sold on the concept. A lot of great surfers don't know much about the equipment they're riding, whereas shaper/surfers know their own designs intimately, hence they offer more scope for advancement and also communicating with customers. With this business principle in mind, Muzz set out to find a talented surfer who was willing to learn the art of shaping.

Wayne Williams, who was originally from Bondi and an old buddy of Murray's, put him onto a hot young grom named Dominic Wybrow - AKA Zappa. Dom was doing it tough down in the bowels of Bondi and needed to see the world beyond. So Muzz took him under his protective wing and proceeded to teach him everything he knew. In only a short time the two became a formidable team, designing cutting edge boards for Dom to compete on - they were arguably the first to drop channels into a twinny - while Muzz shared with Dom his shaping knowledge.

By 1978, Dom was not just finish shaping Murray’s boards but shaping his own Pipe Dreams replete with Zappa rice paper decals. When, a few years later, Dom left Pipe Dream to set up his own shaping business it left Muzz with time to consider his response. After all, he’d invested time and energy into Dominic. He’d taught him how to shape and he’d also allowed Dom to badge Pipe Dream boards with Zappa decals, effectively paying for the marketing Dom would springboard off when he struck out on his own.

In an era of  conspicuous surfboard logos, this nose to tail offering surely beat them all. Yet the ploy worked. "It was the cutback that put my brand on the map," says Muzz of this Guy Ormerod slash at North Stradbroke that appeared as a centrespread in Surfing World Photo Annual 5, 1980 (Photo Bruce Channon)

Prior to computer shaping, there were essentially two strategies a shaper could use when they became successful and production increased. There’s only so many boards a lone shaper could produce per week, so the first, and most common way to meet demand is to employ ghost shapers to fill their orders. Usually there’d be no trace a board was produced by a ghost shaper; no pencil signature and certainly no rice paper decal indicating they shaped it.

The alternative was for the shaper to relinquish control of the shaping and share the load with other shapers who not only did the work but also got their names on the boards. Think of Shane Stedman who trained future shaping stars such as Butch Cooney, Jack Knight, Simon Anderson, Terry Fitzgerald, and many others, and who put their names on Shane's boards. In time, those shapers left to start their own businesses, ostensibly putting themselves in competition with Shane.

Some of them even repeated the cycle. Terry Fitzgerald, for instance, left Shane in 1972 to form Hot Buttered, nurturing the talents of the next generation of shapers including Mick Mackie, Greg Webber, Wayne Deane, and Stuart Campbell.

Though some Gold Coast shapers stuck with the former strategy - Nev Hyman for example who, even at his early-90s peak, gave no voice to the ghosts - Murray chose the alternative for Pipe Dream, and it meant accepting that shapers would grow and then leave to strike out on their own.

“You’ve got to understand that shaping - even computer shaping - is a creative process. If you don't let people be creative, then you're stifling them and they won’t do their best work. So I gave the shapers freedom; I allowed them to put their names on the board so that they became more individualistic.”

The experience with Dom didn’t leave him jaded. The opposite in fact; Muzz continued to take shapers on, teaching them skills while also allowing them room to flourish. Standards across Pipe Dream’s range were achieved by profile machines which recreated rocker, yet after that each shaper added their own flair. Think of Erle Pederson and his wild jet bottoms, or at the other end, the slipstream planshapes of Ken Reimers and Lance Murphy.

Perhaps Murray’s most famous student has been Darren Handley, who began working for Pipe Dream during their 80s heyday and stayed on for eleven years.

One ad, two companies promoted, as a hirsute Darren Handley drives off the bottom at Duranbah. These days they'd call it cross-promotion but back then it was just canny marketing. Despite the misspelling of his name, Handley went on to work at Pipe Dream for over a decade.

Darren Handley:

“I was trying to be a professional surfer but my parents told me to go and get a job. A  job came up sweeping floors in Murray’s factory so I went in there and got interviewed by a guy named Larry Taylor. There was me and another guy and I got the job. I must have been better on the broom.”

“I did the full apprenticeship with Muzz. I started in there making fins, and then I went into polishing, then I went into sanding, then glassing, and then I was managing the place. I was there for four years before I even started shaping my first board.”

“When I was making boards with Murray they were polished and had no fin systems. Boards were heavy and he employed me to make boards lighter and better, and that's what I did. What I really liked about him was that surfing was always the most important thing. He's got some really good stories about early trips to Lakey Peak and all around Indonesia.” 

“Muzz introduced me to Lance Murphy, who’s still working for me now, and also to JS. Actually, Murray had hired Jason but when I left I said to him: ‘Come with me and I'll teach you everything I know.’ JS worked for me for four years before he struck off on his own…which I guess is similar to what I did to Murray.”

“At one point I’d have said he’s my mentor, he taught me a lot, but the biggest thing I learned is that we're all friends, and we can all learn from each other. I really enjoyed that whole time with Muzz.”

Pipe Dream ads from the mid to late-80s tell a story of market positioning. At left is underground Indo traveller 'Banana', cult hero and jockey-size warrior Chappy Jennings is at centre, while Queensland heavyweight Bruce Lee pulls into a mega Burleigh barrel at right.

In 1975, Muzz took his first trip north to Bali, his very first session being a two-hour solo surf at perfect Racetracks. Though he went to Bali a few years later than some of his peers, a few who'd been on the case since the early-70s, he took to the place with typical amounts of gusto. In fact, he very nearly built Bali's first surfboard factory. "In 1978, a guy who rented a photo studio at Bemo Corner offered the back half to me." Relishing the chance to base himself in Bali and turn an honest buck too, Muzz set about solving the logistics. "I went to Jakarta and found a guy, a boat builder, from who I could source fibreglass and resin, though I'd have to import blanks from Australia. I resigned myself to that."

With his business burgeoning back home, Muzz took off the clove-coloured glasses for a moment and made a purely commercial decision. "At that point, I didn't want to take on a partner - I'd seen how those arrangements end up - and I couldn't see how I could run both operations...so I let it go."

By the mid-80s, however, and with sales for both Pipe Dreams and Headworx ratcheting ever upwards, Muzz passed through Indonesian customs every year, sometimes for extended stays, and all of them somehow rolled into his business. Arguably these were Pipe Dream’s glory years. Not necessarily for the shapers he had working for him, though having a roster including Darren, Erle, Lance, and Ken certainly helped, but because it was a period when a number of elements lined up. The 1980s surf boom was in full swing, so they also had the retail space covered with high-vis stores at South Tweed Heads, Coolangatta, Palm Beach, Main Beach, and Torquay, while Muzz satisfied his inner artist by crafting ads that ran frequently in Australia’s Surfing Life. The publisher, Peter Morrisson, often rode Muzz’ boards and they developed a symbiotic relationship with Murray’s exploratory Indonesian trips providing content, and Morrisson supplying the page space for ads. Hot surfers shaped great boards, then rode them in amazing waves, which appeared in slick ads for both Pipe Dream and Headworx, with ol’ Muzz conducting the entire orchestra. From this side of the stage it was both desirable and authentic.

After Bali, Muzz made early missions to G-Land, lobbing in the two-storey bamboo hut built by McCabe and Lopez, then pressed further afield. He wasn't the first surfer to ride Lakey Peak - underground crew like Peter Reeves and Paul Macklin had likely already been there - however he did name it. "The local name of the bay sounded like 'la-kay', so I opted for Lakey Peak, and now you drive in and there's a big sign welcoming you to Lakey Peak!" Other locations Muzz visited include Timor, West Java, the Hinako Islands, Fiji, Samoa, and of course the Mentawais. In 1992, Murray authored an article about a trip to the ‘sinking islands’. It was the first reference to the Mentawais in an Australian publication, though the name was never mentioned - all the locations were blacked out and no clues were given. It's only hindsight that betrays the now-famous location.

"In a way, Headworx started the Search thing. Rip Curl did it later with a much bigger budget, and then came the Quiksilver Crossing.”

Yet such fortunate circumstances can’t last forever. The 90s recession put the industry over a barrel, Headworx stumbled then fell a few years later, and in time Darren made for the exit door, taking Jason Stevenson with him.

“Darren built up a bit of a name in the company. I knew that he was eventually going to go, and I knew how he was going to do it too. He was always so ambitious and very talented as a communicator. You can't hold onto people like him forever, so I let them go, and importantly to go with no hard feelings.”

Over the years, Muzz thinks he may have had up to forty shapers with varying levels of responsibility go through the Pipe Dream factory. Some of the biggest would be Darren, but also Erle Pederson, Greg Webb, Ken Reimers, Lee Stacy, and Corey Graham, all who went on to successful careers making boards for themselves.

Muzz also gave Jason Stephenson his start in the industry, though he didn't teach JS how to shape as, at the time, he was busy showing his son Skye the art of mowing the foam. What good is the father of the house if he doesn't teach his own son the required skills? These days Skye is running his own operation, shaping Onfire Surfboards out of Evans Head.

And while we're ticking off big names, let's also count Adam 'Sparrow' Fletcher even though he didn't shape a board or even sweep a floor. As a grom, however, Sparrow spent six months working the front counter of Murray's Coolangatta store after he put his skateboard through the plate glass window.

Murray's equipment often lent towards the sleek and streamlined, better suited to the long pointbreaks of Queensland or the thin-lipped perfection of Indonesia, a place he's been visiting since the mid-70s. Clockwise from top left: Muzz at Padang Padang, Outside Corner, G-Land, and Asu (Photos Stue Burns, D. Coase, Peter Morrison)

Corey Graham:

“I began working for Murray in a roundabout way. At first they wanted to open a Headworx/Pipe Dreams shop here in Torquay - actually the shopfront to my parent’s factory [Moonlight Laminating]. They really wanted a local shaper and that was going to be me - Murray would come down and show me the ropes.”

“The shop didn’t happen, can’t remember why, and instead I went up there and made Pipe Dream boards with Murray. I'd grown up amongst famous shapers yet this was the first time I'd left the umbrella of my dad's factory. So there was Lance Murphy, Kenny Reimers, Darren Handley, all those guys, and I was this fucking terrified 17-year old.”

“Muzz was so real, and he was funny when a lot of the other shapers thought they were these wise old gurus. I got to hang out with him and his wife Dot, and she made him really human because she was always ragging out on him. He was always having fun whatever he was doing, even though he'd swear out loud and he'd never put a top on when he worked and all that kind of stuff. It genuinely looked like it was all fun.”

“One thing I’ll say with all certainty is that Murray never made me feel stupid at all. As a young shaper starting out, it’s easy to feel stupid when you're in front of those legends. He made me understand that it's good to ask what you may think are dumb questions. That gave me confidence; it allowed me to learn so much because I actually wasn't scared of asking him anything.”

“And also, he taught me about having the freedom to create. You’ve got to remember this was the 90s and it was all cookie cutter shapes, but he was willing to try different things, different set ups, like the rules didn't apply to him. That was an important thing that I learned, probably the most important thing. It's very much in the ethos of what I do.”

“It was always clear that Pipe Dream was Murray's thing, but there never seemed any competition between the shapers. They were all viewed as equal even though Darren was really starting to take off. You could tell something was going on there as a lot of good surfers were getting his boards under their feet and he was getting approached for magazine interviews. It just seemed like something was on the cook with Darren's boards, even to the point where Muzz would tell me, "Yeah, Darren's going off at the moment." 

“Over the years I've taught skills to a few kids, though they didn't really kick on, they turned more into factory types that ended up glassing and all that. However, Luca Rossi from Babel Surfboards spent a little time here, and also Shyama Buttonshaw came over a few years ago and I taught him how to hand shape and all that jive. Shyama has gone onto great things.

The house that Muzz built. "I've always thought that if you're dealing with something bad, then throw yourself into a project." That's just what Muzz did when a divorce sent him into a spiral. "I saw this north-facing block of land at Bilambil Heights and paid $7,500 for it. Camped on it a while to check the sun's arc through the sky, then set about building it."

"First we smoked a few chillums, then drew up the designs. The rock comes from a quarry on a mountain near Pomona on the Sunshine Coast. It's a beautiful blue-edged slate, lots of houses in Noosa use it, however I had to smuggle it into NSW; the tick inspectors wouldn't let it pass. In the end, I smuggled nearly 200 tonnes, mostly by covering it with sand which was allowed through."

"It was the house that was built with surfboards, though I sold it when my new wife didn't want to live there."

In the early years of the new millennium, shapers found themselves under pressure from a new threat. Aided by low wages, low production costs, and cheap shipping, some manufacturers turned to developing countries in South-East Asia to produce their boards, import them, then sell them at a price point that could rarely be achieved by domestic manufacturers.

To counter this, Maurice Cole - there he is again - and John Cross created BASE, a shapers collective that would soon include Murray, plus Simon Anderson, Nev Hyman, and Darren Handley, who was five or so years into his solo career. The idea was for the shapers to pool their resources and create an economy of scale that’d make them profitable against the Asian influx.

BASE collapsed in 2011 and there are many reasons why that happened, none worth expounding here, however it's worth at least revisiting this period as it led to him dropping the Pipe Dream label name.

“I loved the name Pipe Dream. However, while at BASE I realised the media was focusing on shapers. Brands were focusing on shapers. And when I looked around the room: Simon, Maurice, Darren…Fuck, I was the only shaper that wasn’t a person! I was a label - Pipe Dream. So I thought, ‘Fuck it, I'm going to become Bourton Shapes.’”

Despite the name change, it was a great time for Murray, shaping for a new generation of surfers such as Zane Harrison, who won the 1999 World Cup at Sunset Beach on one of Murray’s shapes, Troy Brooks, who rode Murray’s boards during his four years on the Championship Tour, and Rye Craike, who stuffed his boardbag full of Bourton Shapes on every Quiksilver film trip. Yet soon enough Bourton Shapes found itself with a familiar stablemate.

“When BASE went pear-shaped the receivers came in and did their thing. They had control of the names Bourton Shapes and Pipe Dream, and they said to me, "We want $20,000 for them." I replied, "OK, well go find someone who's going to pay that." 

“Six months later they came back and we did a deal for a very much lower price."

Remember earlier how young Muzz mentioned he "wasn't totally sold" on the concept of sponsoring hot surfers? Well, he eventually came around to the idea, though not so much that he was chasing down precious CT talent. Instead he put his boards under the feet of people he connected with so the relationships weren't merely transactional. When Muzz got artwork for his van made up he even produced an honor roll of sponsored surfers.

Among that mob, Muzz reserves special mention for one of them: Russell Specht. "He's from Straddie and he's been my longest serving team rider. To put a number on it, I think he's been riding my shapes for over forty years and, believe it or not, he's still ripping into his late-sixties. The island has many great surfers and Russell has been instrumental in swinging them my way, including the Stevenson brothers and the late Heather Ewing, mother of Ethan and arguably the best Australian female surfer of her time."

Looking back over his fifty-plus years of shaping, not just the advancements but the booms and busts too, Muzz has a few words of caution to anyone starting out. Considering what he's seen, both in his own career and the careers of all the people he's taught, they're words worth listening to.

“There’s only ever been two people that have made money out of surfboards that I know of, and it was all because of circumstance: right place, right time. The first was Al Merrick at Channel Islands, and that was because of Kelly Slater and then the sale to Burton Snowboards” - in 2006 Burton paid Merrick USD $15M for Channel Islands. “The other is Jason Stevenson. They’re the only two that could’ve dropped everything and walked away - and in Al’s case he did.”

“They played the game and they were lucky and everything was right for them. But you've got to remember it's a labour of love; no-one gets into surfboards to make money. You get into surfboards so you can go surfing when you want. That’s what it’s really all about."

At left, though he's sold it now, for ten or so years Muzz moved his office closer to the waves, ready to take another order from a dripping wet surfer or go surfing when he wanted to. At right, with over fifty years of shaping Muzz sits at the top of the totem pole, and still he doesn't wear a shirt while working.

"It's a whole different world out there right now," says Muzz comparing the shaping landscape now to when he embarked on his journey five decades ago. Computer shaping has eased the physical aspect of mowing foam but it's also killed the apprenticeship system; there's no longer any need for greenhorns to seek out the wisdom of old hands such as Muzz.

In fact, there's been an inversion of sorts: Where once he had many shapers working for the one label, he now operates many labels while working as a solo shaper. Bourton Shapes is his main vehicle and it keeps pushing the new ideas forward, Pipe Dream is still there with a range of reworked 70s, 80s, and 90s favourites, Born To Fly is his outlet for meshing ideas from the past with progressive materials and curves, and lastly is Lightning Bolt, a label that needs no introduction, but which Muzz owns the Australian rights and can produce sleek wall-hangers or classic guns for surfers wanting to tap into a pure source.

Despite how it sounds, it'd be wrong to say he's never been busier. If that were the case he wouldn't have time for a chinwag, for which Muzz is legendary, nor have time for the occasional surf adventure where he can drop everything and chase waves. Father of the house he may be, yet Murray's not just a board-maker; he also makes time for friends and he makes time for himself. The lessons are still there for anyone willing to heed them.

// STU NETTLE