Mark Richards

In the late 1950s Ray saw the new balsa and fibreglass mailbu surfboards, which Greg Noll and other visiting Californians had brought with them in 1956.

The new boards were shorter and more manoeuvrable than the solid Timber boards used until then.

He bought himself one, and when he saw how much it impressed people he made a decision to branch into selling them too, buying from early manufacturers in Sydney.

So the business came a combination car yard and surf shop, and in time the cars gave way to the surfboards and it became a dedicated surf shop, one of the first in Australia.

Mark Richards (born 7 March 1957), known as MR, is an Australian surfer who became a four-time world champion (1979–1982).

Mark Richards was born and raised in Newcastle, son of Ray and Val Richards, both keen beachgoers.

They worked at the Wire Rope Works, Ray Richards as an accountant, but he wanted more than that career could offer and started a business selling second-hand cars at a time when new cars were too expensive for most people.

Together they set up a showroom at the front of Hunter St and lived in an apartment above it.

So when Mark was born in 1957 he was always around surfboards, growing up with surf-o-planes and pint-sized longboards.

He learnt to surf in gentle waves at Blacksmiths Beach, about 15 minutes south of Newcastle, a beach partly sheltered by the breakwater on the northern side of the entrance to Lake Macquarie.

The family also went to Rainbow Bay on Queensland's Gold Coast for holidays, where he surfed Snapper Rocks.

He was also very keen on cricket when young.

Richards surfed many junior competitions around Australia, taking time off school to go in some cases.

He also made trips to Hawaii for winter on the North Shore as a teenager.

Organiser and 1968 world title holder Fred Hemmings had other ideas; with sunshine, offshore winds and television coverage he threatened to go out himself if nobody else wanted to.

Richards made a decision to go.

At 17 years old and without Waimea experience nobody would have thought less of him if he didn't, but he felt to walk away would end his hopes of surfing professionally, and put him back in Newcastle at some unappealing apprenticeship.

He went with survival uppermost in his mind, and reckoned his first wave twice as big as anything he'd surfed before.

By the end of the heat he was game enough on the monsters to actually bottom turn, yet was glad not to reach the final and have to go back out.

In time he came to enjoy big waves, without being regarded as a big-wave specialist.

The highlight of his junior career was a win at Margaret River in 1973.

In mid-1973 Richards father allowed him to leave school midway through fifth form, to pursue surfing.

Anyone could leave after fourth form, but that was usually to take up an apprenticeship.

To leave for surfing was radical at a time when surfers were regarded as long-haired layabouts.

The deal with his father was that if it didn't work out in a year then he had to get a trade.

At the end of 1974 Richards returned to Hawaii for the North Shore winter.

This was his fourth trip, and his first taste of really big waves.

He got a late entry into a contest at Waimea Bay, and did well enough on the first day of competition to make the semi-finals the next day.

That day the surf had jumped and 30-foot clean-up sets were closing out the Bay.

Even local big wave riders were saying it was too big to compete.

Image was important for Richards, and in 1975 he had Hawaiian artist Albert Dove design a superman-style badge with "MR" inscribed in it.

He used that logo on all his boards and wetsuits for most of his career.

Richards was interested in twin-fin surfboards and in shaping.

At the Surfabout in 1976 he saw Reno Abellira on a highly manoeuvrable twin-fin fish and thought something like that would be better than a single-fin for small waves.

Back in Hawaii again for the 1976/77 winter, aged 19, he took his father's suggestion to pay for shaping lessons from noted pioneer Dick Brewer.

It meant Richards was able to put his thoughts about design into actual foam.

He credits Brewer for the style of shaping he came to use.

Brewer made Richards a twin-fin, and Richards took aspects of that and Abellira's fish for his own designs.

The result was boards faster and more manoeuvrable than the single-fins of the day.

By 1979 Richards reckoned his career as shaping primarily, and just competing at home in Australia and in Hawaii where he would go for the northern winter anyway.