Now living in a quiet, idyllic seaside town in Queensland, board shaper Bruce Palmer has been credited with influencing 1970s surf culture in the United Kingdom and across Europe.
The 78-year-old has travelled the world, but said he fell in love with Agnes Water for its secluded beaches and quiet lifestyle.The coastal town about 220 kilometres south of Rockhampton has some of the northernmost point-breaks in Australia.
Scarcely short of the tropics but far enough from the population centres of south-east Queensland is just how surfers like Palmer like it.Bruce Palmer with his most recent creation.The surf isn't always up in Agnes. But the town's not too far from the Great Barrier Reef."I shouldn't mention the best islands, the surfer's will get annoyed at me,"Lady Elliot Island is the southernmost coral cay of the Great Barrier Reef.Palmer has spent a lifetime dedicated to the craft of surfboard shaping and has been credited as a "godfather" in Portugal for sharing his board-making expertise. According to the Museum of British Surfing, he also influenced surfing culture in the 70s during his time life-guarding and selling boards in England.Bruce Palmer and Buddy in front of his workshop."I don't go out if it's too big, I'm a four-foot-and-under man now,""When I was in Hawaii I would ride anything that came in, like Sunset and Pipeline … now I'm reduced to four, but I'm very happy to be doing that."ABC Capricornia: Jasmine Hines/Supplied: Bruce PalmerPalmer, who was born in Bondi, first learned to surf in Jarvis Bay on the New South Wales coast in the late 50s. "My life for me was really set in stone from that first time … I knew my life was not going to be an accountant like my mother wanted,"He was staying with his parents and family friends let him borrow a board which had been owned by surf pioneer Greg Noll — a member of the United States lifeguard team who had travelled to Australia for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.Old photos and magazine clippings about Bruce Palmer.He said being a surfer was looked down on at the time, but it spurred him on to see the world."Who wanted to work when you could go surfing?"Palmer said by 21 he had travelled to Hawaii and surfed breaks like Sunset and Pipeline.Not long after he visited California and Europe, he settled in south-west England where he sent out lifeguard applications to every county council he could. "I only got one reply … that was for this place Croyde in North Devon, which turned out to be the best wave in England,"He got pretty lucky because the North Devon Surfing Reserve has since been officially recognised as one of 12 world-class surf spots internationally.Supplied: Alex WilliamsMuseum of British Surfing chair of trustees Kevin Cook said Australian lifeguards, including Palmer, had been extremely influential in the area."The locals would see what was going on and try to copy them."Palmer travelled overseas often, and gigged for different surfboard companies, picking up skills he took back to England, where he started a business in his backyard. Cook said Palmer was among a group of Australian shapers who brought shorter surfboard designs to the UK when longer, Malibu-style boards were popular. "You would look at Bruce in the water, and you'd say, 'Bruce, I'm thinking of getting a new board, could you make me one?'Bruce Palmer with a framed shot of him surfing Mundaka in Spain.Palmer said his business grew so big after being approached to produce famed Lightning Bolt surfboards that he had to stop stealing his neighbour's electricity. "I made the Lightning Bolts out of this one-pound-a-week factory, and I tapped into next door's electricity to do it and I never got caught,"Lord Ted Deerhurst brought the Lightning Bolt licence over to England and passed it to Bruce Palmer to produce in his factory in Knowle.Palmer said it was his competition wins and access to the Lightning Bolt brand which helped elevate him as a board marker.Bruce Palmer worked, surfed and shaped boards overseas during his earlier years.Palmer said he won the second national surfing competition to be held in Portugal, at Peniche. "Some years later I was in Noosa shaving boards at a factory, and this chap came in and said, 'Are you Bruce Palmer?'Palmer said he was initially embarrassed by the recognition.Surfers from across the world bought Bruce Palmer surfboards.
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