July 2024
This week I was down in Tasmania to visit my good friend, Dale Matheson, who owns the Scamander Beach Surf Shop. Dale couldn't wait to proudly show me a surf board he has acquired for his collection.
Dale knows that I worked at Gordon & Smith Surfboards in Taren Point, Sydney dating back to the late sixties for me. I got to know and work with the late Floyd Smith who established G&S in Australia in 1965.
Above, me posing with a Steve Griffiths shaped G&S classic at Dale's Scamander Beach Surf shop right on the Scamander river mouth. Photo: Dale Matheson |
Griffo remembers back that his first ever custom surfboard that he ever ordered for himself was a Peter Clarke 5'2" twin fin shaped by the legendary Frank Latta.
Griffo took up an offer to shape at G&S and did a 6-year straight stretch shaping for the famous Taren Point based label. He shaped at G&S from '72 to '78.
Still crystal clear some forty-odd years later. The shaper's personal identifying name marker. |
Emerald also opened their own retail surf shop in Laycock Avenue, Cronulla.
'Griffo' sold the Emerald surfboard operation to Arnold and Kathy Cohen in March 1982 and moved himself and his family to Queensland's Sunshine Coast.