📍Merewether NSW 2291, Australia
1957 – 1979“Mark Richards was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, in March 1957, the son of Ray and Val Richards, and grew up in Merewether, a beachside suburb of the coal and steel city, with its rock pool, cliffs and consistent surf. His parents both surfed, which was unusual for the time, and his father, a former accountant, had started a business selling second-hand cars, but after seeing the new Malibu surfboards he began selling those too, and in the early 1960s turned the shop into one of Australia's first surf shops, on Hunter Street. Mark was surfing by six at Merewether Beach, and he grew up in and around the family surf shop, dreaming of taking it over and of shaping surfboards. He was tall, thin and gangly, with a distinctive, wide-armed style that earned him the nickname the Wounded Gull. He started competing in the under-fourteen schoolboys divisions in Newcastle, and by his teens he was one of the best surfers in Australia. In the winter of 1975 he went to Hawaii with Rabbit Bartholomew and Shaun Tomson, and their bold surfing changed the sport. In Hawaii he learned shaping from Dick Brewer, and in 1978 he developed the twin-fin surfboard, on which he won four world titles in a row, from 1979 to 1982. He came home to Merewether and took over the family surf shop, shaping boards there for decades, and Newcastle's Surfest has often carried his name, the Mark Richards Pro, on the beaches where he grew up.”
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