Maurice Cole is still riding life's waves

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Over the course of his life, Maurice Cole, a legend of the surfing world, has absorbed damage, inflicted it and come face-to-face with death more than once. Now he is helping his son try and reverse the damage his generation has done.

Maurice Cole starts the generator in what used to be an old chicken shed on a farmland property in Torquay.

Here in the back part of the converted shed he works on creating the "magic surfboard".

The magic, Cole explains, is "where you don't have to think about the surfboard when you're riding a wave and your instincts kick in".

Considered revolutionary in his work, Cole has made boards for a whole host of champion surfers, including Tom Curren, who went on to win three world titles riding his boards between 1985 and 1990.

Cole's reverse vee design, with its unique bottom curve, became a standard feature in short boards used by world champions such as Kelly Slater, Tom Carroll, Mark Occhilupo and Taj Burrows.

But while the innovator has ridden the waves of success, at one point becoming the highest-paid shaper in the world, he has also had his dark times too.

In his early 20s, Cole spent time in prison with the likes of Chopper Read and when released, fell into a spiral of anger and violence and attempted suicide.

Since then, he has endured 35 years of undiagnosed depression, survived car accidents and beaten cancer twice.

Now, at 65 years of age, after a "crazy 50-year ride", he has survived and feels more relevant than ever, joining his son in fighting the "damage his generation have left behind".

Into the blue

It was chance that drew Cole to surfing — he had always loved the water but was not much of a swimmer.

Then one day the 12-year-old handed over his Christmas present — five shillings — to rent "a big, giant" surfboard over nine feet.

Struggling to carry the board to the beach, he dragged it along the sand, eventually pushing it into the water, where he stood up on his first go and rode it to the beach.

"The light went on, that moment in Warrnambool, that sliding doors moment — it's still got me," Cole recalled.

"I always wondered if that had never happened what life would look like?"

It was a time before wetsuits, when surfers would spend hours in the water in the middle of winter, being buffeted by freezing cold westerly winds and wearing only shorts and cut-off football jumpers.

"We'd surf until we were blue, literally blue, until you couldn't hold your surfboard," Cole said.

After spending a whole summer surfing, the shy Cole would emerge stronger, fitter and more confident, ready to take on the world.

"If I didn't surf, I wouldn't shape," he said.

"And I probably wouldn't shape if I didn't surf."

From 'lord of the universe' to lock and key

When Cole arrived in Torquay as an 18-year-old it was the golden era in surfing — a time before weather forecasts, when great conditions meant plans for work were abandoned.

"It was about surviving and living in the moment, and the moment was beautiful," Cole said.

"We were the lords of the universe."

It was in Torquay that Cole met his future wife, Anne Heriot, and learned to shape the boards that would eventually take him across the globe, from pre-tourist Bali and Hawaii, to living in France and later Margaret River.

But at 21 years of age Cole was arrested by the Federal Police for being in possession of three-and-a-half ounces of hash oil.

After 22 months on bail reporting to police he was sentenced to four years with a minimum of three, which would see him serve time in maximum security in Pentridge Prison with the likes of Mark 'Chopper' Read and the Russell Street bombers, Peter Reed and Stan Taylor, the latter becoming his mentor in jail.

Within a week of being in jail Cole tried to kill himself.

That fear would soon be replaced with survival in the form of street-fighting skills.

"It was vicious," Cole said.

"I saw people stabbed, hit over the head with iron bars, there was a guy blown up in one of the cells and killed."

When Cole was finally released he would take those institutionalised skills to the outside, trusting no one and often dealing with others in an aggressive and violent manner.

"I was literally jacked up all the time and on edge," he said.

"Basically, they threw a kid in there — and another sliding doors moment — and a very, very, very different person came out."

Released in 1978, Cole went on to win the state surfing title the following year and in 1980 he was ranked fifth in the world.

Thirty years later he would seek professional help for both undiagnosed depression and PTSD.

He said it was unimaginable for a first-time offender to receive such punitive punishment, which he attributes to racism and to being made an example of for being a "surf star".

A question mark for life

Born in 1954, in Terang in the Western District of Victoria, Cole spent his first few years in Ballarat after being adopted into a strict white middle-class Anglican family before moving to Warrnambool on Victoria's south-east coast.

Already shy and introverted, the boy was also one of the few darked-skinned people at his school.

He often experienced bullying and racism, including, he says, having the "crap beaten out of him."

"You still carry it with you a lot, it's something that doesn't go away," Cole said.

"It never dissolves, or you can't forget it, it's just how you deal with it."

While he always knew he was adopted, Cole finally met his birth mother about five years, having searched for her for three decades.

"It was the biggest question mark in my life, there was a part of me that was really scared — 'what does it all mean?'" he said.

When he finally met Annette — a "little, five-foot, really dark woman" — she told him she may have been of Maori descent and that Cole had other siblings.

But she could tell him nothing of his father.

"There's a giant question mark, it will be there for life," he said.

The shy dark kid from Warrnambool who emerged from the surf to take on the school bully would eventually go on to take on the surfing world, becoming one of the most in-demand shapers in the world.

After starting his company, MC Surfboards, in Margaret River, where he lived with his family, he went on to make more money than any other shaper in the world.

At one stage Cole was earning more than $1 million a year.

"I got to the top really fast and it was so empty, such an empty feeling — 'what do you do now?'" he said.

A dark and violent time

Eventually the pressures of workload and lifestyle would lead to a nervous breakdown.

One night after a party he woke up at 3am with his family gone, not knowing what had happened but feeling an overwhelming sense of dread.

"I had to go outside and make sure the cars were gone and there were no bodies," Cole said.

He realised he had snapped and become furious, causing the family to flee.

As he drove to work his thoughts turned once again to taking his own life.

"When all of a sudden there was a flash in my mind of the kids standing at the funeral, not understanding what had happened to their father," Cole said.

Twenty-four hours later, again on the road, Cole slammed on the brakes and, brandishing a machete, got out of the car to confront a tailgater.

"If he had not taken off and kept driving, I really wonder [what would have happened]," Cole said.

"I had just completely lost control."

When he returned home he collapsed, begging his wife for help.

The two years of counselling that followed would teach Cole to understand himself and the impact of his past, namely the adoption and the trauma of prison.

Eventually he returned to Torquay to start an even bigger company, Base, in 2003, into which he brought other shapers.

But eight years later the company collapsed, millions of dollars in debt and Cole engaged in a six-month battle to regain his name.

Five years later was diagnosed with cancer and given a few years to live, which he puts down to the stress and anger he felt during his darker days.

Finding ways to sustain

At 65 years of age and now a grandfather, Cole remains passionate about design.

When he is not travelling the world to make boards he is tucked away in his small workshop in Torquay where he prefers to stay small, custom-making boards for his clientele.

"Now I've got an aversion to making money," he laughed.

"I've created my own bubble in the world, just sort of where I feel safest and comfortable."

But he is working not only towards making faster and better surfboards, but sustainable ones.

A fight for the environment

When he is not surfing or shaping, the co-founder of the environmental organisation Surfrider Foundation Europe back in 1990, is still politically active.

"The Baby Boomers, all we've done is rape and pillage the planet and basically put the whole word in debt," he said.

Cole took his then six-year old son Damien to his first protest in France against the French nuclear testing in the Pacific in the mid-90s.

He has been actively involved in various Indigenous issues over the years and fought for the protection of the Bells Beach Recreational Surfing Reserve.

More recently, the self-described "shit-stirrer" has joined his son in the recent Paddle Out protests against Equinor's plans for deep sea oil drilling off the Great Australian Bight.

It began with about 2,000 surfers taking to the water with their boards in Torquay over Easter and has since spread across other parts of the country.

Looking to the next generation

Damien is acutely aware of his father's shortcomings — including the memorable time Cole took the three-year-old to Hawaii.

As Cole surfed for a couple of hours Damien was 'babysat' by the local lifeguard.

Nonetheless, the two have a "very good connection despite not seeing eye-to-eye at times".

"He actually came back in and I was strapped to a palm tree by a surfboard leg rope," Damien laughed.

"I still run for that ocean, every chance I get," Damien.

Having often lived in the shadow of his larger-than-life father, filled with self-doubt, Cole is proud to support his son fight for environmental causes.

The self-described "labourer from Torquay with a half a degree [in environmental science]" not only organised the surf paddle-out protests but is also running as an independent candidate for marginal seat of Corangamite in the upcoming Federal Election with the environment as a key issue of his campaign.

"I want to leave a legacy for future generations to be proud of," Damien said.

Credits

Reporter: Larissa Romensky

Larissa Romensky Producer: Nick Alexander

Nick Alexander Images: Larissa Romensky and supplied by the Cole family and photographers Ed Sloan, Hodge and Jeff Hornbaker

Topics: human-interest, bullying, people, indigenous-other-peoples, lifestyle-and-leisure, mental-health, mens-health, health, community-and-society, family-and-children, torquay-3228, warrnambool-3280, terang-3264, ballarat-3350, robinvale-3549