From the pages of Tracks Issue No. 583 – Read more here.
“Michael is representative of a lot of good Australian kids, but more purposeful and a little more stylised. He lives at Kirra and knows exactly what each wave is going to do. He doesn’t fight it but seems to fit into its curves and flow with its energy. He has a beautiful feeling for the wave and the wave for him.
It was very difficult to know exactly what to do with the 25 minutes of Kirra footage because there was quite a variety of good surfing of several surfers. The more I looked at it, the more interesting became Michael’s waves. His timing, his choice of waves, his positioning was just so much better, that I found myself gradually eliminating all but his rides.” Albe Falzon
The words above are ripped straight from the pages of February 1972 Tracks. They clearly depict Albe Falzon in a state of rapture as he edits footage of Michael Peterson for ‘Morning of the Earth’. On screen MP appears as a beguiling figure who summons speed at will and then bends his sinewy frame through switchblade turns. His three-minute virtuoso performance in ‘Morning of the Earth’ remains one of the most famous sections in surf film history. Watch it now and he still has undeniable magnetism. Fifty years later, the film is set to be re-released in a digitally re-mastered format and Peter- son’s timeless surfing will enchant audiences all over again. But what of the board he rode in ‘Morning of the Earth’? Was it a key aspect of his mastery a self-crafted Excalibur, or was MP’s skill so superior that it wouldn’t have mattered what he was riding?
If you ask MP’s brother, Tommy, the board behaved like a bucking horse.
“I couldn’t ride it. It was too wide. It had so much area in the nose that when you tried to do a cutback it just threw you off… like a George Greenough kneeboard; take you four days to do a cutback. They were useless. No one could ride them… like surfing a disc, something that you wipe your feet on when you get home – a doormat.”
When I posture that Michael could ride it Tommy eloquently articulates the wizardry of his brother.
“Yeah, he was the only c&$t that could!”
Tommy may be a little cantankerous but his memory is famously photographic when it comes to design. His encyclopaedic knowledge has helped him make three replicas of the board Michael rode in ‘Morning of the Earth’. Over the phone he wastes little time reeling off the basic dimensions of the craft that was beneath MP’s feet when he performed the fabled ‘Cutback’.
“It was 6’1” and 20 inches wide, with a 10- inch square tail… It was pretty thin. More wide than thick.”
The board is imprinted on the mind of almost every surfer who has seen the film or stared at Albe Falzon’s frame-grab, which adorned the cover of the Tracks February 1972 issue and immortalised MP. However, while the disc shape was distinctive, perhaps the board’s most defining design feature was the fin. “A roving 100-layer fin – it was a lot of fucking fibreglass,” explains Tommy. “A 14-inch fin like a rudder not a fin.”
Apparently, sanding the fin was so laborious and hazardous that MP would scratch for three days after putting one in.
Tommy isn’t exactly sure but reckons only about 60 examples of this model came out of Joe Larkin’s factory, where Michael was shaping between 1969 and 1971. Larkin’s factory in those years was a hotbed of shaping and surfing talent. Brian Austin, Gordan Merchant, Terry Fitzgerald, Peter Townend, Michael Peterson, and Billy Grant were all turning out boards from Larkin’s Bay at 28 Miles Street Kirra. “Michael was getting two bucks a board. That was big bucks in 1969,” explains Tommy.
When I suggest to Tommy that the collective of talented shapers might have borrowed ideas from one another, Tommy is
quick to correct me. “I wouldn’t say borrow- ing… more like stealing.” The ‘Morning of the Earth’ board also featured chined rails. According to Tommy, Michael ‘borrowed’ those off Gordon Merchant.
Tommy isn’t sure what became of the original ‘Morning of the Earth’ board, however, he does suggest it would probably be worth a hefty sum if you did get your hands on it. “If that was still around you’d probably pick yourself up $50 000.” Tommy is frequently contacted about his brother’s boards and has become somewhat weary of providing estimates for speculating collectors. However, he does point out one significant shift in the boards made by his brother. His earlier shapes were simply signed with MP, but that all changed when Michael began making boards out of the Goodtime factory in the mid 70s alongside Mike Perry. “The glasser used to walk out and go ‘I’ve got MP boards out here, what’s what?’” explains Tommy. “They were both (Perry and Peterson) writ- ing MP on the stringer with the number. That’s when Michael decided he had to start writing ‘Michael’ on his boards.
Despite Tommy’s colourful testimony about the performance of the ‘Morning of the Earth Board’ some of you may still have aspirations of recreating it. For those intent on embarking on such a shaping quest, Tommy issues a sharp warning. “You’ve got to know what to do and what the numbers are. If you don’t know that you’re fucked.”
Perhaps only one person was ever really meant to ride that board.
Morning of the Earth is coming to the big screen in 2022! Get tickets here.
