Cord at 60: The Story, As I Remember It, by David "Humphrey" Lascelles
- Cord Surfboards
- Apr 7
- 10 min read
This year Cord Surfboards celebrates its 60th anniversary. We’ve been shaping surfing since 1965, a period of time that’s seen some huge innovation and progression in surfing and surfboard design. And Cord has been at the leading edge of many of those pivotal moments.
As part of our diamond anniversary celebrations we’ve spoken with and gone back through some notes and recollections of Cord’s founder, David “Humphrey” Lascelles about the brand’s formative years in the 1960s on Australia’s Sunshine Coast. Here, in his own words, is the Cord Surfboards origin story – as he remembers it.
It was the very early 1960's. I had been surfing since the late 1950’s, maybe ‘58 or ’59. There was nobody surfing up at Noosa. Hayden first surfed it around 1960 and we knew about it but it was hard to get to. There had also been a shark attack there, so we were a bit wary, but by about 1963 we were surfing it. On a crowded day there would only be six or so people! We used to go up there and surf all day then meet the school bus at 3.30pm…
We headed up to Alexandra Headland one day from Caloundra to check out what Hayden’s boards looked like. It was a big drive at the time because there was no coast road back then. You had to go back onto the highway and then turn off again twenty miles up the road and go in through Buderim. There we met up with Bob McTavish. I already knew Bob because a few years earlier he had been living in Caloundra, but also he was a bit of a hero because the year before him and David Chidgey had made the pilgrimage to Hawaii. We got talking about the prospect of working together.
Then the legendary Rincon surfer Bob Cooper appeared on the coast, but we didn't think he was too legendary because he used to go surfing in his Speedos instead of boardshorts like the rest of us!
Russell Hughes turned up around the same time. He originally came from Brisbane but had left home at a very early age and moved to Sydney. He was pretty street wise by the time he came back up to the Sunshine Coast and was a magic style-surfer. I knew a few of his older brothers’ mates. They were young gangsters and one of them, “Mad Dog” Cox, became Australia’s biggest bank robber of the time - they only caught him a few years back. Russell and I used to go down and see his mum who lived in West End so every now and again we'd bump into those guys.
I don't know why Algy Grud came up from Sydney, but he was a cruiser and was funny as. He probably heard about the surf scene that was starting to happen up here and wanted a piece of the action.
I think Kevin Platt had been up here before with Bob Evans making a movie. Bob Evans used to get a few guys together in Sydney and they would all get in his station wagon and drive up the coast to QLD and make a movie of it all. Then once the movie was made he would drive it around Australia and show it in any movie theatre he could. Guys involved were Midget (Farrelly), Bobby Brown, Nat (Young), Kevin Brennan and Kevin Platt to name but a few. Just heaps of young guys who wanted a free surf trip, but who also happened to be the best surfers in the country.
Kevin Platt's parents Jean and Lance were starting to get commercially into making boardshorts and other stuff under the name Platt Surfwear. It was great stuff for the day and I always remember the first time I went to Kevin’s home in Freshwater, just before I started Cord. His mum said to me, “Just go into the sewing room and help yourself!” Talk about a kid in a candy store! This was all happening for me between the ages of fourteen and sixteen.
There was a bit of a group of us starting to form by this point. Most of the guys were working at Hayden’s and I was doing a bit of work at the oldies pub in Caloundra, but mostly just going surfing. At that stage our main local break was a reef break called Moffatt Beach and on a good big day it was a hell of a wave. Still with only six or eight people ever surfing it at a time. During the winter when the swells were there and the winds were offshore there would only be a couple of us, braving the wind chill without the technology of wetsuits in our old faithful boardies. Back then Moffat Beach would hold a good ten-foot wave no problem and surfing it on big boards was always a handful. My little brother Chops (Lascelles) started his surfing at Moffat and by ‘62 or ‘63 he was dropping into some pretty serious waves - he was only about 3-foot tall so these were big lumps of water to him! Then there was Ben Bendall or “Pa” as we all called him. He was so good to all of us and none of us would have got into surfing as much as we did without him and “Ma”. They looked out for us.
Bob Cooper was amazing when surfing First Point at Noosa. He was a master in small hollow waves. He told us one day about this guy he knew from Santa Barbara who was going to come over. We had never heard of him but his name was George Greenough. It was around late 1964 or early 1965 when he arrived at Brisbane airport and we went down in my car to pick him up. This salty blonde guy emerged through the gate with no jeans and no shoes. He had cameras slung all over him and a kneeboard under his arm. He and I got into talking about fast cars right away and we all headed off to not only go surfing but to also change a fair bit in surfing over the next few years…
In those years in the mid-sixties we were all hanging out on the Sunshine Coast, especially around the Alexandra Headlands, and surfing anywhere from Noosa to Sydney. By all, I mean myself, Bob McTavish, Kevin Platt, Russell Hughes, Algy Grud, John Mantle, Bob Cooper, Hayden, George Greenough, Wayne Parkes, Darrell Dell and more, plus a constant stream of other good surfer passing through. My parents owned a hotel at Caloundra (home of Moffat Beach, a great reef break) and I did a little work there, but really wanted to be in the surfboard industry. It was all very young then, and the rest of the boys were all working at Hayden’s. They made good boards, didn’t earn much money, but had a good lifestyle and plenty of time to surf. It was during that time I got a feel for the surfboard industry and began to take notice of how boards were built and began to store some knowledge.
I think that it was late 1965 when there was a blow up at Hayden Surfboards and the boys were all fired or quit. Right about that time I had been talking to my parents about financing a surfboard factory for me. I was just 17. They didn’t like the idea of me being a dedicated surfer, but I guess they figured there was an opportunity for me, so agreed to fund it. I had been discussing these plans with Bob McTavish, Kevin Platt, Russell Hughes and Algy Grud. They were keen and all agreed to come and work for me. We needed a name and came up with “Cord”. That was the birth of a surfboard label.
By early1966 we had found a suitable building in Caloundra, fitted it out, and began production.
Bob McTavish and Kevin Platt were the shapers. Algy Grud glassed, while Russell Hughes sanded and finish coated. A few weeks later John Mantle joined us as another finish coater.
Orders were coming in thick and fast, and some of the best surfers in the country were riding “Cord boards” and coming to the Sunshine Coast - Kevin Brennan, Nat Young and Peter Drouyn to name a few, plus a strong NZ contingent of good surfers headed up by Wayne Parkes. Even a constant stream of US surfers came by, and they all took Cord boards back with them. The US surfers had probably heard about what was happening through either Bob Cooper or George Greenough who were both hooked on the place.
We got busier, then my mate Darrell Dell (Rooster) joined us and eventually Bob McTavish taught him to shape. Rooster had already had five years in the industry. He left school and went to work for Joe Larkin Surfboards at the Gold Coast where he did his apprenticeship in most aspects of surfboard making. He then went up to Alexandra Headlands to Hayden’s factory and then down to Cord. He is still shaping today and I think is definitely one of the best shapers not only in Australia, but the world.
Another member of the Cord team was my younger brother Peter, or as he became known all over the world, “Chops”. Already a hot surfer and winner of contests, he got his basic knowledge from the older guys and was forever in Bob or Kevin’s shaping room picking up tips, or wanting Algy to teach him how to glass. He wasn’t shy of saying “Hey Russell, take me surfing, you can borrow my brothers souped-up E.H Holden, no problems!” (That thing was fast, and I always reckon Russell drove it a lot faster than I ever did.) Chops at the ripe old age of 14 already had a head full of surfing knowledge and was ripping apart some of the best waves with the great surfers.
Cord was a factory not only producing quite a few surfboards, but also a lot of ideas. Bob McTavish had a different idea every day, one of the other boys would add to it, and then suddenly there would be a new innovation coming out of Cord. Some surfed really well, some not so well, but they were all pushing the limits and surf product was improving dramatically. Kevin Platt was a great shaper also and just turned out lovely surfboards for the era.
The other thing was that we were constantly surfing great, uncrowded waves, and especially uncrowded Noosa (one of the best peeling point waves anywhere). If there were more than five or six people out in the water in those days it was crowded!
At Noosa you were able to do amazing things. Take off and either a bottom turn or a wall turn, hang back in the hollow section of the wave by stalling on the back of the board, then walk out through the white water onto the nose and nose ride it right under the lip. Big cut backs, and probably the first re-entries ever done. The wave was perfect and we had all these new maneuvers happening and were developing the boards to do them on. Bob and Kevin shaped and surfed them and took the feedback from everyone else, and in 1966 there were some very hot Cord surfboards and Cord surfers riding Noosa. The absolute beginning of a whole new era.
In 1966 the Australia surfing titles were held at the Gold Coast, and everyone wanted new boards to surf in the titles. One such person was Peter Drouyn, an incredibly hot young surfer from the Gold Coast. He came up to order his board, which I think Bob shaped. He kept saying that he wanted it lighter and shorter. Eventually, after much argument, it came out at 8-foot or so, and very light. Everybody thought he was mad, but he went to those titles and did things that nobody could believe - and won. My brother Peter also won there. Bob had made him an 8’4” board for those titles, and it was the second board he had surfed around that length. I think that around then was the beginning of the “shortboard era”. It was only a matter of months after that that all boards began to shrink in size. It had a long way to go, but probably started at Cord. Certainly all boards at Cord were getting lighter and finer, and some of the things being made there were so different to anything else every made.
The other big change happening was with fins. George Greenough had arrived with his new-shaped fins and the Sunshine Coast manufacturers were the first to use them. They revolutionised surfboards and are still used today. The guys at Cord with George’s help just kept fine-tuning them, and some of the things we were doing on waves after the arrival and development of the Greenough fin were just amazing for the day. Probably still are.
Bob especially was feeding off George’s ideas, as well as coming up with his own, and there were flextails, stepped decks, very rolled bottoms, concaves, scooped out decks, even three fins, and much more. I think they referred to everyone hanging around Cord as the “Hot Generation”, and maybe they were right. As Bob said to Richard Harvey in his book, The Surfing History of QLD, “When all the boys formed Cord Surfboards it was the best of all.”
Anyway, like all good things, it came to an end, probably all too quickly, and everybody went their own way. Over the years Rooster shaped me boards here and there with the original Cord label on them, and Chops put a Cord decal on any extra special boards he shaped over in Europe. Cord never went away, and now it’s had new life breathed into it by Chops’ boys, my nephews, headed up by Marcus who learned his trade from his old man. Sixty years on, and Cord is as progressive and innovative as it ever was. Long may it continue!
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