Sometimes, even the gods of the surf industry aren't above suspicion, recalls Gra Murdoch.

In 1990 or thereabouts, one charter boat - the MV Indies Trader 1- had the entire Mentawais chain pretty much to herself.
A few lucky ASL crew joined up with one or two industry blokes, and under Martin Daly's command we spent a splendid 10 days surfing deserted Lances, Thunders, Maccas, etc.

We all got on brilliantly and had the great time, but there was a profound cultural chasm between one member of the charter – Billabong Boss Gordon Merchant – and the rest of us.
Gordon, you see, looked after himself.

Where we'd gorge on ice cream and beer for dinner, Gordon would eat properly. In the afternoons, we'd loaf around under the tarp eating chips and chocolate while Gordon calmly worked through his yoga programme. As our live-in boardies became more rank with every passing day, our hair more crusty, and our facial hair more mangy, Gordon just became increasingly dapper and civilised by comparison.

Gordon was smooth out in the water too, he'd drop and climb and stitch turns together from deep up the reef with never a limb out of place. He made surfing look easy. We'd flail, he'd flow.

One larger afternoon at Thunders, Gordon and Martin were the only guys with the bottle to head out and fly through some big bowls for two hours until a mate and I – fortified with some bintang bravado and berated by Martin who came back to fetch us – went and scratched into a couple of in-betweeners.

A blink of an eye later and we were queueing in through customs and immigration in Sydney airport – all of us looking particularly unkempt and rancid except for the freshly-pressed, cleanly-shaved Gordon... And what do you know... we were all waved through with a cheery smile, except for world's most respectable surfer, who, perhaps because of the multitude of stamps on his passport, was asked to follow the stern customs officer into a small adjoining room.