Curiosity will take you to unexpected places, but you will not get anywhere without it, according to boat maker, Graeme King.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Mr King's boats have taken him all over the world, and it all started with a bit of curiosity.
Mr King said he was at a movie theatre as a child and saw a news reel featuring an overhead shot of a rowing race, which sparked his interest.
"I just found that totally fascinating, these boats going," he said.
"I decided to make these little models and float them in puddles, I was only like five years old at the time.
"One day, when I was probably more like 14, I was walking along the bank of the Torrens and saw an eight out on the slims and I thought I might try and build one of those one day."
Mr King said he never had a formal education in boat making or design; he just taught himself because he was curious about every little detail.
He made his first boat using World War II surplus wood and gradually improved on his designs.
"I built a boat for the first South Australian to win the Australian Sculling Championships, helped coach him," Mr King said.
"Way back then, I was also doing a fair bit of repair so I could look at other boats and see where they were failing and then change the design a bit so they would be more durable.
"Over time, I gradually kept refining things and analysing things and trying to understand how things worked."
From there, his reputation grew and Mr King suddenly found himself with an offer to work at Harvard University in the United States looking after their fleet of boats.
IN OTHER NEWS:
He said it was "blisters galore" and "a real mess" when he first arrived at Harvard, but after he made some changes to the rigging in the boats, it all turned around.
Mr King has since gone on to design boats that have won championships and even made a boat for Meryl Streep after befriending her on the set of The River Wild.
After over 50 years of designing and making boats, Mr King decided to move back to Australia and set up in Port Pirie, on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf in South Australia.
He said there were a lot of factors in that decision, but a lot of it boiled down to wanting to slow down a little.
"I wanted to throttle back quite a bit and I would never be able to do that over there," Mr King said.
"It was a privilege over there and the people I worked with were really the top notch people in the country."
Regardless of what people want to do, whether it is building boats or not, Mr King's advice remains the same: be curious, ask questions, and keep looking for answers.
