Gra Murdoch: The Last Lap Of The Horse

A few months back I appeared on the Waterpeople podcast with Dave Rastovich and Lauren Hill. There I waxed lyrical about surf media, including my fondness for 'White Horses' magazine - Dave and Lauren graciously agreeing. By the time the podcast came out, however, the news was dated: 'White Horses' had crossed the finishing line for the last time.

The news came as a suprise to me and, I imagine, a suprise to many others too.

In light of the information, I recently spoke to White Horses' founder Gra Murdoch about the decision to shutter the title.

Swellnet: So, Horsies, not to appear insensitive, has been put out to pasture. Can you sum up the situation for us?
Gra Murdoch: Yeah mate we’re out of puff, basically. Horsies has always been a labour of love and it’s just felt more like labour than love for a while now. We’ve got a humble, low-overhead business model that could have kept going indefinitely, but the point of Horsies was always to make it valuable – and that took work. My commitment was ebbing. 

It felt like the biggest reason to keep going was pride – not the best reason.

Over the last few years, between myself and Simsy [Craig Sims, Horsies’ fearless leader], we were juggling the mag between us. One of us was usually able carry the load when the other couldn’t, but between family commitments, looking after ageing parents, and our respective work lives [Simsy, academia; Gra, freelance stuff] it just wore us down.

We had offers from a few crew to inject cash into The Horse, one in particular has a distribution set-up in the States, and getting even a small slice of the Surfers’ Journal market might have laid the foundation for some kind of scale, but even the thought of that, knowing how hard you’d have to hustle, was tiring: you know when you’re done. 

For the record: How many years? How many issues? 
Issue 1 came out in 2012. The last one’ll be issue 47. We thought about going ’til issue 50, but I that was mostly pride talking. 

Issue 17 - The Pacific Ocean issue - cover of Eddie Aikau by Dan Merkel

As it had a unique flavour and format, can you recall your motivation to first begin 'White Horses'?
The first remotely Horsies idea I had was in ’98. I was tagging along as designer/writer on an ASL [Australia’s Surfing Life Magazine] 'on-location' issue. We were in the WA desert, Warroora Station. Ross Clarke-Jones, Martin Potter, Taj Burrow, Pancho Sullivan, Shane Powell, and Maurice Cole. The issue was great, but it struck me that for all the profiles we did on the surfers, their answers to our interviews, and the narrative of the surf trip in the desert, the most interesting stories to come from the surfers were the ones told around the fire each night – unguarded, unrecorded, and undocumented, because they didn’t fit the surf magazine formula. I wondered if a mag could feel more like those camp fire conversations.

Also, working on Deep magazine with Nick Carroll was very influential. Nick’s always been the total Yoda figure for me.

But the idea to make Horsies happen was actually formulated as an exit plan: By 2010 the writing was on the wall for printed mags. I’d been doing surf mags since ’88, so I was kind of ready to move on, but in order to bid a proper goodbye, I thought it’d be nice to try to make the most beautiful gem of a surf title possible – launch a title with a pre-determined life-span. It would run for five years, 20 issues, spell out The Sea Has Stories along the spine, and then we’d walk away. It’d be a goodbye / love letter to surf magazine publishing. It was backed all the way by Peter Morrison, who was the best boss anyone could ask for.

As far as the market for White Horses goes, I never really thought about it. To me, it wasn’t so much a market as a tone. It just felt that with most surf mags, there was this kind of artifice, that surfing should be treated as somehow separate from the rest of life – but then you go down to any backbeach carpark and you see how our surfing and our lives are totally intertwined. It’s no big deal, it just fits into and enhances our lives and family. I never thought about ‘the market’, other than if the mag was beautiful and low key it’d fit into that world.

Does that world still exist or has it too changed?
That community’s still there, consumption habits are obviously different. We don’t go to the newsagents, it’s all about subscriptions, etcetera. If myself and Simsy and Bainy were in our 30s and gung-ho, we’d leverage the goodwill of the Horsies brand into some digital model, grow moustaches and do podcast tours or whatever, but we’re crusty, tired old bastards.

This must be coming across as more morose than it actually is. We’re stoked and proud, happy to let it go.

Back to your initial plan, you didn’t stop after five years and 20 issues. Why was that?
Morrison Media was bought out by a mainstream media company and we were made redundant three issues short of reaching issue 20, so myself, Bainy and Simsy tipped in some of our redundancies and bought the mag off our overlords. By the time we reached issue 20, we thought fuck that, we’ve fought too hard for this, we’ll keep going.

Issue 13 'Conversations' - cover by Logan Murray

Do you have a favourite issue, or even a favourite story?
I loved some of the theme issues. 'Winterfell' was a day-in-the-life theme, I had 46 writers and 68 photographers out and about on June 1, first day of winter, just seeing what they could find. It was unreal! I loved 'Conversations' too, the whole mag was just verbatim first-person convos, from interviews to overheard exchanges in the lineup. It was probably the closest I came to executing a mag where there was absolutely zero editorial voice and it was all just pure capture. 

As far as individual pieces go, one of my favourite stories that springs to mind is a 'Writers’ Rally' piece by this West Oz fella, Richard Easton, in issue seven. In that issue, writers could choose one of three topics: ‘Song’, ‘Dream’ or ‘Surfboard’. Richard chose ‘Surfboard” and wrote this perfect piece about his aunty buying him his first new shooter. There’s been some incredible writers show up in the Horse, but this piece was amazing.

You began your publishing career at Australia’s Surf Life back in the 80s – pre-internet obviously. Now that the publishing world has changed so drastically, how do you reflect on those years when mags were central to surf culture and you were behind the controls?
I was never near the controls, the editors were steering the titles. I was more Smithers to Peter Morrison’s Monty Burns. But when I think about the cultural influence of the titles, though, Morrison Media (ASL, Riptide, Slam, Australian Longboarding, Kiwi Surf, etcetera) never really felt like it was ‘central’ to the surf culture. I think Sydney’s Northern Beaches – home of Tracks and SW – was the epicentre. We were outsiders from the trashy Gold Coast. Even when ASL was smashing those titles on the newsstands, it always felt like we weren’t quite in the club. Which was a great angle to come from when it came to being funny, subversive or just silly. Which we did well.

If I think about the messaging of surf mags back then - apart from the of-its-time sexism - it all feels pretty naïve in a sweet kind of way. But of course everything a few decades ago feels innocent and light compared to the polarised shit-show that we’re just a click or two away from now.

But to actually answer your question, I reflect on those years of full-on mag making with so much appreciation. Mags might have reflected or helped shape the culture a bit, but for me the culture was inside the slightly Soviet-style bunker we worked out of in North Burleigh. Working in this super focussed and productive madhouse, people trying their absolute hardest, really believing in their titles. Like the Slam Skateboard guys were hard core perfectionists, total ninjas, the Riptide crew were left-field cheery brainiacs, The ASL crew worked their arses off, I got to design for Bruce Channon (along with Hugh McLeod, my all-time magazine hero) on our Longboard mag. The designers and production crew were like brothers and sisters.

I cringe when I think how seriously I took myself in it all, but it was a lot of fun and we surfed heaps.

Issue 9 - 'Equinox' ('The magic of the midpoint') - cover of Matt Rott by Matt Shepherd

Were you ever bitter at how technology disrupted everything?
Though I’m terrified about how the worst of social media is sending society to the shitter, and what phones are doing to our ability to tolerate even the slightest boredom, yet from a personal point of view, I’m probably better off for the lessons of that disruption. 

There was a time when ASL was riding high, we were launching new titles all over the place, we were smashing it, and I thought I was hot shit. But after that peak lay a decade and a half when mags steadily lost their currency as the interweb caught on…and there’s nothing more humbling or grounding than working your arse off for years, getting better at what you do, yet being a little less successful with every passing day. Your ego gets very much put in its correct place, when you’re doing your best knowing that the returns are diminishing, then evaporating. You end up doing what you do for the love of it. The work, especially the people you work with, becomes the reward. 

And you’re never remotely in danger of thinking you’re hot shit ever again. If the internet had never come along, I would most likely be insufferable.

Are stories still central to surf culture?
For sure, mate. Out the back, in the carpark, on WhatsApp groups, on the job site, in the supermarket, school, pub, anywhere one surfer runs into another. Oh, and here on the mighty Swellnet of course! The Sea Has Stories, as an old surf mag used to say.

And mate if I can just take this chance to acknowledge the writers and photographers, artists, shapers, and storytellers who the Horse really belonged to. What a privilege it was to try to do justice to their work. My mag-making skillset is completely redundant these days, but I can’t get over what a satisfying gig it was!