Mitchell Rae started applying the distinctive eyes to the nose of his boards after he first visited Bali in 1972, and saw eyes on the bows of local fishing boats.inspired by the concept Mitchell designed the trademark eyes which feature extensively on his boards.

Balinese folklore instilled the belief that the ocean was full of evil spirits, so the local fishermen, the majority of whom couldn’t swim, felt the eyes on the front of their canoes protected them from the spirits.

The spirit eyes, I call them. They take your board out of the realm of foam and fibreglass. They encapsulate the quest for the higher level of the surfing experience. It also gives the boards a bit of life, he adds. It animates them. Sometimes you check them from different angles and they seem quite alive.

Outer Island boards have ended up in many corners of the surfing world. A lot of Mitchell’s market is travelling surfers who do their annual or biannual pilgrimage to their favourite surfing paradise. So Outer Islands have lived up to their name and ended up in Indo, the Pacific, the Maldives, Fiji, Hawaii…and lots of even more out of the way places. You can visit some real surfing backwaters and you’ll bump into someone with eyes on his boards and you’ll inevitably start talking.

Over the years, the Outer Island spirit eyes have become a kind of a cult thing, and some of Mitchell’s clients have amassed extensive quivers. Morning of the Earth creator, Albie Falzon, reckons he owns eight. “I don’t invest in real estate,” jokes Albie, “I collect Outer Island surfboards.”