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RACHAEL CRANE CPA IS RIDING A WAVE OF SUCCESS AT SURFWEAR ICON RIP CURL

It was not so long ago that visitors to the global head office of surf industry giant Rip Curl were greeted with a casual "g'day" and Erected to wait on a couch, where they could flip through surf magazines or watch fooptage of wild waves on a big screen mounted on the wall. Today, it's different. The surf screen and magazines are still a feature, but now visitors to the office in the Victorian coastal town of Torquay are photographed before they can get past reception. This picture is added to a security pass that must be displayed at all times during a visit.

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Such a procedure is a far cry from the days when company founders Brian "Sing Ding" Singer and Doug "Claw" Warbrick began making wetsuits on a pre-World War II sewing machine in a Torquay garage in the late 1960s. Today, Rip Curl clocks hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, producing everything from surfboards and shoes to wetsuits and watches. Sing Ding and Claw appeared on BRW's Rich 200 list in 2002, having accumulated an estimated $241 million fortune. The company has recently announced a multi-million dollar expansion to its Torquay operations, including a new 4,000sq m distribution warehouse, new IT systems and a swanky upgrade to its head office and showroom.

All this begs the question: could the corporate tide finally have turned for the famously free-spirited surfing company?

Not just yet. The principles of hippiedom on which the company was built are still very much at its heart. Board members still stroll into meetings with sand in their eyebrows, and as for the tightening of security at head office, this is largely to prevent those wandering in from the adjoining surf shop mistaking the office for a surf museum. The receptionist who snaps visitor pass pictures is likely to be dressed in jeans and a hot-pink Rip Curl tank top. And don't be surprised if she addresses you as "mate".

Then there's Rachael Crane CPA, Rip Curl's Australia and NZ CFO, who looks like she could have stepped right out of a Rip Curl catalogue. She appears as the archetypal Australian surfer-chick: tall, blonde, tanned and decked out in the kind of casual surfwear worn by most residents of this laid-back beachside town. At the first sign of an offshore breeze, Crane reaches for her McTavish longboard and heads for the swell. There she regularly spends her lunch breaks competing for waves against fellow die-hard surfers, many of whom head back to the same office when they dry off. Even Crane herself admits to being "outdoorsy". So what's with the accountancy thing?

"It seemed like a safe option that could offer flexibility down the track," says Crane, 31, who began her accounting career at 17 when she joined KPMG in Albury as a trainee accountant while studying for a bachelor of business part-time at Charles Sturt University. "The traineeship kind of clinched it because it meant that I could start earning a living straight away," she explains.

After a brief stint as an accountant with stationery company Blue Star in Melbourne and then as financial controller with environmental consultants WSL, Crane joined Masterfoods in 1998 as financial accountant. Later she took up a position as finance manager for the company's Taiwan operations, where her husband had also landed a job in the product development division.

After two-and-a-half years in Taiwan, Crane needed a change. She handed in her resignation, filled
embroidered patches a backpack with the bare essentials and headed to Europe solo for 10 weeks. "It did feel like a good chance to not cut loose but just
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