OAK Flats woodcarver Enn Muller is in a quandary – he wishes to retire, but the Australian Navy doesn’t want him to.
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Mr Muller, 76, has carved an enviable reputation for his craft. This lead to him being offered work carving honour boards for the navy’s cruisers. His work takes pride of place on the boats, each honour board taking him about 10 weeks to carve.
“When I was originally commissioned to do the work I was 64 and said I would do it for 10 years.
‘‘When that 10 years was up I said I wanted to retire and they said, ‘like hell you will’. So here I am two years later still working for them,” he said with a smile.
“But it gives me something to do and I am taking a six-month break after the job I am working on now.”
Mr Muller has been doing woodcraft since he was a boy, but stopped practising the art when he moved from Germany to Australia.
He said when he came to Australia in 1958 anyone who was a bit ‘‘arty’’ was frowned upon, so he stopped doing carving and made furniture for a living.
“As a coincidence, my boys were playing soccer with Oak Flats and they were having problems with their trophies.
“The president was a friend of mine and they made their own trophies, but had used neutral wood-grain filler, not realising that it would dry white, so I helped them fix that problem and one of the committee challenged me to do better.
“They only had 17 teams at the time and gave three trophies for each team, so 51 trophies wasn’t really a problem.
“They held the presentation at Jamberoo and there were several other clubs there, and they were so impressed they asked me to make their trophies too. So I started my own trophy business, and at one stage we had nine employees.
‘‘But that all ended when the trophy market was flooded with cheap imports – you may as well go broke sitting on the beach as try and stay afloat.”
However, his passion is woodcraft, with a particular interest in native flora and fauna, and loves nothing more than teaching others.
“I do one day a week at Greenacres, which really is my favourite day of the week, while I have been teaching one day a week for the past 16 years, with some of them doing quite outstanding work.
“Over the years I have also made several major items that I can display, including a carving of a Norman Lindsay painting In Festive Mood.’’
