Hoping to get some advice from the kind longboarders out there!

I'm looking to purchase my first board as a 33 year old beginner surfer (178cm, 73kg) in Melbourne, Australia. I'm planning on surfing 1-2 times per fortnight. So far I've been hiring boards and have gone from soft boards to NSP epoxy boards, generally either 9'2" or 8'6". I'm just progressing from whitewash to green waves at the moment. Given my age, weight and planned frequency of surfing, I think it makes the most sense to buy a high volume longboard around the 9' mark as my first surfboard. At the moment my priority is wave count and standing time. I'm keeping an open mind as to whether in the long term I would want to continue on a longboard or move to shorter boards.

I was hoping to spend less than $1000 for the board plus fins and accessories. I am aiming for a $500-600 second-hand board or a $700-800 new board. For the last month I've been keeping an eye out on gumtree and eBay for NSP longboards but there are actually surprisingly few longboards of any sort in my price range. The ones that are available seem to be on the decrepit side and/or are by brands of which I've never heard. I'm looking out for pop-outs of which I've heard such as NSP, Modern, Torq etc as well as "second-stage" boards such as McTavish and Firewire without much luck.

I was hoping I could get some advice regarding getting a decent, reasonably-priced beginner longboard, either second-hand or new, most likely pop-out/epoxy.

So far, the best option I've found, save for waiting for a good deal on gumtree, has been the 9'0" Torq boards available at Zak Surfboards in Thornbury for $750.

www.zaksurfboards.com.au/torq-longboard-90-x-22-3-4-x-3-1-8-72l/

These seem to be similar to the NSP boards though cheaper, going from the NSP Australian online store (9'2" elements for $845).

http://www.nspsurfboards.com/2017/shop-online-aus/?c=30730/Surfboards

As far as I can tell, these NSP boards are not available anyway. I've emailed the distributer but they've not been especially helpful.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks and kind regards!
Nick

Well buy another softee. Wave catching machines. I love mine so so much and will be the most used board come this summer

Have a look at Surfboard Warehouse online if you want something cheap as they often have deals, or ECS as I've heard they are OK and you can pick a new one up for around $500 I believe.