For those that have never experienced it, driving out to Bells Beach is an event in itself. As you wind down Bones Road you are surrounded by a unique mix of indigenous coastal shrubbery and tall, arching gums. Each fence you drive past harbours seemingly hidden acres of land – left open for both farm and wild animals to graze. Kangaroos lounge in the shade. As you continue to drive you realise that the ‘roo population at Bells heavily outweighs the human population.
Just a few kilometres away from the coast – just before you reach the top of a hill and are greeted with the stunning contrast of raw, sandstone cliffs and a powerful, deep blue Southern Ocean – is Shyama Buttonshaw’s place of residence.
Shyama, a relatively reserved 20-something-year-old, grew up here. Five-and-a-half acres out the back of Bells Beach, cultivated into a mass of veggie gardens, cacti gardens, flower gardens and workshops. Shyama is a particular fan of the cacti garden, and he likes to call it his own. It’s on this unique piece of land that he opened his first and only shaping bay, showroom and laminating bay. He spends the majority of his time in these three areas, perfecting his craft and taking orders from local surfers.
When I arrive at Shyama’s he is in the main house, sitting cross-legged in a chair in the lounge room with a cat purring in his lap. He’s watching his iPhone intently, which happened to be streaming the WSL broadcast. Stephanie Gilmore and Kanoa Igarashi were about to win the Corona Bali Protected. We watch, and then we talk.
I’ve been around surfboards my whole life. My dad had really good relationships with legendary shapers down here… Wayne Lynch, Maurice Cole, Greg Brown… so I’ve always had a connection with custom surfboards. I also was always interested in board design. I used to ride Simon Anderson’s boards and I’d sit with him and break down the board design each time I ordered one. It was really hands-on; it wasn’t like just grabbing one out of his shop.
Then in high school I won a woodwork award and the prize was an orbital sander. I won for these big, abstract flat lay drawers that I made for my brother Raf, who is a painter. When I got the sander, I started repairing all my old boards, and even some friends’ boards for cash.
After about six months of that, Maurice Cole asked if I wanted a job in his factory. I worked for him for three-and-a-half years. I was ding repairing for two years and then I started sanding new boards and working with resin, and during that whole time period I’d sit in his shaping bay and watch him shape. In saying that I didn’t shape a board until three years into working with him – I was just trying to learn correctly.
The first board I ever made was when Maurice was in America. I was down at the factory by myself and thought, stuff it, I’m going to try and make a surfboard. I had no idea what I was doing, I didn’t know how to use a plainer. I made a thing that kind of looked like a surfboard, it wasn’t too bad… but then I went to glass it.
When you’re glassing you have a certain period of time before it goes hard – and before I’d done even half the process it had gone hard. So, then I was trying to cut the glass with scissors and there was resin everywhere, and I decided to move the board away and deal with it the next week. I went and picked it up to move it to a different rack, when I tripped over and snapped the nose off the board. I was so frustrated and flustered I chucked it in the dumpster out the front. When Maurice came back and found it, he blew up at me because “I threw my first board in the dumpster”. Needless to say, he took it out of the dumpster. I still have it actually! It’s so bad, the nose is snapped off and it’s got a big footprint in it because I put my foot through it. It was a complete disaster. But… that’s where it all started.
As he says this his mum moves past the window. The living room space feels like a greenhouse – one huge wall made of glass, facing the afternoon sun. It’s raining lightly outside, and the gardens are glistening. It’s easy to forget where you are in a home and on a property like this.
Living down here at Bells… there is a bit of a bullshit tester. It’s kind of like… black wetsuits, white shortboards… and they have to work. The industry in this part of the world can be a bit narrow-minded, but it’s good because there is an exact set of standards you have to meet before you get any support.
It can be a bit crusty down here though. It’s cold, the market isn’t as big… it feels like everyone is in a slightly worse mood than other places. Compare it to a place like Byron, where everyone thinks everything is cool, and there’s actually no comparison. But I like that. If what you’re making isn’t good, people won’t buy it.
The guys around here, especially some of my mentors, are really good surfers as well as really good shapers. Their shaping doesn’t become a brand – they’re making surfboards because they want to make better surfboards for themselves. They are held equally in their surfing as they are to their shaping. That way of thinking has rubbed off on me a lot.
My mentors down here like Wayne (Lynch) and Greg (Brown), they really push their surfing. It’s not just a hobby, it’s a lot more than that. Whereas there are some shapers out there who might be great craftsmen, but they won’t make boards as good as Wayne or Greg because they’re not pushing themselves in the water. When you test yourself in bigger surf, more conditions, as often as possible, you find little improvements. There are always exceptions to this rule but I think you get instant feedback from yourself if you’re a good surfer and you’re pushing yourself in the water.
Bells and Winki are really good waves to test boards because you have a lot of time on the wave and they’re both slopey. They are a good shape but they’re not hollow, so you actually have to produce a lot of the speed yourself. If you have a bad board, you’re going to suck. You have to be able to manufacture your own speed.
It needs to carry speed really well through flatter bits in the wave. There are steep moments but also a lot of down time, so a board out there has to have lot of carry but also not too stiff, either. A lot of boards might track out.
It’s a balance between putting enough foam in your board, keeping it not too refined but also refined enough that it turns well. The thing about making boards for these waves is that it’s a good foundation – you know you’re going to get a board that will work well in different conditions. If you took a board shaped for down here up to the Gold Coast, it would go alright. If you took a board that was shaped for the Gold Coast down here, it wouldn’t work that well.
Yup, well, a lot of guys are competing for a small market… and there’s not much money in surfboards to begin with. If you look at a place like California and then look at the market here, it’s a fraction of that – which means that the shaping industry down here isn’t necessarily all sunshine and rainbows. There are some weird things that go on. But as a whole, if you’re doing well then people support you.
Navigation. Communication and navigation. You’ve got to work your way around issues between shapers, and if you can communicate well the small stuff isn’t a big deal. Really, at the end of the day it comes down to your boards. I feel very lucky though because I don’t have the overheads that a lot of the guys do – I’m self-sufficient out here.
Well Mum and Dad used to live in Aireys Inlet, about 20 minutes down the coast, and in the late 80s there was a huge fire called Ash Wednesday. I wasn’t alive yet, but they lost their house completely. Every single thing got burnt apart from a painting of the Virgin Mary [Shayma points to a painting above his head, perched on the railing towards the top of the ceiling.] It was lodged in the top of a tree. The fire incinerated everything else – totally wiped it all out. There used to be a big brick fireplace in the house and at the end of it all, there was nothing left – no brick, just dust. It was horrible.
But after that Mum and Dad found a way to get this property we’re on now. It’s five-and-a-half acres behind Bells, there’s a yoga studio that Mum runs, a huge garden and my shaping area. It’s mostly five-and-a-half acres of garden though.
So we had the property here and after a few years working with Cory Graham in Torquay, I decided to build my own shaping studio on the property. We had the room, so I just went for it. I built a shaping studio, a little showroom and a few years later I built a laminating bay. So yeah, now I’m kind of self-sufficient. I do everything start to finish out here. I feel really lucky that I don’t have a lease to pay and I’m not out working in an industrial estate. I mean, I’ve got birds chirping out the front of my studio.
It is. I have to force myself to get a coffee with my friends because sometimes I don’t see anybody for a week. I dart between here and Bells and don’t go in to town for weeks at a time. It’s probably bad, but I love it.
We can see why Shyama. If you’re interested in learning more about Shyama Buttonshaw and his shaping business, you can do so over here.