The boards range from garage boards made at home in the 1960s when surfing was beginning to boom, all the way to modern hydrofoil boards that glide above the waves.
“It is a total evolution from the stabs to the foils,” Buck says.
“What's really cool is that you'd ask someone and they would have a few boards around . . . Then they'd remember the one under the house and go out and pull out something old and dusty.”
A classic kneeboard on display was found in a chicken coop.
“I tried to find boards that had a bit of a story behind them to make it a bit more interesting.”
There's Ricardo Christie's board from the World Surf League Championship Tour, with words and images spray-painted on the top.
There are plenty of classic boards, even a Gerry Lopez board made in Hawaii.
A favourite of Buck's is a board from the late great local Allan Byrne that was made in California.
“He was a bit of a legend back in the day because he was just so ahead of everyone else.”
Allan won various New Zealand Men's Champion competitions from ‘64 until ‘79, staying at the top of the surfing for 15 years, winning his first trophy when he was in his early teens.
“He went on to become a shaper . . . He was really well respected in Hawaii,” Buck says.
Allan went on to compete at the Hawaiian Pipeline Masters and, in 1977, set up Byrning Spears surfboard company.
Surfing is said to have started in Gisborne in 1959 when a group of Piha surf lifesavers brought boards into town.
“The phenomenon of surfing had arrived, never to leave,” it says in the Gisborne East Coast history book, A Splendid Isolation.
Surfing continues to boom, says Buck.
“It hardly used to get surfed out at Makorori, but now it's sort of the best place to go and learn. It's got a nice, gentle aspect to it.”
While the modern hydrofoil on display looks more like something from the America's Cup, the oldest boards look more like something Tahitians were surfing when Captain Cook's ship was anchored in Tahiti over 200 years ago.
In A Splendid Isolation, it says the first board in the region was a fibreglassed piece of balsa wood owned by surf lifesaver Gary Robinson.
“There's so much history here, and everyone that has surfed has still got a board somewhere that is special to them,” Buck says.
Even the hydrofoil on display is quickly becoming an antique compared to new boards coming out.
Buck says the boards and the surfers are part of living history.
“They've got the history. That board somebody won a title on, this board was the first to have rails like this or a fin like that.”
Buck is already looking to expand the exhibition, hoping to get a board from the 2021 New Zealand Women's Champion, Saffi Vette.
The boards not only reflect the changing styles over the years with improvement in technologies, but the personal styles each surfer had
“The surfboard is an incredible shape between form and function. You sacrifice one for the other and it works differently.”
The change in board styles reflects the person riding it and the thinking going on in the head of the shaper, Buck says.
“This is just a general collection with a few examples. There's so much more than just this.
“There is real scope for a Tairawhiti surf museum. It does strike a chord with so many surfers in Gisborne, which has such a long history of surfing.”
The Tairawhiti Museum has a handful of surfboards in its collection, but Buck thinks the region could do with a dedicated space.
“It's limitless. You'll always find someone with a board under their house. They're real collector's items.”
But Buck says the tales behind the boards are already being lost to time.
“The stories get lost . . . you stumble across these things, but you don't get to find out the story behind them.
“People love stories . . . you could go on forever finding these old boards.”
