Tauranga businessman Dusty Waddell has spent years collecting items that represent “a broad spread of New Zealand’s surfing history, from the early 60s to the 80s.” Now, the collection is up for sale.
Standing row upon row in a Tauranga Airport hangar are more than 130 short and long surfboards from a bygone era.
The boards, which date from the early 1960s to the 1980s, have been meticulously catalogued and stand alongside other memorabilia including skateboards, posters, movies, T-shirts, diecastmodels and wetsuits.
It’s taken Dusty Waddell 20 years to acquire this impressive collection which is valued at more than $200,000 in its entirety.
Now it’s for sale.
Waddell, who has just been for a paddle, hopes to sell it to one buyer.
He says his “passion for surfing and the ocean” started as a schoolboy in Ōhope but his real board addiction started about 20 years ago when he semi-retired.
Dusty Waddell stands with one of his most prized surfboards.
His son came home from university with a longboard and he was hooked.
“One board went to five, five went to 10, and so on – end of story. I’ve always collected stamps and coins but the surfboards bit me.
“But I didn’t realise how much space you had to have.”
Waddellsays a buyer with a suitable building could start a New Zealand surfing museum.
He was planning on building a museum with Tauranga City Council by Mount Maunganui’s Visitor Information Centre but had decided to move on.
“Kaikoura Museum also has an old surfboard collection too, but it doesn’t have that same history as I have,” he says referring to folders full of details of old surf competitions.
Waddell says he thinks it is important he collected the boards when he did “because now they’re as scarce as anything”.
“My main priority is for it to be sold all as one so the history doesn’t get wiped out.”
'One of a kind' airbrush designs were hand-crafted on to the surfboards.
“The boards these days are a quarter of the weight but they don’t last,” Waddell says but he reasons “at least you don’t get as badly hurt coming off”.
“The new boards are so much more manoeuvrable. With these, you have to push your body and drop your knee to get around.”
Waddell ran a surf shop at Mount Maunganui when he started seriously collecting, buying old boards and remodelling the old-fashioned ‘D’ fins to modernise them.
“There were about 800 boards there at the time - long boards down the bottom and short boards up the top.”
The collector says his best boards include a 1976, 6′4″ single fin hand-crafted by Simon Anderson, for which he has been offered A$3500 ($3790).
Other collectables include “pop art”, with one-off airbrush designs and boards by designers and crafters who have died such as Allan Byrne and Bob Davie.
Australian champions Layne Beachley, Damian Hardman and Joel Parkinson, who Waddell describes as “real legends”, all have their old boards in Waddell’s hands.
Waddell is inviting contact from anyone who has an interest in the collection.
