Imagine having a shed that looks like this inside and coming home one day to find it all wiped out.
We all get asked this question, skeptical tone and all, a lot: “How many surfboards do you need?”
Of course, the answer is always that there is no answer. Get deep enough into this game and there’s no limit to how many different waves, conditions, and appropriate surfboards for those waves and conditions one will find a need for. Somehow, the small handful of boards we all keep in our rafters, closets, garages, or apartments — space permitting — seems ridiculous to every non-surfing friend, parent, girlfriend, and the list goes on.
Since the late 1980s, 62-year-old David Ford has probably been asked that question with awe and wonder instead of criticism because of his obvious appreciation for what he appropriately refers to as “functional art.” In those three decades, Ford came across and kept approximately 260 surfboards and sadly, his collection was wiped out by the same fires that started taking over Australia in September of 2019 and became global news by the holidays. Some of the vintage boards were made as far back as the 60s, and Ford built the collection through everything from garage sales to diving through dumpsters, according to Reuters. One such dumpster find was apparently a former board of World Champion Damien Hardman.
“What I’m most gutted about is that history has been lost,” Ford told Reuters. “It’s all a bit overwhelming. I don’t know if I’ll start collecting again, but I’ll never give up surfing.”
The boards were kept in a shed on Ford’s Lake Conjola property when the fires took out a majority of homes in the area. At the time, he was visiting family for the Christmas holiday and when he returned, his home was one of the few still standing but the shed and the collection that had been inside were now gone.
“There’s people who have got the shirts on their back and that’s it,” he said. “Out of the ashes come better things and I suppose I see my role now in supporting my friends and the other people in the community who lost everything.”
