The beautiful part of surf travel. Photos: Courtesy Isaac Chadwick
I met Isaac Chadwick, an underground, uber-talented surf filmmaker from New Zealand, outside a Brother’s Mart in Bali. We did what people do outside Brother’s Marts: drink beer and conversate. From the hour or so talk with Isaac, I could tell he was talented, passionate, and down to earth – and in the middle of absolutely going for it with his mates searching for remote waves in remote Indonesia. And all the adventure that comes with the chase. We parted ways to explore different islands, and from what I’ve seen on his socials, his last month, spent filming a surf edit in Simeulue, was pretty crazy. We reconnected and talked about it all: surf injuries in the middle of nowhere, medicine men, traveling with grit, and the state of the New Zealand surf industry.
Tell me a little bit about yourself.
I’m a surf filmmaker. I’ve been doing it semi-professionally for about four years, ever since I moved down to Dunedin. Dunedin’s got some of the best waves in New Zealand, it’s cold, and I’ve developed a good group of mates down here and through that and filming has come opportunities with bigger brands.
Who are some of your favorite people you’ve worked with?
Backdoor in New Zealand. They’re one of our biggest commercial retailers and they took me on one of the team trips beginning of last year. I’ve got Derek Morrison from New Zealand Surfing Journal to thank for that.
They did another trip down there, at the end of last year, and they took me on for the full four days. That was super dope, getting to roll with some of New Zealand’s best surfers, like Billy Stairmand. And then Hydro Surf, who I’m currently working with on this next film.
That’s sick. So, obviously, we met in Bali, and you’re from New Zealand… what drew you to Indonesia? Why did we meet here?
If you want to go on surf vacation, you’re going to go to Indonesia. Especially being in New Zealand. Me and all my mates, we’ve been yearning for the past year. Winter here is pretty miserable <laugh>. You still get swells, but it was snowing and sleeting yesterday.
Kelly, a mate of ours from the North Island, asked if we’d be keen to come with him to Simeulue. It wasn’t planned from the start at all. I had just booked tickets one way. I was like, “**** it, I’m gonna stay for five weeks and see what happens.”
The good life, on the road. Photos: Courtesy Isaac Chadwick
Booking five weeks with only a little bit of a plan is pretty ballsy.
I went with just over a grand and somehow managed to make it.
You came to Indonesia with a grand?
After flights in and out of Bali, I had a little over 1300 New Zealand dollars <laugh>.
Did you guys have any really bummy moments where you were just like, “dude, this is not worth it”?
We were at this homestay, and there were three of us. We’d managed to convince the ladies to put a mattress on the floor, but you could barely call it a mattress ’cause it’s just a sheet with some springs on it. I cocked it, so I managed to snag the blanket, and then Ollie passed out, wrapped up in, like, a half-wet towel. And then Jasper just fell asleep with nothing.
But there was never a point where we regretted it. We were just like, “this is fine, mate.” It’s all part of the experience. A bit of grit, you know?
That’s gnarly for sure. Tell me about the film. How did that come about?
In the past three years, I’ve made films that have been solely based in New Zealand. I figured now is the perfect time to take that Dunedin mindset – but to a polar-opposite location.
What’s the Dunedin mindset?
I’ll put it to you this way: yesterday we tried to check the spot. It’s about a two-hour drive down south. Along the way the car’s nearly getting blown off the road because for this place to work, you need, like, a full Antarctic storm to come up.
We’re in my mate’s van that’s got a bed in the back of it. There was me and another one of my mates in the back, freezing, with three layers on, but you can see his breath the whole time, and then we got to the spot and it wasn’t even working.
And there’s nowhere else around it that’s good. It was snowing, sleeting, hailing, all the above. We just parked, smoked three cigs and then stopped at a pub on the way back. Had a beer with these two southern blokes, like true farmers, and then just went back home and didn’t even get any waves. You try to make the most of what you can.
Dang, that’s crazy. What was Simeulue like for you guys?
As soon as you step off the plane, it’s 10 times muggier than Bali. And in Bali, the weather stays pretty consistent, but, in Simeulue, it’s bright sunshine one minute and the next minute it’ll be overcast. Within the first three days there we had a big rain squall come in. It knocked out power on the whole island for about two days.
Did you have any other ordeals? I saw some people got pretty hurt from your Instagram.
We boated out to this wave that’s like Cloudbreak, but a right. And just a bit of a smaller playing field. I was filming in the water, and then you just see easily the biggest wave of the day coming through. I see Jacko paddling back out from wave he already got. He whipped around super late, paddled, and got up and then fully full airdropped.
He was riding a six four, so when he came in, he dug the nose, just went full head over heels. He reckons if he was riding his normal shortboard, he would’ve stuck it.
I wear contact lenses. Before that, a big wash-through set had come through and I dove down and I just opened my eyes underwater so I could see where the reef was. And it was so powerful it ripped my contact lenses out of my eyes. I came up, and of course now my vision’s pretty shit <laughs>. And then Jacko comes up, and I see him slap the water and I’m like, oh, he must be doing that, like “I blew it,” so I’m like, okay, he’s all good.
But then, I see Ollie properly paddling over to him. Like, okay, no, something’s not all good. I swim over and as soon as I get there, I see his shoulder’s fully out.
We just scraped underwater under another bomb, and then we paddled him out the back and managed to hail down one of the boats. They came over, and that was a massive mission to get him in the boat, ’cause there were no ladders or anything. I can’t remember exactly how we did it, but I think we used his board. Put him on it and maneuvered it like a slide, almost.
His left arm was fully out of it. So, Jack was lying on his stomach with his arm hanging off the boat. I’m a professional surf lifeguard over summer. I kind of know some of the stuff. But Jack had me pulling on his arm trying to relocate it while we’re still out in the middle of nowhere. I was just yanking on it trying to get it back into place.
It was a full half-hour boat ride back to the mainland and then Ranu met us there and put me and Jacko into the back of his car and we went to try, went to try find this, like… medicine man.
No way.
IC: Yeah. Apparently the hospital there can be a wee bit sketch. I don’t know the full situation, but Ranu was like, “no, no, we don’t go to the hospital.”
Finally Ranu got a hold of him. He was a massage therapist or whatever. He had Jack on the deck and he was putting all these oils and green paste on his shoulder.
He’d grab Jack’s left arm and he’d like shake it, like the worm. It did not look comfortable at all. He’d shake it for a bit, go back, massage it, and like it was the second or third time he did it, like shook it just like popped straight back into place. And just like that it was over. But it was out of place for over two hours.
That’s gnarly. It healed up? He didn’t have complications after?
Yeah. That’s the amazing thing. Whatever it was that he did, Jacko had a few sessions with the dude. He came back a few days later and massaged it and all that.
But five or six days later just put strapping tape on it and Jacko was back to surfing. He’s fully back to ripping and you know, still pulling into pits and stuff.
Good for him. That’s stronger than I would be <laugh>.
Kelly, the dude who sussed the trip for us about a week before he came over from New Zealand, the nose of his board went into his shin. So he was still healing from that. He had a full compression sock on it. But there’s a big lump like in the middle of his shin and some days it’d be mellow, sometimes it’d flare up again. Like, “hey, this is weird.”
Apparently, two days after me and Jack had left, it really flared up, and there was pus coming out of it. So, he pushed on it, and the nose of his board shot out of his leg.
With great risk comes great….well. Photos: Courtesy Isaac Chadwick
Unreal. Didn’t Jasper also hit the reef or something? I saw a heavy pic of someone’s face looking kinda messed up.
Yeah. Jasper just took off in a wave, got pretty slammed and split his lip open and one of his teeth just went down. It was kind of half hanging out.I came over to check him out, and I’m like, “oh yeah, you need some stitches, you know, not a big deal.” And then you see the tooth, you’re like, “Ooh, that’s gnarly.”
He had to boost with me and Jacko, and he went to Kuala Lumpur and he got what would’ve cost him a couple thousand dollars worth of medical care in American dollars. But he got it all fixed up for like $150 US, which is mental.
That’s good to know. On the flip side, what were the highlights from the trip?
Even the very first session we had out front, it was just like a switch had been flipped. The boys were pulling into these tubes, and coming out, and just doing these big grab-rail carves and it was just some of the most mental surfing I’ve seen them do.
And, being able to film in the water. That wave where Jack did his shoulder, we went out there about a week later and I had one of the most dreamy sessions, like four- or five-foot crystal barrels. I got a few mean shots, the ones where you dive under and you’re looking back at the wave as it barrels across.
That’s so sick. When is the full film coming out? Or do you know yet?
It’s coming out at the beginning of January next year, but I’m dropping a little clip I’ve put together which is all the B-sides (below). That being said, there’s still some mental ones in there!
And what’s your plan with this film?
We got a sponsor, a local surf shop here called Hydro Surf. Their tagline is that it’s the closest surf shop to the South Pole in the world. And they sponsor a bunch of the boys, they’re, like, Hydro team riders. So, it’s going to be a Hydro team riders clip, which is epic.
Were you inspired by anyone making this film?
Yeah. I always try to stay true to my vision, but in terms of influences, one of my all time favorite surf films is Pentecostal.I reckon it’s the best surf film ever made.
The other big influence would be Chapter 11, Dane Reynolds. It’s very relatable to our situation. It’s all your mates, and they might not rip as hard as Dane’s mates, but you’ve got some pretty good waves, you’re always drinking beers in the car park and stuff like that. <laugh>. You gotta have some sort of narrative to it. I really enjoy finding those little in-between moments.
I feel like there’s something really refreshing about seeing people that aren’t surfing as a career still scoring. I’ve seen you guys surf and it’s pretty insane, to make it clear to everyone who reads this. But everyone still has a normal life, which is kind of how surfing used to be.
Yeah. And I think that shows too like, Jacko, he builds houses and stuff when he is back home, and Ollie works at the surf shop and as a musician when he’s back home.
We’re not doing this professionally and there’s a bit of grit to it. We haven’t been given money and heaps of stickers since day one. We have normal jobs and we’re just doing this ’cause we love it and getting to travel the world… we’ll make a film about it.
That’s so beautiful.
There’s not much for surf industry in New Zealand at the moment. Now it’s a Hydro team film and I’ve been lucky to have recently been given a budget for it, but when you put it in the context of international flights and everything in Indo, I’m not making a profit on that.
Why do you think there’s not a lot of industry in New Zealand?
Surfing was booming early 2000s, then, mid-teens collapsed a wee bit, and now it’s kind of coming back post-COVID. But New Zealand’s a pretty small country. There’s never going to be a huge amount of money flowing through.
People like Kehu Butler, but they’ve had to move to the Gold Coast to make their careers. You can’t make it in the surf industry at the moment if you stay in New Zealand. You need to travel. But it’s a bit unfortunate that it’s super difficult to base yourself out of New Zealand. I would like to “make it,” whatever that means, and be able to bring back a lot of exposure and money and pump that into New Zealand surfing. That’s not to say that there aren’t people that are working their butts off trying to make opportunities for people.
We just need to support everyone. Don’t see new people coming up as a threat. If someone’s doing something, the more people are creating content and surfing that’s naturally gonna attract more money into the industry.
