Shane Stedman, an Australian surfing icon, innovative shaper, entrepreneur and true raconteur, has passed away at 85 years young.
A dynamic force in the surfing world, he was a charismatic craftsman unafraid to push boundaries, and an embodiment of what it truly means to be a surfer. Shane helped shape the culture of Australian surfing as we know it today.
Surfing Australia extends its heartfelt condolences to Shane’s family, friends and all who knew and loved him.
Rest in peace, Shane.
There will be a service honouring Shane Stedman at Crescent Head SLSC on Saturday, May 30, at 11 am, followed by a midday paddle out.
Shane Stedman OAM
(awarded in 2024 for Services to the Surfing Industry)
Shane Stedman spent the last 50 years of his life bringing the joy of surfing to others.
“Seeing the look on a young bloke’s face when he gets his new, often first, surfboard, especially if I have custom shaped it specifically for him, is my motivation,” Mr Stedman said in 2024. “The nature of my business has allowed me the freedom to go surfing almost every day!”
Mr Stedman hasn’t sought recognition, but he has made a significant impact. For his service to the surfing industry, he has been awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia.
“What I felt on learning of my nomination was that I was honoured and humbled, especially as my OAM is for having a lifetime of having fun.
“My brother (David Stedman OAM, 2022) received his for his hard work in helping foster unfortunate kids. He is currently on his seventy-fourth.”
Shane: On Crescent Head, Brookvale and Mona Vale home
Shane Stedman was, without doubt, one of surfing’s big names of our sport. He has had a huge impact on Australia’s surfing history. He was born and bred at Crescent Head, NSW in the roaring 40’s and in the early learning years he still remembers his one room shack primary school. The shack was home to six classes, all in the one room with half the class aboriginal and the other half white kids. There was no electricity in Crescent until he was about 12 years of age. He went to high school in Kempsey.
Following school, Shane did a five year Production Engineering course in Kensington, NSW followed by another year post graduate. Shane’s foray into surfboard production came in 1963/64 and as with most experiments his first board was shaped in his Mum's garage with a dirt floor. His simple plan reflected the times and all he wanted was to make enough boards to support his surfing lifestyle.
Peter Alexander posted in a surfing and surfboard collectors forum in 2024:
In the Book the “Shane Gang” by Shane Stedman he writes about how Dick Van Straalan came to him in 1966 and said he wanted Shane to sponsor a rising star called Russell Hughes. This board was shaped by Dick at 116 Rowe Street Eastwood, under Shane’s parents’ house. The board was called “The Russell Hughes Excellor Model” This board is 9’6” and has 2 Redwood stringers with a heavy glass job, It has a number 203 on the tail. As it turned out Russel won various contests while sporting the Shane Logo on their boards and the arrangement certainly went a long way in raising the Shane profile.
1966 Russell Hughes came 3rd in the Australian titles, won 1967 Queensland tiles and came 3rd in the World Titles at Puerto Rico in 1968.
Roger Sutcliffe shared:
‘Michael Peterson Shane Custom Number 1’. This is the first board MP shaped at Shane Surfboards for Shane Stedman, 6’10” In great condition unfortunately has been restored and hot coated.
What Shane ended up doing was much bigger than he had originally planned. In 1966 he was working with Dick Van Straalen and Kevin Brennan and in 1967 he made the move to Brookvale, the home of surfboard shaping in the State.
Shane and his mates became the legendary Shane gang and very early advertising in Surfing World and then Tracks made you aware that this gang was a tight community of surfers on a mission. Together the team of surfers, shapers, sanders designers and glassers were beginning to see their hobby was now turning into a serious platform for their surfing and business future.
The Shane gang.
In 1967 the Brookvale operation had some influential guys producing quality surfboards with Bob Kennerson sanding and guys like Peter Cornish and Ted Spencer shaping. A liitle known fact is that Shane was the inventor of the Ugg Boot and sold the rights off very early in their inception. This business was to become an $800m enterprise for the shoe industry.
Later in 1970, a whole myriad of talent would come and go though the Shane factory. To Shane he loved them all. The standouts were Ted Spencer and Terry Fitzgerald, who subsequently insisted he put on this young kid from Narrabeen. This was his now great friend Simon Anderson. Other great names to come through the factory were Butch and Steve Cooney, Frank Latta, Richard Harvey, Glyn Ritchie, Chris Young, Richard Kavanagh, David Trealor, Josette Legarde and Jack and Gordon Knight. His rich shaping history began in 1963 with Malibu boards ranging in length from 9 to 10’ and in 1968 Shane began to produce Vee Bottom 8’ stringerless boards. As the years passed boards were getting shorter and in 1969 the Shane 7’6” rounded pin preceded the the Shoe Knee board 4’11” rounded pin. This was the same year the Standard Shane 5’5” pop out surfboard was produced and production of this model alone was 200 per week. This model shape is still current today and many surfers are riding this plan shape that Shane introduced back in the late 60’s. Shane’s favorite surfboard design was the Ted Spencer model “White Kite” because it evolved through so many rapid changes.
Shane acknowledged that when he moved to Brookvale he eased up a little on the shaping because he had so much talent there shaping world class boards, but he still loved getting foam dust on him into the latter part of his career and his boards were still being produced in large numbers as his designs just don’t seem to date.
A lifelong surfer, Shane lived at at 61 Hillcrest Ave, Mona Vale overlooking his beloved waves, which he bought in 1974, and sold on in May 2021 for $5.306 million.
Of that home Shane said in a 2013 White Horse magazine article he first looked at it on a Sunday in the Winter of 1973 or 1974:
‘’ It was the very last house at the end of the street. Geoff Watson an architect friend of John Witzig said, ‘This place is a goer, all the hard wood is solid.’
The walls of the Hillcrest Avenue house were covered in all sorts of stuff. Hessian over the timber walls and under the Hessian was paint and under the paint was the beautiful timber that we have sand blasted. So much of this place is original. The Baltic pine floor is well over a hundred years old. From what I can ascertain, a doctor built it in the 1890s and had it for a few years as a holiday home.’’
Stedman home at Hillcrest pre-fixup. Photo: Stedman family
Molly Archibald, (previous long time owner – an Artist – who had been there for 50 or 60 years prior to 1970's) had left the house to a Captain O’Reilly a Torres Strait pilot who lived nearby, off whom Shane bought it for 30 thousand dollars.
The plan after the home at Mona Vale sold was to move back to his old home grounds at Crescent Head with his children Bonnie and Luke and their respective families.
At that stage Mr. Stedman, who had emphysema from years spent sanding surfboards without a mask, was due to have surgery to improve his lung's function and saw the move to the country as a boon for his health.
On Shane - Steve Core
This Tribute by Steve Core of 'Steve Core Surf', Cronulla, is among the best that have been shared, provides more Shane insights:
Steve said:
I was terribly saddened to learn of the passing of my old friend, surfboard builder and industry entrepreneur, Shane Stedman this week.
Working in the Sydney surfboard industry, I first met Shane Stedman in, well, next year will be 60-years ago. Way back in 1967 when we had a huge Surf Expo in Sydney’s CBD main Town Hall.
They still have that huge exhibition space to this day that is called the Lower Town Hall. It is located right on George Street in the heart of the city. That was a very big deal back in those 'Beach Boys' surf boom days of the sixties.
At the time, I was working for the Taren Point based, southside board builder, Peter Clarke Surfboards. We had a display booth at the Expo. Where we had our Signature surfer/shaper at the time, Keith Paull taking custom orders for surfboards and doing meet & greets.
Shane Stedman was also there attending the Expo representing Shane Surfboards of course. Shane was set up with a purpose built, indoor 'fish bowl' shaping bay. He was shaping surfboards inside a specially designed clear plexiglass shaping bay.
The entire exhibition hall would strain to have a conversation when Shane was attacking a foam blank with his screaming tar planer. Much to the delight of the thousands of show goers who had never seen a surfboard being shaped ‘live’ previously.
That was a very innovative exhibition for the ‘60s. I soon learned that would became the hallmark of how Shane did things. Shane always had a ton of energy, enthusiasm and a pure entrepreneurial spirit.
Interestingly, also performing live at that same Surf Expo was a surf band called ‘The Sunsets'. They had recently recorded the soundtrack for Paul Witzig's early surfing film ‘A Life in the Sun’. That was around the time they began to morph into the more famous, Taman Shud. They also went on to do soundtracks for later productions ‘Evolution’ and ‘Sea of Joy’.
There’s also a musical tie-in for Shane that I'd like to unveil here. I'm not sure how many may know this but in those early days Shane also dabbled as a lead singer in a rock n roll band too. They were called ‘Shane and the Trojans’. Let it be noted that, without Shane out the front mind you, ‘The Trojans’ supported the Rolling Stones on their tour of Australia in 1965.
Shane wisely moved his surfboard operations from Eastwood to the more high profile Brookvale in 1967. He wasn't part of the original Brookvale six, but he clipped the cusp of it. Some of Australia’s most famous surfers shaped or had signature models with Shane Surfboards.
Names like... Russell Hughes, Ted Spencer, Terry Fitzgerald, John Harris, Simon Anderson, Michael Peterson, Richard Harvey, Frank Latta, Bill Cillia, Jack Knight, Terry Richardson, (to name a few) and additionally, Shane Surfboards were made at Crescent Heads by Bob Kennerson.
Relatively fewer northside board builders had the immense production facilities that Shane Surfboards developed in Mitchell Road. During that ‘transition era’ to shorter boards, further emerging into the ‘stringerless era’, Shane produced a plethora of models and types.
The magnitude of Shane’s achievements can best be sensed by talking to avid surfboard collectors and hearing testament about how many Shane Surfboards they have acquired in their collections. The forms of Shane Surfboards are not only nostalgic leftovers, but testament to the evolving design development of Australian surfboards of that era. They have aesthetic unity and clarity of form.
Chosen by Contest Director, Graham Cassidy, Shane became the voice of surfing as the live beach commentator for all of the original 2SM Coca-Cola Surfabouts starting in 1974. Then in the early '80s, Shane had jumped camps and started doing his famous radio surf reports for a new western Sydney based radio station WSFM and there was some kind of conflict of interest.
In 1982 for the 2SM Coca-Cola Surfabout, I replaced Shane Stedman as the live beach commentator. The 1982 2SM Coca-Cola Surfabout final was held at Cronulla Point which was my home turf. Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholomew ended up winning that one, beating Hawaiian Dane Kealoha in the final, winning $30,000 and a new 4-wheel drive car.
I know Shane worked a lot on the development and marketing of his very successful Ugg Boot business and I seem to remember back in late ‘70s or ‘80s, before the advent of dedicated ‘Jeaneries’ - when Surf Shops moved truck loads of denim jeans, Shane came out with Shane branded denim Jeans as well. He was always thinking and being the active impresario.
The last time I worked with Shane was in November 2019. That’s when I organised the Sun Room in the beach side Cronulla’s RSL for Shane’s book launch, 'The Shane Gang'. Some of my photos from that day are attached for you.
We talked about the original Brookvale six of surfboard makers from the ‘60s. That six being Gordon Woods, Scott Dillion, Barry Bennet, Greg McDonagh, Danny Keogh, Bill Wallace.
Shane was not part of that pioneering six foundation members in Brookvale. But he realised that he needed to be in the heart of things and moved from Eastwood to Brookvale in 1967.
But with Shane’s passing, now Danny Keogh is the last man standing of all those once all-mighty surfboard manufacturers.
Shane leaves us with an abundance of valuable memories, tons of exciting stories and hundreds of imposing examples of his Shane surfboard empire. Stories that will keep us talking about him for years to come.
Photo: Two of the greats of Australian Surfing we'll never get to work with ever again. Left Graham 'Sid' Cassidy and Shane Stedman. At the Nov 2019 book launch of Shane's book 'The Shane Gang' at the Cronulla RSL. Photo by and courtesy: Steve Core
Shane Stedman, that happy, cheeky look, full of life and abundant energy... this is exactly how I will always remember him. Photo: courtesy Tracks
In 1979 The Bulletin ran an article penned by David Armstrong that provides more insights into his work in the surfing industry:
SPORT Seeking the dollars in the surf, The Bulletin, Vol. 100 No. 5158 (1 May 1979) Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1758885543
My Children are my Best Creation
Shane Stedman made no secret of the fact that he believed his children were his greatest creation - his dream come true - and filled his life with light and love.
Shane's son Luke Stedman, who in his own right is a first class surfer who has represented his country on the world stage of surfing on the WCT, has produced his own clothing fashion brand “In Sted We Smile”, and now coaches others in surfing. Shane’s daughter Bonnie was also a local, having studied naturopathy in England and setting up a practice here before another was opened in Byron Bay around 7 years ago.
Final words go to Luke and Bonnie.
"He spent the morning with a dozen oysters and a chilli magarita and we held his hand until the very last breath, loving him with every ounce of our being," said Bonnie on social media
“This is the last family photo with our dad. In the place he loved most, on the balcony at Crescent Head, with the people who loved him most.”
Luke Stedman, stated;
“The first time Dad saw anyone surf a wave was on the point in the late ’50s at Crescent Head. His final wish was to spend his last moments watching the same waves at his favourite spot on earth, Crescent Head. Fortunately he had the sun on his face, watching those same waves roll in listening to Willy Neilson’s “On The Road Again” with his family loving him, right beside him. I got to hold his hand and was right there with him to the very end. He never lost any of his positive energy or good time vibes. He was the eternal optimist.
“I’m going to miss you so much Dad and so are so many others..”
On Saturday morning, May 9, Luke shared:
‘’ Overwhelmed with the support and love that’s come from every one that’s heard about the passing of my Dad. We are are having a celebration of life including a paddle out for him on the 30th of May at Crescent Head. Feel free to pass this on to any one who would like to attend.
I’d also just like to share that my Dad would be so happy to know that he has had an effect in a positive way to the people he has crossed paths with. This was always his number 1 priority in life.’’
Shane’s biography (cover) – designed and laid-out by Pacific Longboarder’s Sharon Brasen, edited by Phil Jarratt.
Shane finished a book with help from mate of several decades, Phil Jarratt, The Shane Gang, a Memoir by Shane Stedman, which had this dedication, as suggested by Bonnie:
And of course, his own motto for life was: Life is for Living!
