San Juan Bare Nature Warren Cornish and Sky... and the Sugarcanefields.

When I worked at San Juan I was also doing some work for Roy at Bare nature as were a few of the boardworkers that were then in town, the South Africans Tony Cerf, Deri Star ,and Gunther Rohn had arrived ,as did a few Yanks, at this time they were the only " foreigners" that were in town ,not like today. Both Tony and Gunther went on to be sought after shapers with Tony being the glasser at San Juans before Billy Mclean. This was still the era of tints and pigments ,Sylene glass, the new no lap stuff was only about a year old and expensive, it was only used as a clear on the top of an insert glass job ie. with a taped up deck and glassed to the cut overlap from the bottom. Bill still does quite a few of these still and, it is a dying art, but then  4 out of ten boards that were glassed were Inserts. The finbox was just starting to be kinda accepted but, 9 out 10 were glassed on fins and this remained that wat for some tim as single and twin fins were the norm, so a sander had to be able to foil well and make the fin look good and work well, in fact

as a shaper , if you coudn't make a good fin ,well foiled, you didn't get much respect. At San Juans the sand room's duct dragged the dust and fibres out onto old Tony Kibblewhites house which was right next door, and had been doing this for years . Tony knew this but never complained until his wife got sick, and that was the end of sanding at the shop, from then on I had to load the boards into my car and take them out to the old Piggery ( where Byron Bay Brewers are now) on a set of portable stands amongst the rubble and the Pythons in the rafters( they were pretty regular there) . Not long after this I had a bit of indifference with John Thomas who now owned San Juan and  by the end of May 73 I started work in the Sugar cane fields as a hand cane cutter down at Ballina  on the Richmond and on the Clarence river near Yamba  for the next 5 years and at he end of the season ( December) went back to boards at Bare Nature and then Warren Cornish where Bill Mclean was now glassing as John Thomas had sold SanJuan and with Bob Mctavish, started making the Bluebird at a shed they rented of Warren (Warren passed away this year)  Around this time I started to work partime at Sky so, at one stage I was working for 3 different Labels .... But Byron Bay was changing ....to be continued .....P.S. Bob the Yank in the above photo is Bob Newlands who was glassing before he and Roy started Bare Nature