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Where’s Currumbin? What does it have to do with brightly coloured beer? Angus Taylor’s economic beer theory? A ‘Kerrupt-flip’?
Be patient ’til the last.
In 2022, on a surf trip to the Pacific, I first came across Bede Durbidge. Bede – a former WSL veteran of a decade and decorated Pipeline Master – told me the ins and outs of his time growing up in Currumbin, Queensland, with his surfing contemporaries Mick Fanning (three-time World Champion), Joel Parkinson (World Champion) and Josh Kerr (pro surfing veteran and aerial innovator). He described it as this sort of magic alignment of fun and competitiveness, in which surfing with his mates pushed them all further and further down the road of competitive prowess. He also described what it was like to be a co-founder of the Australian craft-beer success story:
Balter.
Currumbin in the early 2000s was this melting pot of the surf industry: a new class of surfers were coming up, brands settled in the Gold Coast, boards grew shorter, and surfers took to the skies. It was a new era. Where Hawaii and Southern California had their renaissance in the early nineties, Currumbin was beginning to move away from pejorative opinions about its perceived grunginess. The competitive surfing industry swept through the Gold Coast, bringing in millions and laying the foundations for a place of real modern cultural importance.
That was the early 2000s.
Let’s jump to 2015.
The aforementioned boys had won their titles and found their places in Australian household folklore. In the spells of forthcoming retirement, the idea of a local microbrewery and hangout spot in downtown Currumbin was sparked. But the question loomed: what do five professional surfers know about beer? Other than making the most of their tour’s sponsorship by Foster’s?
Not enough – but remember earlier about Currumbin being a melting pot of culture? Well, amidst their class of surfers came talented brewers, marketers, and people aligned with an ethos they all shared.
“With enjoyment”
And so, in 2016, Balter Brewing Company formed in a gutted warehouse in Currumbin, with one beer vat. To the beer world, another craft beer emerged, but to the surfing world, this was something special.
Imagine the Avengers assembled to create their own brand of gin. This was that.
The roster was: Bede Durbidge, Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson, Josh Kerr, Scott Hargrave (head brewer), Stirling Howard (the mastermind behind Billabong’s ‘Life’s better in boardshorts’ campaign), Ant Macdonald (WSL surfer), and Sean Ronan.
The age-old attitude always stands as “never go into business with friends”. But what if you did?
Launching with their infamous XPA in 2016, canned in white and blue with the ever-simple logo of a smiling face, Balter took off. Within a year, it made its way around the country, widely enjoyed not as a result of the names behind it, but because it was something new and different and, most importantly, good.
Balter stopped being about who it was associated with and became more about its ethos: with enjoyment.
Balter (BAWL-tuh)
(v.)…to dance artlessly without particular skill or grace,
but usually with enjoyment.
This was not without its trials and tribulations, however. At its inception, four of the founders were still regularly competing on the World Tour. Co-founder Josh Kerr was swept up in Californian celebrity-land after inventing a new type of backflip on a surfboard (search up “kerrupt-flip”, it is insanity), rendering him unable to be hands-on in Currumbin. Bede himself suffered a near-death incident at Banzai Pipeline in 2017. Mick and Joel Parkinson were competing avidly on tour.
Waves of financial troubles came and went. Other microbreweries opened up and swamped the market. Balter, whilst being ‘with enjoyment’, was not immune from excise tax and the reach of mega-breweries. They did not enjoy that. Further, craft beer wasn’t as cemented in Australian society as lager or traditional ale (think Tooheys and cricket, or Resch’s/Coopers and lawn bowls). Another spanner in the works is the entrenchment of those traditional beer companies in the Australian psyche. Toohey’s historic partnership with the Australian Cricket Team led to many successful ad campaigns that our society cherishes today. A well-known example of this is the infamous 1982 advertisement starring Mike Whitney and Joel Garner:
When a nasty ball sees the ninth-wicket fall and there’s a groan from the hill…
How do you feel?
I’m sure that one rings a bell or two (heys).
That ad campaign is still going. Another Tooheys winner that Balter was up against was the introduction of the ‘Tooheys New’ variant, which came equipped with the acerbic coda: “Get this man a new.”
Bonus points if you remember the one of the man and his guide dog: “…What have they given me?”
So, as such, beyond surfers, it was hard for Balter to push the narrative to everyday Australians. Craft beer – from negative stereotypes and just general discourse – had a kind of persona to it, one that demarcated it as a drink for hipsters and surfers, dubbed as tasting and looking weird. They were also about forty years late to the Tooheys party, and up against the prevailing opinion of the time that this new beer’s look and taste and cost were nothing like that of old-school lager.
When he was at Oxford, Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor wrote his economics thesis about the “beer-archy” (though he did not use that exact term) and their strangling of the market and suffocation of smaller companies. Whilst useful in understanding the triumph (or disgrace – it depends on how you view it) of Wetherspoons in England, Balter has seemingly proven the exception to this economic rule.
You could probably draw an explanation for this by understanding Pigouvian Tax, an MSC curve and a general wrap-around of the market economy, but I think Balter’s survival is best explained by their down-to-earth ethos and “open door” policy (literally, you can walk in anytime and meet the team and check out the process).
What also makes Balter different is that it provides a nice change to the traditional “beer-archy” of Australia. Not that it’s bad to ‘Feel like a Tooheys’ or want a camping weekend with ‘The beer from up here’, but Balter’s attitude of being enjoyed anywhere, to me, seems more open and doable.
Balter seemingly doesn’t cater to a specific type of Australian we wish we were. For example, their website promotes drinking their product (responsibly) when “putting together an IKEA shelf” or winning a title in ‘World Tinnie Hurling Championships’ (a sport of their own creation). Balter sponsors charities. Balter sponsors local boardrider clubs. Balter sponsors charities that sponsor other charities. It is who they are. My local boardrider club, North Avalon Surfriders Association (NASA), has been sponsored by Balter since the beginning.
How quickly the veterans in the over 50s division forgot how they felt with Tooheys and embraced Balter (for free).
If you meet Bede, or Mick, or Joel, or Ant, or any of them, you will realise that it wasn’t just a company front to flog beer to Gold Coast surfers: it’s them, and it’s a lifestyle.
Since 2020, bits of Balter have been slowly sold off to institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals. The original ten became the original four. I reached out to Bede in January after the end of his involvement in Balter.
Man, what a wild, fun ride it was.
– Bede
I approached Bede for further comment, which he prefaced by saying he was between surfs (Snapper Rocks was pumping that day), and had this to tell me in our mini-interview:
Jasper: Straight up, what was it like?
Bede: Balter was such an incredible journey with all its highs and lows. There were some real moments at the start where we didn’t know if we would be able to keep up with the bills coming in, compared to what the beer sales were. You need a big kitty to float the cash flow till the big accounts pay, like Dan Murphy’s.
Jasper: If the lows are financially driven, what are the upsides like?
Bede: The stress and fear are all paid off when you see people all around Australia enjoying a Balter. They were probably my fondest memories from Balter: seeing how far and wide it went and how much everyone enjoyed it.
In closing, Bede left me with a quote I think extends beyond brightly coloured beer and Gold Coast surfers:
We always wanted to do things differently. That’s one motto the whole team had was to be leaders and not followers.
– Bede
Since 2021, further bits of Balter have been sold off to the large breweries they sought to challenge. Carlton United Breweries got in first, then Asahi got it all in the end.
Nine years and nine variants of beer later, Balter lives on.
