Sam James has two passions in life (his partner aside) skateboarding and photography. When you combine your two loves, you get a unique story that started in Lismore and ends in Lismore (for now) with Hawaii, the Philippines, Indonesia, Melbourne and Cambodia in between. Simon Mumford visited Sam at his 36 Chambers skate shop in Molesworth Street to get his story.

I was born at Lismore Base (Hospital), like a lot of people. The family lived in Ewing Street behind KFC and across the road from what used to be the Onon (??) car park.

I first started to roll around (on my skateboard) when I was about four years old that I can remember, I have photographic evidence of that. My older brother skated, so I was always wanting to be like my older brother and the cool kids, they were pretty cool.

I went to Lismore Public for a bit, but because my mum was a single mum with four kids, she somehow got a scholarship up at Blue Hills Seventh Day Adventist School. So, I finished the rest of my primary school up there, which was cool because they taught me to read and write quite well and spell quite well.

My mother is quite a devout Christian. She felt that God was telling her to go and study in Hawaii of all places, to a Bible school. So she took myself and my younger sister over there for three months. It was pretty eye-opening for a 13-year-old from Lismore. It was a pretty cool time to go, I did a lot of surfing.

We did some missionary work as well in the Philippines and Indonesia. We ended up in Indonesia for nine months, living in the slums over there, it was super ghetto. That was a pretty massive experience at that age and I guess that really got me ready for going to Cambodia later in life, travelling through Southeast Asia and living in squalor basically. Where we were staying was super poor.

In Jakarta, my mother made some relationships with some rich people, and what they would do is donate milk and bread, we would then take that to the slums and feed people. We didn't really talk about God that much, it was more about being a good example in that sense. She worked on a sort of Christian campus there. It was a pretty interesting place to live.

I came back when I was 14 and went to Lismore High. That was when I really started skating.

I had a board and a couple of my friends from down the street were just messing around because we only had the one board to share. We would figure out a little game or you could have two tries of a trick and then it's his go and then his go and then it's back to you. Or we would play stupid games like two guys would stand on either side with a basketball and you'd have to skate through the middle and not get hit with the basketball, just dumb stuff like that.

It didn't take long for both of those guys to get boards and then we started skating properly. I'm not that competitive, but there's one guy in particular, Aaron Hunt, he's pretty well-known around here, he was mad competitive. So, his competitive nature brought it out of me a bit more. He moved on to other things and didn't quite give it as much time as I did. I focused on skateboarding from that age, around 14 or 15.

I started Year 11, but they weren't offering the electives that I was interested in, which was skateboarding and getting up to mischief on the streets, so I dropped out. I thought the streets of Lismore would teach me better and they did.

In those days, we weren't even allowed to take our skateboards to school. So, I used to skate to school and leave it at one of my good friend's houses who lived a few blocks from the school. If we did take the board to school, we would get into trouble or would end up in the principal's office or something like that.

Skateboarding was really different back then. People would look at us like trash and criminals, so it was difficult. We copped a lot of flack from parents and parent's friends, all types all asking why are you doing that? And to a degree that makes you want it more because someone tells a teenager not to do something. Maybe I should be thankful for that.

After about a year of skating, I got sponsored by Spot X, which was a little surf shop around the corner on Magellan Street. He stocked skateboards because he wasn't selling many surfboards in Lismore.

It wasn't like we were getting the gear and the boards. He would only give us 20% off, which is not much when your boards were costing $120 for a 15-year-old, especially when sometimes I snapped the board on the first day and he would turn around and say do you have another $80 or $200. It was a bit tough.

It was cool to be able to say yeah, I ride for a shop, I'm sponsored, even though it wasn't that good. I guess I was one of the better kids around town.

He would put on a couple of demos. He took us on a trip to Yamba, with a trailer load of things we could skate. So, I guess he did do a little bit for the scene and trying to pump things up like that but we would be the ones that would skate, and that's what people came to see.

When Travis (Watson) decided he wanted to start his own shop (36 Chambers), he instantly came to myself and Soren, who was another amazing skateboarder at the time, and said he wanted us to ride for the shop he was going to create. We instantly said yes. It opened in 1997.

Travis let us buy all our boards and gear at cost price straight up, maybe a couple of bucks for shipping, we jumped at it. He said he didn't want to make money off us and he'd try and take care of us. By doing that, he knew that we were going to promote his new shop 36 Chambers. That's the reciprocal situation that we had. Not only that, he would take us anywhere if we needed a lift or if we wanted anything. He would try and help us out as much as he could.

Travis moved shops as he grew and ended up on Molesworth Street in the early 2000s to attract a broader market than skaters.

(Sam and Penny outside of 36 Chambers in Molesworth Street)

He told us everything about skateboarding because he'd been involved for a lot longer than us and really kept his finger on the pulse of what's happening internationally with skateboarding, especially in the States. Whereas, we just kind of skated and rode and wore whatever the shop was feeding us. That was all we knew. Travis had a much broader picture of skating, so he definitely steered us in the right direction of where we should be going with our skating.

As far as the shop was concerned, he was really transparent and wanted us to be involved with everything. I was working a lot of hours for him so I would do ordering, deal with customers and run things if he needed a day off from the shop. It got to a point where I kind of became his assistant manager for a time because I didn't have a job. I was just skating.

Then around my mid-20s, after a few injuries, tearing the ligaments in my ankle for the fourth time, it slowed me down a little bit. It was not easy to make money out of skateboarding in Lismore, as a skateboarder, it's not that easy to make money anywhere unless you're incredibly good and then go to the right places and meet the right people. So eventually, I started thinking more about a career.

I became a youth worker at CASPA and went to uni to study Social Sciences and as part of that course, I took photography as an elective just to kind of help with my degree. I loved photography, but I didn't realise until the first 10 minutes of the class how mind-blown I was and that's what I should do.

I had a bunch of shitty jobs that I hated and I thought why pour yourself into these jobs that you hate, why not pour yourself into something that I love. And that's what I did with photography.

I just scrapped the rest of my studies and I ended up leaving that job. They only offered two semesters back then in photography, and thankfully that was the last year that they offered film at uni, which was pretty cool. So, I just did everything that I could in that sense.

After uni, I didn't feel like I was a photographer, I just knew that I loved it and then I moved to Melbourne and started assisting one of the biggest studios down there. They employed 10 commercial photographers every day, so I would assist all 10 of them and if I had a question I'd ask all 10 of them. I got all these different perspectives, I learned so much in that year and then the next year I started shooting for them.

The next year, the Melbourne winter went on for eight months, and I just couldn't handle Melbourne anymore. I love Melbourne but the wind was just so brutal. My partner at the time was from Melbourne, we'd been through Southeast Asia and both liked Cambodia and found opportunities there.

I wanted to go and shoot there, shoot editorially for magazines, so I made contact with a magazine and they said let us know when you get here. My partner was helping establish a women's organisation because that's what she did in Melbourne. She knew all the back-end stuff.

My photography career absolutely blew up. It was amazing how well received it was.

I was so well trained in Melbourne on the commercial side and even though there were a lot of photographers going to Cambodia trying to shoot humanitarian things and documentary photographers, there's not much training that goes with that. It was more like shooting from the hip being in those situations. Unless there was something happening in Cambodia, that the rest of the world wanted to see, like the news, those people weren't getting paid. So, for me to go in with a commercial background I could take care of any business, which was a lot.

The government really opened up to foreign investment which made it really easy for foreigners to start businesses. It was so cheap and getting a visa was really easy. So, all these restaurants and businesses were popping up and I was well-qualified to shoot everything they needed. I went there specifically for the editorial stuff, which I did, but it was much lower paid than the commercial stuff. I had a really good balance of what I wanted to do over there and what I wanted to shoot.

The magazine was incredible. I helped them start a luxury travel magazine and a business magazine so I was travelling a bunch and just shooting all the time. Sometimes, I was going to private islands or the best restaurants or five and six-star hotels. It was crazy. This was stuff I would never have been able to afford. I was there for eight years and did those jobs multiple times.

That was the first conscious step away from my skateboarding at the time because I just wanted to focus on my photography. But the first month that I got there, I met Cambodia's very first skateboarder and he was self-taught, basically from YouTube. He was just a complete natural, I couldn't believe that he'd learned all this stuff by himself because we were learning from each other, watching other people and getting them to watch you. That's one of the quickest ways to learn.

This guy was getting his boards shipped from the States. So, for a Cambodian kid to pay for a skateboard, let alone another $60 US for shipping to get it into the country, was pretty admirable. I started skating with him a bit and then encouraging and motivating him in the right direction, like what Trav did to us.

I travelled a lot, I went to Thailand and Vietnam regularly, and they had little shops there, so I would bring a few boards back for him and myself. Then the next trip my friend wants one and his friend wants one and so I started bringing back as many boards as I could carry and afford at the time.

My loungeroom was a photography studio but in the corner, there was a stack of boards just getting bigger and bigger because all the kids wanted them. I was thinking about opening a shop but was still so focused on photography that I wouldn't have time to start a shop. Meanwhile, the kids are still skating and ripping, they're just getting better and better.

Then one night I was out with some friends, there's a big expat scene over there with a lot of people looking for business opportunities because the city was starting to blow up, and someone came to me and said they were thinking about starting a skate shop. I asked if they were into skateboarding and they said no, I see all these kids skating and I see the gap in the market. Where are they getting their boards from? And I'm like from me, all those boards came from me.

That really triggered me and I could hear Trav's voice in my head because the mantra when he started the shop was 'by skaters for skaters' and that's how it's always been. To see that in Cambodia, to see this little scene bubbling already and to think that someone's going to come in that doesn't have that attitude. The shop really does help steer the scene, the attitude of the shop, it has more of an effect than you might think.

That really triggered me to start a shop over there. I found a space and I renovated it. Thankfully, I found a really amazing location because right across the street was a big marble plaza, so the kids could skate all day. They would come sit on this big custom-made couch, because couches weren't very common over there at the time and watch this big TV I put on the wall and I was indoctrinating these kids into what good skateboarding was. Then it was like, there's the plaza man go and do it.

We put on a team for sponsored riders, and we would make road trips all the time in and around Cambodia to a bunch of different spots, new ones and old historical ones, down to the coast and then took them out of the country for the first time over to Thailand. The Thai scene was much bigger, and we made a good relationship with them buying boards and stuff like that.

One of my riders got selected for a game of SKATE in Shanghai so I escorted him and filmed it. The thing just started popping off really well.

Then, after eight years, I was 39, and it came time for me to leave. To be honest, even though I had the dream photography job and been to all of the private islands regularly several times a year, it started to become a bit monotonous. It was the same thing. Any job can get monotonous is what that taught me.

I was considering another country to go to and just keep shooting but my sister was in France with her partner, and they fell pregnant and were coming home to have the baby. I wanted to be around for that and I hadn't been home in 12 years so, I came back and lived with them near Bangalow for the first year of the little baby's life.

I took a break from everything, even from photography and started managing a property living on-site in a big beautiful place outside of Bangalow. I was keeping a low profile and then COVID hit, so it was a pretty good place to keep a low profile. It was luxury accommodation, a big old heritage-listed mansion, the first big mansion built in the Byron Shire, in 1906, I think. It's called Hinterland House.

I lived there for the last three years. And it's only this year that I moved away, which meant finding a new job and a new house. So I moved to Mullum (Mullumbimby) and was working in Byron (Bay).

Then in the first week of my new job, my old man died. On my way to his wake, I threw myself off my dirt bike and fractured my wrist, so I didn't make it to his wake, unfortunately. It also meant I couldn't do my new job because it was in landscape design.

I was still a bit burned out from that other job because living on-site is quite constant, even though it sounds pretty chill. So, it gave me the time to deal with that but also deal with my dad's death. Then my mum's cousin died. There were two funerals within a week which was already a big deal. Then maybe a week and a half later, one of my best friends called me about Trav as well. That was all within a month.

I was thinking that changing house and my job was a big enough change in my life and then there were three funerals in a month, pallbearer at two and I spoke at Trav's funeral. It was pretty heavy.

The truth is, I wouldn't have been equipped to start that shop in Cambodia if it hadn't been for what Trav did for us and showed us here. That ripple effect of just giving and being a good person rippled into the Cambodian skate scene as well.

At Trav's funeral, his mum and family asked what I was up to. It was actually a pretty interesting transitional period because usually I work 40 to 50 hours a week, and when someone tries to put another option in my face I say sorry, I'm busy with this other job. But at the time, I wasn't, for the first time ever because I physically couldn't. At first, it kind of shocked me a bit and I wasn't really into it, I guess. I had spent the last 20 years trying to stay away from Lismore, it was pretty rough when I was growing up. So, I wasn't ever thinking about trying to spend six days a week in town. That was my immediate reaction.

But after a couple of days of thinking about it, I was like, nah, I can't let this place fade away, and I definitely want to be involved. We've been reopened for two weeks now, it's amazing.

I feel like Travis is going to walk around the corner one day.

We're trying to keep everything inside 36 Chambers the same. I feel really good about it and the support has been amazing.

I get tons of people coming in saying Trav did them favours just to keep their kids skating while other people have no interest in skateboarding whatsoever, they just come in for a chat. It's become just the place where people can hang out and have a good chat. There's no pressure to buy anything, it's just a place to chill basically. Which is what a skate shop should be.