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[ Biography ]

Okay, well, who the hell am I? My name is Tim Baker, I'm 43, married to the beautiful Kirsten, talented flautist, acupuncturist, food therapist and wonderful mother to our two children, Vivi and Alex. We live in a little timber house among the gum trees in Currumbin, Queensland, about halfway between Burleigh Heads and Kirra Point, with our dog Boo Boo.

It's a long way from the land-locked eastern suburbs of Melbourne where I grew up, when I was more into Aussie rules football than surfing, truth be told. A good old, straight ahead, schoolboy half back flanker, that was me, playing for the mighty Forest Hill Zebras during an illustrious era of dominance in the third division of the Eastern Districts Football League. The waves were at least an hour's drive away and as surfing took hold, weekends started to revolve around me and my friends bludging rides with older brothers, or hitching, or enduring the public transport marathon - bus, train, ferry - down to Point Leo, Flinders or Phillip Island.

I never figured on a career in journalism, was on a bit of a maths science path like my dad, en route to a respectable career in Agricultural Science or Forestry or something, until I got my HSC exam results back and got 100% for English. I'd written my general essay about an early morning surf check with a line in it about pissing off a cliff, marking my territory like a dog, and I had no idea what the HSC examiners would make of it. They seemed to like it. "Bloody hell," I thought, "there could be a living in this." Writing was always fun, a bit of laugh, but to be paid for it? That sounded like dream material. I got accepted into a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and scored a cadetship at the old Melbourne Sun. There I did everything from fruit and vegetables prices, to shipping movements, to caption writing, to the country lawn bowls results, to district cricket reporting, before being tossed into the drama-filled world of police rounds, interviewing hookers and the relatives of people who'd just been killed in car accidents. Grissly stuff for a green 19 year old, dressed up in my Fletcher Jones, poo brown three piece suit with the reversible waist coat and the extra pair of trousers. That lasted a couple of years before I realised the stress of the daily metropolitan newspaper beast would likely send most of its servants to an early grave. I spotted a job advertised in Tracks surfing magazine for an associate editor, and applied for it with about as much expectation as buying a lottery ticket. Miraculously, despite the fact that I was still a flailing weekend warrior on a surfboard, I got the gig.

So, at 21, I landed in Sydney with a surfboard and a suitcase to begin my new life, working under the legendary editor Reggae Elliss, when Tracks was still a newspaper, the quiet winter issues were only 48 pages, and the bumper Summer edition tipped the scales at 88 pages. There was plenty of time for long lunches at any of the dozens of great Italian restaurants that dominated inner city Darlinghurst, and Reggae had a relaxed, organic attitude to the magazine's production each month. I lived all over Sydney's northern beaches for five years, eventually took over from Reggae as editor when he moved on to the big buck world of commercial radio, and honestly had no idea what I was doing being in charge of such an esteemed journal.

In 1990, I was approached by Peter Morrison at an excellent party at Sunset Beach, Hawaii, and offered the job editting Surfing Life up on the Gold Coast. So, northwards I went, where my office had a view of the Burleigh lineup and the publisher actually surfed. It was heaven - for a while. Magazines will devour you if you let them, and after five years as editor of ASL, I took a six month sabbatical, travelling through Hawaii, Central and South America, California and Tahiti. I tried to go back to the office job afterwards, really I tried, but having tasted freedom it was a doomed effort. After 12 months as editorial director at Morrison Media, overseeing the production of eight magazines, I hit the wall. I quit my job in '95, ostensibly to write Rabbit Bartholomew's biography, "Bustin' Down The Door," (Harper Collins, 1996, now entering its sixth print run) but also to cleanse my coffee, alcohol and deadline raddled body and soul. Since then, I've managed to carve out a precarious existance as a freelance writer and remain in wonder that I can survive financially doing what I love - writing.

I had one of those moments a few years ago, you know, when you kind of wake up and smell the roses and realise how amazing life really is, when I was having a bit of grumble to a friend about the anxieties of the freelance work regime, and the awful spectre of getting a real job. "All I want to do is write, surf and play music," I told him, despairingly. He looked at me blankly. "That's what you do," he said. "Oh yeah," was all I could manage in humbled response.

Trying to support a family as a freelance writer was a kind of anxious prospect for me, a bit like pulling into the barrel really deep over shallow reef. At various points I've felt ready to pull through the back and try and avoid the reef unscathed, paddle to the safety of a regular job. But as this particular wave has spun on down the line, the tube seems to have just opened and grown and I'm amazed and profoundly grateful for the unexpected opportunities that continue to come my way. Remarkably, it is possible to make a living as a surfing writer, support a family, a mortgage, two cars and a dog, and still have plenty of time for family and wave riding. I feel very blessed.

And I take my inspiration from a wonderful community of talented friends who continue to pursue their dreams against sometimes daunting odds. The more people who dispel their fears and follow their dreams, the better place the world will become. Dream on .....