About

“Tim Baker may well be the most brilliant and incisive surf writer working today, or on any given day for the last twenty years.” worldprosurfers.com

“Baker will make you look at wave riding — and life — in an entirely new light.” Jaimal Yogis, author, Saltwater Buddha

Tim Baker is an award-winning author, journalist and storyteller specializing in surfing history and culture, working across a wide variety of media from books and magazines to film, video, and theatre.

Tim is the best-selling author of The Rip Curl Story, Occy, High Surf, Bustin’ Down The Door,  Surf For Your Life, Century of Surf and Surfari.  He is a former editor of Tracks, Surfing Life and Slow Living magazines, and a three-time winner of the Surfing Australia Hall of Fame Culture Award.

His children’s book The Surfer and the Mermaid  was adapted for theatre for the Bleach Festival and played to sold out seasons at the Gold Coast Arts Centre (now HoTA), Bondi Pavilion and the Merrigong Theatre Company.

Occy was a national bestseller and chosen by the Australia Council as one of “50 Books You can’t Put Down” in 2008. Surfari tells the story of his family surfing road trip around Australia with his wife and two children in 2011.Century of Surf, a history of Australian surfing, was published by Random House in 2013 with funding from Arts Queensland and the Regional Arts Development Fund.

Tim received an Uber-Mentorship with Melbourne artist David Pledger from the Gold Coast Arts and Culture unit for his event (m)Ocean, which presented surfing as a performing art set to live music at Burleigh Heads as part of the 2015 Bleach Festival.

He has been nominated for the CUB Australian Sports Writing Awards and his work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, the Bulletin, Inside Sport, GQ, as well as surfing magazines around the world.

Tim has appeared at the Sydney, Ubud, Byron Bay, Brisbane, Margaret River  and Reality Bites Writers Festivals and presented writing workshops at the Byron, Hunter and Sydney Writers Centres.

He has been a keynote speaker for groups as diverse as the Australian Primary School Principals’ Association, the Rip Curl International conference, the Element Leadership conference for year 12 students from across Australia and New Zealand at The Southport School, the Kathmandu management conference in New Zealand, the Gold Coast Literati Festival and the 2019 Asia Pacific Writers Conference in Macau.

At 54, he has worked in the media for 35 years and has travelled and surfed throughout Australia, Indonesia, Hawaii, Central and South America, North America, Europe, South Africa, Fiji, Tahiti, and Sri Lanka. He lives in Tugun, Queensland, with his wife and two children.

You can read more of Tim’s work and support his writing by subscribing to his Patreon page for as little as US$3 a month, for exclusive content, blasts from the past dug out of the archives, sneak previews of future works and personal reflections he doesn’t share with a general audience.

The best place to check out all his books in one spot is his Amazon author page. If you’ve enjoyed any of them please feel free to leave a review. If you hated them maybe don’t. If you are looking to buy any of Tim’s books please support your friendly, local bookstore who can order in his books if they don’t already stock them or visit the Surfing Life website, where you can purchase signed copies of all Tim’s books.

For school bookings please contact:

bookings@bookedout.com.au or

info@speakers-ink.com.au

For corporate bookings please contact:

info@claxtonspeakers.com