Tim Baker Travels from Gold Coast, QLD

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Tim Baker is an award-winning author, journalist and storyteller specialising 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.

Keynote Titles

The Rip Curl Story
Punching The Shark – Living Well With Cancer
Saltwater Diplomacy
Writing The Waves
Writing Real Lives – The Craft of Biography and Memoir
What’s Your Story? – The Craft of Biography and Memoir
The Surfer and The Mermaid

Testimonials

After Kathmandu announced the acquisition of Rip Curl, Tim did a magnificent job bringing “The Rip Curl Story” to life at our Kathmandu management conference. He was inspiring, full of humour and very knowledgeable sharing the essence of Rip Curl and its founders. The entire management team – around 70 team members – had a great evening listening to Tim. We are even more excited about partnering up with an iconic brand like Rip Curl after Tim’s presentation.

Kathmandu Holdings

Tim has a genuine interest in helping young people. He engages our students through his relaxed presence. His workshops are well liked by students and staff.

Morayfield State High School

Tim has a quiet aura about him that invites people to lean in and listen. On the morning of his environmental performance work, (m)ocean, he called together a crew of incredibly talented free surfers, musicians and arts workers who stilled their internal oceans and did what Tim asked them to do for a whole afternoon: perform in the water and on the land. And they did. He has that effect on people.

Director | Not Yet It's Difficult