Surfari

On The Road meets endless Summer as Australia's favourite surfing writer takes his family on the ultimate surfing road trip.

All surfers dream of shedding responsibilities and answering the siren song of the ocean swells. For most, it is an ideal that recedes as age advances - as family, career and provider commitments overwhelm the wanderlust of youth.

But what if you could defy the slow march of age? Shelve all your worldly pressures, pack up the family and a few trusty surfboards and hit the open road for the Great Australian surfing road trip?

Best-selling surf writer Tim Baker is doing just that. Inspired by the dreams of his youth, and in the face of looming middle-age, Baker is embarking on the Big Lap, with his wife Kirsten and two children, Vivi, 8, and Alex, 4.

Starting in late January 2011, the family will set out from their home in Currumbin, Queensland, heading south down the east coast. Over the next six to eight months, they will circumnavigate the country, as Baker documents the state of surf culture and our coastline, and the array of colourful characters encountered along the way.

"Surfari Highway" will evoke all the magic and charm, the challenges and perils of the Australian coastline and the curious variety of human sub-species who inhabit it. The result will be a lively, colourful handbook on how to trade your life for another variety, the delights and dangers that lay in wait for those who dare to chase their dreams, and how a family of four survive six months on the road in the close quarters of a four-wheel drive and a caravan.

It is a story for anyone who has ever dreamed of an alternative to the busy, micro-scheduled existence of work, school, shopping and housework. It offers vindication for all those Sea Changers and Baby Boomers, mature age longboarders and carefree beachcombers who have heeded the surf's call. And it will provide an inspirational text for every bored office worker, desperate housewife or unfulfilled suburban dad who senses there has to be another way.

About The Author

Tim Baker is the best-selling author of: "Bustin' Down The Door," (Harper Collins, 1996), "High Surf" (Harper Collins, 2007), "Occy" (Random House, 2008) and "Surf For Your Life," (Random House, 2009). He is a former editor of Tracks and Surfing Life magazines. He has twice won the Surfing Australia Hall of Fame Culture Award and been nominated for the CUB Australian Sports Writing Awards.

His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, the Bulletin, Inside Sport, Playboy, GQ, the Surfers Journal, Qantas - the Australian Way, as well as surfing magazines around the world. He is currently a senior contributor to Surfing World, Surfer's Path (UK), the Surfers Journal and US Surfing and Surfer magazines. He has appeared at the Sydney and Byron Bay Writers Festivals, and has conducted writing workshops at the Hunter, Sydney and the Northern Rivers Writers Centre.

At 45, he has worked in the media and surfing magazines for 25 years and has surfed and traveled throughout Australia, Indonesia, Hawaii, Central and South America, North America, Europe, South Africa, Fiji, Tahiti, and Sri Lanka. He lives in Currumbin, Queensland, with his wife and two children.