If you asked one of those newfangled artificial intelligence apps on the internet to come up with the perfect person to write a social history of Byron Bay’s surf and associated cultures of 50 years ago, it would probably take a nanosecond to come up with the name Tricia Shantz.
A social geographer and researcher who works in journalism, social planning and community development, Tricia is also known as Mrs Rusty Miller, the former US surf champ of the 1960s who created the template for American surfers to flock to Byron in the early ‘70s, with whom she has not only shared the raising of a family in the town but has also co-authored and published two previous books of surfing nostalgia.
A third, called No Fixed Abode: stories from the streets of Byron Bay, was published in association with the Byron Writers Festival. So she knows her stuff.
It’s interesting to note that Turning Point I, the first Miller/Shantz book collaboration, credited only Rusty on the cover. Turning Point II, published two years later, was “by Rusty Miller with Tricia Shantz”, which is code for a ghost writer or “fixing up the grammar and punctuation”.
Now, eight years later, in Neverland – American and Australian surfers in Byron Bay 1960s and 1970s, she gets a well-deserved solo billing, although Rusty’s own migration story, from San Diego to Byron via some wild times on the garden isle of Kauai, was clearly an inspiration.
While Rusty has proven his talent as a writer over half a century of articles in magazines like Tracks and in the family’s own Byron Guide publication, Neverland is Tricia’s time to shine, and it is a tour de force that has attracted rave reviews.
“Tricia has successfully woven personal stories of drama and daring into a layered social history of the far north coast seen through the eyes of a community of American and Australian surfers tied through a bond of understanding and respecting a feeling born out of the joy we experience playing in the waves,” wrote Simon Baker, award winning actor and director, and local resident.
“Byron Bay is rich in stories … this book is a treasury of those tales that give Byron its unique living spirit, [and] to read it is to feel that you have been welcomed into a tribe”, wrote author, journalist and surfer Malcolm Knox.
“Neverland is an insanely enjoyable, albeit bittersweet read,” said Swellnet’s Steve Shearer.
Neverland, illustrated with archival and contemporary photography from the surfing era (much of it by Rusty) is a social history of a surf town. It is the story of the surfers, American and Australian, who made Byron Bay their home in the 1960s and 1970s.
These stories, as told to the author, are of a time in Byron that changed its history forever.
Culture wars, freedom, rebellion, the new residents believed they were going to change the world.
The book explains how a backwater NSW slaughterhouse town became the beating heart of Australian counterculture, a crossroads creative Mecca, a world-class surf destination, and home to some of the planet’s most desirable addresses and expensive real estate.
Most of the local surfing community will know Tricia and Rusty from their many years of patronage of the Noosa Festival of Surfing – a true-blue surfing family whose love of our surf culture shines through everything they do.
And Neverland, whose title is taken from a hippy clothing shop of the early ‘70s, is no exception.
It is fitting that the Noosa launch of Neverland should take place during the Festival of Surfing, with Annie’s Books on Peregian hosting one of its famous footpath wine and cheese evenings with Tricia Shantz and Rusty Miller in conversation with Phil Jarratt.
Says Annie: “Surf-related books are always of great interest to surfers old and young, and Neverland will appeal to those who have loved Byron Bay since its surf breaks were discovered, and those younger surfers who know the great surfing stories and big names such as George Greenough, Paul Witzig, Rusty Miller, Dick Hoole and more. Neverland is packed with photographs and entertaining tales, along with a cultural and social history of one of Australia’s favourite coastal destinations. We anticipate a lively conversation with Tricia, Rusty and Phil – and the audience will be encouraged to tell some of their own Byron Bay stories and experiences.”
Free event, 6pm Tuesday 7 March.
Author talk with wine and cheese.
At Annie’s Books On Peregian.
Limited seating – you are welcome to bring a folding chair.
