Place of Shadows: The History of Noosa

Phil Jarratt is a journalist, author, publisher and film-maker with almost 50 years experience in Australian and international media. Born in Wollongong, NSW, he is a former editor of Tracks, associate editor of Surfer and editor and publisher of Australian Surfers Journal. He is regarded as one of the foremost global authorities on surfing, and has worked inside the executive ranks of two of the world’s biggest surf brands – Rip Curl and Quiksilver, where he was a senior marketing executive for 10 years in Europe and the US.

He has written more than 35 books, covering sport-related biography, surfing and surf history, travel and youth culture, and has been published in the US, UK and France, as well as Australia. His history of Noosa, Place of Shadows, is his first book with Boolarong Press.

As a film-maker, Phil has written and produced the documentaries 8 Days of Pure Stoke, Cup of Tea With God, Men of Wood & Foam and Generation 99. Wood & Foam, made for Foxtel’s History Channel, was selected for the 2018 Santa Barbara International Film Festival and won the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame Media Award for 2016. Generation 99, a feature-length documentary about the music and culture of Timor Leste’s children born of war, had its world premiere in Dili, Timor Leste, in August, 2019. He is now working on the development of Making Tracks, about the birth of the iconic surfing magazine in the late 1960s.

Phil has received the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame Media Award five times and was shortlisted for the Blake Dawson Business Literature Prize in 2010 for Salts and Suits. He has lived in Noosa for more than 30 years, where he now writes for the local newspaper and is president of the Noosa World Surfing Reserve.