Cirrus@Austlit

'Golden Daze tells the story of Australian surfing one year at a time through the lives of our greatest surfers. The book takes a deep dive into a significant year of their surfing lives. Years when they won, years when they lost. Years where their surfing and their surfboards changed the game. Grommet years when the days never ended. Years where they surfed up the coast, down the coast and globetrotted into the great unknown.

'Years when both surfing and society changed. Years when they made high art, experienced spiritual awakenings or were just tubed out of their minds. Even years where they survived the embrace of a great white shark. Part journal, part biography, part surf culture memoir, in Golden Daze, world renowned surf writer and bestselling author Sean Doherty gives a fascinating insight into what makes Australian surfing tick.

'Surfing Australia's Hall of Fame recognises the nation's most influential and iconic surfers. Every year the current members of the Hall of Fame vote to induct a new surfer. You will find all of these surfers, from Peter Troy to Tyler Wright in Golden Daze.' (Publication summary)

'Richie 'Vas' Vaculik grew up in the tough streets of Maroubra where surfing, fighting and drinking were the way of life for teenagers, and where joining the notorious Bra Boys was the pinnacle of ambition. Richie developed into one of Australia's most fearless big wave surfers, a figher so tough he now competes in the UFC, and of course a member of the Bra Boys. Richie always pushes to the limits, and sometimes beyond. A vicious brawl in a Queensland pub saw him charged with Grievous Bodily Harm and the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence. It was a wake up call that he had to change his life or end up either killing himself, killing someone else or in jail. He turned his focus to the discipline of MMA and is now one of Australia's top UFC fighters. This is his gritty, uncompromising memoir about growing up in the 'Bra, the gang, and about living life on the edge of an adrenaline charge - whether towing into fifteen metre waves at Shipstern Bluff, going toe to toe in brutal gang fights or entering the UFC cage.' (Publication summary)

'Australian surfing's cult hero lived two lives.

'In the 1970s 'MP' became the best surfer in the world, an electric lash of rockstar looks and rockstar habits, but with a pathological aversion to rockstar fame. But MP died on the night of 10 August 1983, when his schizophrenia caught up with him and his years of institutionalisation began. Emerging from the other side was Michael Peterson, a quiet, complex soul who lived with his mother and sat under a mango tree every morning, communing with the voices in his head.

'In 2004 Sean Doherty wrote a bestselling biography of Michael Peterson that laid his incredible story bare. Over the years that followed, and especially after Michael's death in 2012, hundreds of people – family, friends, surf stars and complete strangers – contacted Doherty with stories never before shared. Stories that spoke of the man, not the legend. Stories of Michael, not MP.

'Now Doherty has compiled these stories, anecdotes and tributes, completing the picture of one of surfing's most talented but tragic figures. Also featuring classic and unseen images of Peterson, along with photographs and letters from his family's private collection, MP Untold presents Australian surfing's most fascinating champion in the words of those who knew him best. ' (Publication summary)

'My Life as a Pork Chop is 400 pages of the very best (and very worst) of Captain Goodvibes. It includes most of his Tracks strips, all four Captain Goodvibes specials, a selection of Tony’s post-Vibes artwork, as well as a bunch of Tony’s classic anecdotes recalling the excesses of the era. ...'

"Michael Peterson, or MP as he is commonly known, ruled the surfing scene throughout the early to mid-1970s until developing paranoid schizophrenia. This is his story, covering his early life, his celebrated victories in surfing, his descent into the drugs scene, imprisonment and subsequent institutionalisation." 

(Publisher's blurb)