Sidelined surfer determined to get back on board

FINDING PEACE: Surfing journalist Phil Jarratt in his happy place - riding a wave.PHOTOS/SUPPLIED

Phil Jarratt's staying off his surfboard for the time being but it's not sitting comfortably. After all, the 64-year-old has made a career out of his love of wave riding. But he's heeding doctor's orders in the hope that he'll recover from a heart attack suffered while surfing last year in Bali.

"I didn't know I was having a heart attack," Jarratt said from his home in Noosa, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. "I was breathless and feeling weak but it wasn't until I got home about six weeks later that I saw a doctor. If I'd had it seen to straight away there would have been no problem, but as it is my heart has suffered some damage.

"We've got a big river system round here so to build up some stamina I've been stand-up paddle boarding, along with biking and fast walking."

To say that Jarratt's life revolves around surfing is like saying roosters crow. As soon as the skinny 9-year-old kid from Wollongong rode his first wave, he was hooked, just as he was hooked on writing about surfing after selling his first article at age 17.

His surfing journalism credentials are impeccable - contributor to and later editor of the renowned Tracks magazine, publisher and editor of the Australia edition of the Surfer's Journal magazine - as are his contributions to the sport, including in 1998 founding the Noosa Festival of Surfing, which has the largest entry numbers in the world. After nine years working for surf clothing company Quiksilver in Europe and California, he returned to Australia and has helmed the festival since 2007.

A lesser-known part of his journalism career - and one that he describes as the "biggest mistake of my life" - is that he was editor of the Australian editions of Playboy and Penthouse. "Although it seems hard to believe now, back then [late 1970s] they were regarded as the Rolls Royces of the magazine publishing industry.

"There were strong political voices and strong social values voices being published between pictures of naked women - and yes, even then there was something odd about the exploitation of women to promote a different, and better, world but the Playboy Foundation back then was a force for good."

Jarratt is currently working on a profile of Australian Peter Townend, who in 1976 became the first professional surf champion, and is thinking about a memoir.

"These days the top surfers make millions and have management teams around them, you can't get near them," he says, "but back then surfers turned up under their own steam, unpacked their drug kit and didn't mind yakking to a nosy journalist."

His favourite wave? Cloudbreak, near Fiji's Tavarua Island, a private resort. But then he rattles off, "Maldives, Indonesia, Hawaii, and I've had perfect waves in the Mediterranean, truly." Jarratt's love affair with Bali began in 1974 when, heart-broken and unemployed, he spent the last of his cash on an air ticket, inspired by the 1972 surf movie Morning of the Earth, which featured footage from the largely unknown - and empty - waves of the Bukit peninsula in Bali.

But the affair has had its ups and downs. "I fell out of love for a time due to the growth in tourism and I was ripped off in a real estate deal," he says. "But 20 years ago I went back and now go at least once a year. I realised that places change but you can still find what you loved there."

Jarratt is the first to admit that it was the influx of surfers to Bali in the 1970s that drove a development boom that many from "the old days" now rue. "Surfers helped create all the shit development that's around Kuta and we have to take responsibility for that."

However, on the positive side there are the groups of young surfers carrying out litter patrols and raising funds for water purification plants.

Jarratt's 2014 book Bali: Heaven and Hell is a history of the island interwoven with a personal memoir, some of the stories fleshed out with the help of longtime expats including author Richard E Lewis, who was born in Bali and still lives there

Jarratt says his trips to Bali are also about finding balance and peace in an increasingly hectic world.

"I'm not a believer in anything much beyond the church of the open sky - but Bali is a spiritual place and surfing is a spiritual experience which, the old ticker notwithstanding, I hope to keep doing for the next 20 years."