Patting the Shark

With special guest:

• Tim Baker
  … in conversation with Bill Kable

Patting the shark? This does not seem to be a good life lesson but when we hear Tim Baker explain the title it all makes sense.

Surfers such as Mick Fanning have had to confront their mortality. Mick is an old friend of Tim’s and he faced a shark in front of the world’s cameras. Many of us saw him swimming next to a man eating shark in the shark’s own territory. Tim Baker has had to face a different type of mortal threat, namely a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer. We do not know how we would react if confronted with this situation but Tim’s new book Patting the Shark takes us right into that world and he gives us a no holds barred account of what it is really like.

Tim decided to get a medical checkup because he had turned 50, not because he was concerned about any medical issue. Tim had a loving family and with his surfing, writing and residing near a beach on the Gold Coast you might say he was living the dream.

But when the doctor told Tim bluntly that he had stage 4 cancer and that there is no stage 5, his world was turned upside down. Tim was thrown into a world where treatment became a big part of his life. And sometimes the treatment seemed worse than the illness. There have been times when treatment changed his personality, not just his appearance. More recently it went to the core of what it means to be a man when hormone treatment reduced the level of testosterone in his body.

Yet throughout all this Tim has retained his sense of humour and can even see the silver lining in hormone treatment. He has a full head of hair once again. The great news is that even though he was told how his life would be shortened it is now seven and a half years since diagnosis and Tim is really enjoying life.

Tim’s message is not that we challenge the good medical advice but that we can choose to add on to the medical treatment prescribed by cancer specialists. In that situation we need to take agency and coordinate a team which would include nutritionists, exercise physiologists, sex therapy and even consider the use of medicinal cannabis.

It is very important to live in the present and remember the words of Bob Dylan “he not busy being born is busy dying”. Tim has taken this advice to heart. In addition to continuing surfing, he is writing and has started on a PhD scholarship. Tim’s is a fascinating story that has lessons for all of us and he tells it in such an intimate candid way. Pleased to say that Tim is going great at the moment and we wish him all the very best as he continues on his journey.

Tim Baker

Tim Baker is the bestselling author of Bustin’ Down the Door, High Surf, Occy, Surf for Your Life (with Mick Fanning), Surfari and Century of Surf. 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 and Qantas: The Australian Way, as well as surfing magazines around the world.

Song selection by our guest: Every Day I Write The Book by Elvis Costello and the Attractions

Podcast (mp3)