Surf Life: Women who Live to Surf and Create

Anglesea author Gill Hutchison and photographer Willem-Dirk du Toit’s book Surf Life is close to a decade in the making.

In Hutchinson’s words, it represents freedom, creative expression and a connection to nature, celebrating all “Women Who Live to Surf and Create”.

Surf Life details the women of surfing who are strong, independent and resilient, who are incredible surfers who live, work and create in Australia.

In Surf Life, Hutchison and du Toit venture across Australia, finding out about the lives of more than 25 women who share their experiences and creative processes that bring them to the sea.

According to the author, ‘the book is a labour of love, it’s a lot of heart and soul’ and she hopes that readers can resonate with the thrill of travel and meeting like-minded people who all share a love for the ocean.

The Surf Life idea all started when Hutchison moved from Collingwood to a beach shack in Anglesea in 2013.

Once casting her eyes over the local women’s surfing scene, Hutchison and du Toit knew they wanted to create something that documented the varying surfing stories of their community.

“The idea of the book came to me in 2013. I was working for a surf brand, and I was often frustrated about the marketing imagery that was going out and at the time it didn’t reflect any of the people that I surfed with, not what they looked like, not their age and not how they surfed,” Hutchison said.

“It was a very specific time of person they were marketing, and as I started talking about it to my best friend; he just said to me: ‘Why don’t we do something about it? I’ll take photos and you write, Gill”.

“Initially we just kept the idea as a fun thing, and we did it because we loved it and we got to meet really cool people.”

Hutchison said the new venture was a perfect way of chatting to people that she’d never normally speak to. This originally resulted in a website called Babes on Waves, which the pair ran as a fun, semi-side hustle project.

After both going away and having children, the pair revisited the idea in the later stages of 2019 and with the level of content that they had amassed, they knew they needed to do something more.

“After we came back from having kids, we thought, why don’t we make it a book and pitch it to some publishers,” she said.

“Luckily in a week it got snapped up by Thames and Hudson, but then COVID hit and we were back on hold with it all.

“That meant that the book got pushed back, eventually meaning we did the bulk of the writing and photography in 2021.

“We went up to Noosa, Sydney, Tassie (Tasmania), Byron, it was endless, you just meet surfers wherever you go, it was an endless project.”

Hutichison said having du Toit by her side throughout the whole book was a huge plus, leaning on him for creative advice when need be, but mostly the two were like poetry in motion.

“What’s different about this book to others is that usually these types of books are a conglomerate of photographers, we had the luxury of it just being the two of us.

“We got into a real rhythm, I’d do the art direction and he’d do the shooting, we’d create a narrative from start to finish.

“Creatively we are just really in sync, it’s remarkable, we’d love to do more projects together.”

While the book only contains women, Hutchison said surfing was for everyone, which explains why there is no reference to women in the title.

“Surfing is for everyone, it doesn’t have to be isolated from the men, everyone surfs together, that’s why I made it Surf Life, it’s about surfing and it’s about life on and off the board.”

Hutchison and du Toit have plenty of book ideas in the pipeline ready to go,but will enjoy the thrills of having this book on the shelves before starting something new.

“I hope this book draws more women into the water who might be curious about surfing but might feel like it doesn’t fit them for whatever reason,” Hutchison said.

“Usually, women make it into the books who are really really good, but my whole thing was ‘let’s embrace being average’.

“We all do it because we love it.”

To get a copy of the book, head into Torquay Books or your local bookstore.

For more information, head to instagram.com/babes_on_waves/