Josie Prendergast on the Explosion of Philippine Surf Tourism

“I was born in Siargao, that’s where my mom is from and my dad is Australian, he has been in Byron for a long time. He went surfing in the Philippines, met Mom and my parents had my big brother, me, and then my little brother,” Josie said. 

“Dad already had his house and everything in Suffolk [near Byron] and he wanted to give us all of our education and everything back home here, so I've been in Byron since I was three.  We pretty much just spent most of our time here and we’d just go back and visit every year or two for a month or two to reconnect with my mom's family and everyone there and still be able to speak the language, that was important.” 

“Surf tourism really does bring in a lot of opportunities for locals there in terms of surf instructing the boatman taking the surfers out,” Josie said about the growth of surf tourism in Siargao. “It brings in a lot of visitors, but I feel like it's inevitable that it also brings in a lot of visitors who aren't respectful or don't really know etiquette.”

“It was super quiet and super simple but now sometimes I go surfing there and it's busier than Byron, and that's just within five years. It's just growing and growing and growing. And so it's awesome to see opportunities for the locals, but at the same time, it's like a lot of people are taking advantage of it and not really respecting the locals on the island,” Josie said. 

Josie has seen similar changes come in in her other home of Byron Bay over the years. In 20 years the beachside east coast Australian town has morphed from a quiet, subtropical town populated by surf rats and environmentalists to a luxury seaside city jam packed with social media influencers and hollywood style houses. The lineups have become some of the busiest and most chaotic in the world as tourists from across the globe flock to its white beached coastline. 

Living between these two places, Josie describes some of the complexities of navigating and exploring her identity:

“I think growing up I struggled a lot finding my place in Byron because when I was growing up I always wanted to be in the Philippines. Now I really feel connected to home in Byron, whereas I've never felt like I needed to find my place in the Philippines.”

“My family is so big and everyone in my area knows everyone and everyone knows my mother. I definitely struggle with the fact that I don't look Filipino enough to be Filipino and I don't look white enough to be white. So, I get a little bit upset because over there, I even have people telling me that I'm not from there and I have to prove that I have that in my identity,” Josie explained. 

Once Josie finished school she wanted to start spending longer periods of time on the island she was born. So she began to split her time, spending three or four months each year in Siargao and the rest based in Byron. 

Two years ago she wanted to start giving back to the island that had given her so much, noticing that there was limited access to period care that allowed women and girls to go about their lives as normal when they got their period each month. So Josie partnered with Scarlet Period to bring a suitcase of period underwear to the island where she brought together some women and girls to talk about the product and distribute it amongst the community. She did the same again last year, this time heading to the north of the island to bring women and girls together to educate and pass out the underwear. 

“In the Philippines, it's kind of taboo to talk about it and tampons are not really a thing there,” Josie said. “And it's expensive. So I thought even if I can help a small amount of women, it can be life changing. It's less waste and it's cheaper for the long run.”

“I still today get messages from the aunties saying, ‘I haven't had to buy any napkins or pads since I've been using this underwear,’ so it's actually life-changing.”

One of the few to have survived the Billabong mass cull of its team riders, Josie continues her path of freesurfing, traveling to longboard across the globe. With a new project in Papua New Guinea a focus in the near future, her aim this year is one we should all have: to get properly barrelled: “That's been my main goal for the last three years and I'm satisfied but not satisfied enough. I'm like, okay I want to actually commit to getting in a big barrel and making it out.” 

“I just want to commit, not freak out that there's too many guys in the lineup and just do it for the girls, get more girls out there,” Josie added.