Before he became the famous lead singer of Australian band Skyhooks, Graeme “Shirley” Strachan was known on the island as a surfer and chippie.

Author Jen Jewel Brown who wrote a book on the band, said Shirl described his life of surfing and carpentry on Phillip Island: 

“You'd get up in the morning and look out the window and say “yeah”. Then you'd go down to Woolamai and check it out,” Jen wrote.

“There'd be a few bars there, and you'd go surfing. Then you'd have lunch and perhaps a couple of hours' work, and then it's high tide, so you go surfing again.”

It was while he was surfing at Phillip Island that former band mates formed a new band, Skyhooks in March 1973, which Strachan joined the following year.

After Skyhooks Strachan worked as a radio and TV presenter, known to a new generation as the host of a children's TV series, Shirl's Neighbourhood, from 1979 to 1983. 

According to one report, he returned to his old trade in 1983 and built a surf shop on Phillip Island.
Strachan died in 2001 in a self-piloted helicopter accident.