Around The World In 80 Waves

After my night on the sofa Chris and I are up and have wheels rolling by half past five.

We head straight for the coast and after checking a couple of breaks decide to get in at Curl Curl where the swell is showing more than everywhere else.

There is a sand bar here and we have a nightmare getting through the waves which seem to be surging over the top of it. We both get a bit of a hammering on the way out as you can see! 

We both make it out back to the clean waves eventually but it is then a question of which wave you paddle for to avoid just getting hammered by a close out.

Chris cheers me in to one after half an hour and I drop into the head high wave in the early morning sun. The ride was my only one of the session and was little more than a huge drop and a bottom turn before getting clattered by the rest of the wave.

After it I can’t face another battle back out and we need to get Chris back to Manly by eight so that he can catch the last ferry into Sydney that will get him to work on time, so I call an end to my session there.

Chris isn’t far behind me and has time to rinse the salt off and get into his work clothes before the short drive south. We make the ferry with ease leaving me with the rest of the day to see how many more waves I can catch elsewhere.

There are still loads of beaches which I haven’t surfed in and around Sydney.

I can’t let all of them slip through my fingers so go on a safari to all the northern Beaches to see what the waves are like.

Sadly in a similar fashion to most of my East Coast surf opportunities during my time in Australia there is just no swell about.

It has been like this for months and all the Aussie surfers I have met have been lamenting what a poor run they have been on.

I visited Manly, Collaroy, Warriewood, Newport and Palm Beach looking for even a hint of a ripple. There is no joy anywhere though.

I decide to combat my frustration with beer and am met in Manly by my old flat mate in London. Chris has caught the ferry from Sydney and I bring him up to speed on all my adventures and waves since we last caught up.

I only have a couple of beers from the local 4 Pines brewery before we head nearer to home, but it clearly affects me more than I realise because I drive straight through a red light on the sea front road at North Steyne. Thankfully without maiming any of the people returning home from the sand.

I shall divert attention from this dubious driving by commenting on how good the beer has been here in Australia. Like the USA I wasn’t expecting great things but have been impressed everywhere by all the good work done by micro breweries and some of the bigger players in the market too.

Chris and I join his wife Rachel for a curry in the Mosman area of Sydney. I haven’t had one in ages and it will do me no harm to get into the spirit of Asia before I head off there in a few days time.

I am convinced to crash on their sofa at the end of the night, in order to facilitate a dawn raid surf session the following morning. Thankfully a swell is supposed to be arriving.

I only have a week left in Australia and decide to have a few days off before preparing for the journey home. It is the last chance for me to to gorge myself on English speaking television before I return home, and I am joined on the sofa by Lily and Spyda whose company I have enjoyed so much whilst here. They follow my every move with interest too.

I do manage to get a few blog posts out of the way during this time, but I seem to be permanently in a state of backlog of late. Internet access has been an ever present problem since I started this trip and I can’t see that improving significantly in the last two months of my journey.

As a consequence I will make sure I catch up before I leave Australia, or at least in the first few days upon arriving in Japan where I am going next, or it might never happen.

I pack up all of my souvenirs since Tahiti and am amazed by the sheer quantity of stuff I have to send home.

I won’t tell you how much the postage cost but do find myself questioning whether it is worth the expense of sending things back to the UK.

I wonder if I should be putting the postage cost towards an investment such as a Penny Black. There probably would not be much difference between the two expenses!

Throughout my time in Australia I have been listening to the Triple J radio station, which is run by the ABC network, and have to say it is the best one I have heard in a long, long time.

No adverts. Grown up conversations and chat from the DJs. Most importantly they play great music all day and all night. You will never hear One Direction on this station!

What more can you ask for. For those that listen to radio online you will find there website here. I certainly recommend it.

I needed to cheer myself up after Kathleen’s departure and could only think of one thing to do. I had to go surfing!

Cronulla which is Occy’s home break is a short drive from the airport and also catches most of the available swell in the area so I headed down there. There is miles of glorious sand to enjoy under the sun, but the waves have dropped somewhat.

Choosing a tiny peak for myself I paddle out anyway. It is no more than two feet high and breaking over sand so nothing too challenging compared with a lot of the breaks I have bagged.

I am quickly into plenty of rides though and enjoy the fact that the water is so quiet while all the kids are at school and everybody else is at work.

It doesn’t matter how big the waves are you still have to earn them and I think this picture shows how much I was putting every sinew into my paddling for the small waves.

Either that or it is a serious contender for the world gurning championships!

I wont be back down this way again so am glad to have added Cronulla to my list of breaks surfed on this trip.

Two hours in the water here puts a smile back on my face and I even complete the journey back to North Sydney before rush hour starts avoiding all the traffic across the Harbour Bridge.

Kathleen is flying home today so we decide to head for Bronte where the best waves have been on offer at the Southern Beaches since we arrived. However whilst in search of Bronte beach, we stumble upon Clovelly Bay.

The bay is a glorious natural inlet which has been augmented by an ocean pool, a surf club and man made sun decks either side of the water. It is such a lovely spot we cant resist stopping here, even if it means we forgo a surf together.

Before getting in the water we are joined at the beach by all the team members of the South Sydney Rabbitohs rugby league team who have come to the beach for yoga, a sea swim and recuperation after a punishing cup quarter final.

The sight of so many buff blokes in their swimwear is doing wonders for the local female population, but sadly myself stripping down to my swim shorts does not appear to have the same effect.

I dive straight in but Kathleen takes a bit of persuading into the water, eventually joining me for a swim. I have the GoPro with me once more and get this great picture of the two of us before we followed the Rabbitohs route to the shore.

It is the last of our time together and we enjoy a fantastic day together before I drive us to the airport, but all the while there was an undercurrent of disappointment for both of us that we are about to go our separate ways.

Kathleen has become so much more than a friend on this trip and waving her off on her flight home leaves me feeling decidedly hollow, with plenty to ponder as I prepare for my own departure from Australia on the first step back towards the UK. Such a shame that the two countries are on opposite sides of the planet!

After chatting with my folks online just after dawn, I went back to bed. Then, following a very lazy Sunday morning with Kathleen, the two of us went down to stretch out on the sand at Coogee Beach.

The beach is packed again today because it is the weekend, but the swell is only barely showing here still.

I decided to go body surfing in the small but clean waves hitting the beach, but couldn’t tempt Kathleen into the water. For somebody used to the North Atlantic it was great, but for somebody used to the Gold Coast it was freezing.

For some reason we didn’t take any pictures of me body surfing the waves so here is one of a bear surfing instead. It is not a bad representation to be fair, because of how dark my tan is compared to the average Aussie. Apparently I am quite easy to spot amongst the crowd in the water.

I quite enjoyed thrashing my way into the beach, and warming up in the sunshine afterwards is always a pleasure. Another beach for the scrapbook!

Whilst enjoying a hearty breakfast at the hotel, we notice that a pod of dolphins has swum into Coogee Bay to wish me Happy Birthday. We go down to the sand to check them out. It is great way to start the day.

Sadly once I have made my mind up to grab my camera and put on some trunks they swim off without being seeing again, before I get the chance to go out and play with them. Never mind Kathleen and I are both keen to go surfing, so it is time for a little safari of the southern beaches.

Our first stop is Bronte, where in all honesty I really should have gone in, because there was a good sized swell hitting the beach, which you see here. 

We did have fun watching the locals launch themselves off the rocks next to the ocean pool though. However everybody timed it right and got out into the break without incident. It is clearly the best way back into the line up after riding one all the way in.

We pushed on to Bondi, which is where I really fancied getting wet on my birthday, but the waves were just dumping upon our arrival, so we decided to check out the shops and let the tide turn a bit. Kathleen treated me to a new pair of flip flops because the ones I had bought in Costa Rica had become decidedly unappealing to anybody’s nostrils. Not surprising given I have lived in them for six months but I felt bad about chucking them in the bin all the same.

Back at the shore I still wasn’t tempted to bag this world famous beach, preferring to curl up in the sun with Kathleen. The beach here is world class but the waves really aren’t, although they were powerful enough to catch out more than a few tourists who had to be rescued by the surf lifesaving clubs patrolling the beach. We thought one bloke was going to be obliterated on the rocks at the north end of the bay, but he was very lucky to be picked up by a rogue set and then be deposited complete with lifeguard up on top of them. Barring a few minor cuts and scrapes I think only his pride was hurt, but it could so easily have been a lot worse for him.

I was so comfortable stretched out in the sun that I decided to pass on a birthday surf, and didn’t even get my feet wet all day! Some what surprising, even to me I’ll admit.

After a day topping up my already healthy tan we returned to Coogee, and after freshening up had a fantastic meal at a Brazilian barbeque restaurant. It is all you can eat there and they keep walking past with more cuts of the most amazing meat trying to tempt you with another plate full.

After ensuring a healthy number of farmyard animals had died to make my evening worthwhile I finally threw in the towel, and practically rolled out of there absolutely stuffed! Then back to the room for an early-ish night and a movie in bed

I had such a great day and through various media received messages from all over the world. Given the number of people I already knew and others I have met from all over the planet they would arrive steadily through the day as the sun rose on the various time zones.

The benefit of being at the starting end of the world’s day meant I also got to have a Skype conversation with my family the following morning for me but while it was still my birthday back in the UK. My 41st was certainly one to remember!

For the last time I am flying back into Australia. I had hoped for a straight forward journey back, but rather like the film Return to Oz I was in the realms of fantasy. At the airport in Sydney I end up getting collared by the Australian Immigration department, who take me off to a little room to quiz me on why I have been entering and exiting their country so much. When I ask what the problem is, the response is a very aggressive “Why do you have a problem with us asking you a few questions?” My reply that, “I don’t, but I didn’t check my intelligence in with my bags and surely have a right to ask what is going on” is not at all well received.

Apparently the terms of the only visa they were willing to give me upon entering Australia insisting that I do exactly that, because I can only stay for ninety consecutive days each time I visit within the year my visa covers, is not sufficient grounds for them to let me into the country. The result being that I have to show them my blog which strongly suggests I have not been working previously, but I am still forced to sign into my bank accounts online to demonstrate that I have the ability to finance the rest of my stay in the country if I want to be let in. I am also warned about undertaking any TV or Radio interviews in relation to my travels, because that would result in deportation! What a lovely welcome!

I receive a far more pleasant greeting from Kathleen who is waiting for me on the other side of customs, after flying down from Lismore to join me for a few days.

The next hurdle is paying for the hire car I have arranged through Bayswater Car Rental for the next ten days. I have done so in order to get to beaches and help get anything I don’t need to the post office so it can be sent home. My extortionate Long Island Ice Tea tab in Fiji has created a cash flow problem (that didn’t look too helpful at immigration), which can only be resolved by waking my sister up in the middle of a school night back in the UK to ask her to transfer funds into one of my accounts. Thankfully she is willing to help despite the hour of day and we can collect the car, which was very cheap deal but absolutely stinks of cigarettes. Groucho Marx must have been the last person to hire it!

The airport in Sydney is south of the city so to maximise fun time and minimise travel time we are basing ourselves around the southern beaches while Kathleen is in town. There are many breaks that I haven’t surfed in that area too.

We are booked into a room at the Coogee Bay Hotel right on the sea front in Coogee. (By the way when you see hotel in Australia think pub, many do not even have rooms, but almost all will have a bookmakers on site.) The Coogee Bay Hotel is quite a famous venue for seeing gigs and comedians, but we are not going to catch anything while we are here, preferring to just take advantage of the seven bars and two bottle shops which the hotel operates.

I have a ridiculously early flight from Sydney to Nadi in Fiji and of course get the usual surcharges for daring to travel with a surfboard. However I should say that with Fiji Airways it was at least done with a sympathetic tone and a smile.

I manage a two hour kip on the four hour flight too, but end up being the very last person off the plane due to waiting for the lady sat next to me and her elderly mother, who wasn’t at all mobile, to be able to get up and slowly make their way into the terminal without holding up the other passengers.

I didn’t mind too much because I have learnt that travelling anywhere on this trip, is a non event of a day, so there is no point rushing it.

That was until I saw there were only a handful of immigration desks open and I had to wait in line for over an hour, which was tad tedious.

Fiji is no further from Australia than New Zealand, and with it’s close ties to both I had high hopes of my phone working for a change when I get off a plane. Par for the course on this trip though, I don’t get a working signal when I switch my phone on upon arrival.

The trip around the island of Viti Levu to get to the Waidroka Bay resort  on the southern coast where I am staying for the next few days takes hours. As a consequence my driver suggests we stop along the way to get a bite to eat and a drink at his friend’s restaurant

Raju’s is run by Rakesh Singh who you see here posing in front of his bar, which is adorned with pictures of his sporting family. He used to be a professional boxer although I couldn’t understand if he had actually retired or not despite being in his forties. Like everybody I meet in Fiji he was incredibly friendly, and if anything in his case it was too much so. He couldn’t have known anything about it but after recent events I wasn’t really in the mood to hear every gory detail about how he had found his father after he had killed himself in the first five minutes of our conversation. 

It made me incredibly uncomfortable and that he wanted all my contact details in the UK and to know how long I would be away was a bit weird too, so I passed on the address of my old flat and just said two weeks!

The food was great though and the beer was cheap so I left on good terms after me meal. Once back on the road I arrive at the resort, after a few hours looking out the window at the local countryside and sugar canes crops .