Around The World In 80 Waves

I spend the night at the camp site in Lakes Entrance, which is an inlet that is home to the local fishing fleet. I check out the local beaches but there are not any waves to interest me there.

The manageress of the camp site tells me how to find the best known surf break in the area which is called Red Bluff.

It is only a few miles down the road and armed with excellent directions I pull into the car park without issue.

It is a glorious day and there is a viewing platform in the car park from which you can check out the surf without walking down to the beach.

Seeing these lines rolling in I didn’t have to think for long before I was racing back to the van to get changed into my wetsuit. However what you cant see from the cliffs is how rocky it is here.

In this picture that was wave of the day, you can actually see the rocks through the water. Getting off your board at the end of each ride entails a belly flop to limit how far you fall through the water to avoid bouncing of the rocks. The waves weren’t too powerful so I managed not to maim myself doing so, although I had noticed with interest the monument to a 13 year old boy who had died whilst surfing here some years before on my way down to the beach.

There was just one other surfer out on the peak I had chosen. I got chatting with him and it turned out that Rory was from Ireland and had settled in the area about five years ago. We traded waves for about an hour before he got out leaving me with the waves to myself.

The water was surprisingly cold here today and at times I had to keep moving just to keep my hands warm.

Despite the constant fear of losing fins to the rocks this was a mellow session in small clean surf, which I really enjoyed, but it is time to leave the south coast and head back to New South Wales once more.

I am on the road again straight after watching Emma’s boys playing footie. I have to get back to the east coast once more but will be doing everything I can to go around the Great Dividing Range which caused me so much bother going the other way.

On my way towards Lakes Entrance, which is my objective for the day, I am delighted to see there is a place called Pearsondale en route. They should perhaps twin the town with Pearsonville back in the USA.

I follow the signs to have a look at it but it seems to be little more than fields and dirt roads so I don’t hang around long.

Driving into the next town along the highway I see this road sign right in the middle so clearly some of my distant family have made their mark in this area.

Australian Rules Football was a game devised to make use of cricket pitches all year round.

There are similarities with both rugby and football but unlike these games you actually score a ‘behind’ worth one point, when your kick at ‘goal’ (worth six points) is slightly off target and goes through gap between the smaller posts either side of the two goal posts and the goal posts themselves.

The state of Victoria is where the game is most popular in Australia with the majority of teams heralding from this area.

I am lucky that Richard has managed to get some free tickets for he, Emma and I to go and see a match at the ANZ stadium while I am in town.

The stadium is where the British and Irish Lions recently lost the second test against Australia, but I am here to see local side Hawthorn play St Kilda. It turns into a bit of a romp for Hawthorn who run away with the game in the end, but I can see that precise field and goal kicking is the most important skill in Australian football.

It is all the more impressive when done at pace. I used to watch Aussie rules in the UK when Channel 4 was first broadcasting and got a flavour of the game then, but it is much more interesting when you see all the play rather than just the narrow angle that the TV shows.

The games governing body the AFL do everything they can to encourage the local youngsters into the game and the following morning I went to watch the household’s two experts take part in their last Aus-Kicks session of the season.

I am a tad horrified at what playing the game does to the wicket in the centre of the pitch. (The groundsman at my old cricket club would have a seizure!) but am challenged by Richard to have a kick at goal myself whilst on the pitch.

Having spent a good part of my rugby career playing full back I think it will be easy to score, but it proves a tad more challenging that I was expecting. However I will blame the wearing of snug fitting jeans and walking boots for my lack of scoring prowess.

In stereotypical Australian style there is a BBQ after the session and all the youngsters are awarded certificates and trophies for their efforts through the season.

Here are William and Matthew in their Hawthorn colours proudly showing their awards off. I suspect they would have far less trouble scoring a goal than I did.

In Melbourne I meet up with and old school friend of mine called Emma. I am staying with her, her husband Richard and their lovely boys Matthew and William.

Emma and I haven’t seen one another since the sixth form at school, during which we probably spent far more time than was appropriate watching the Australian soap opera called Neighbours on BBC1.

As a consequence I suggested we go on a grail quest around Melbourne to try and find the street where the series is filmed.

Emma does a bit of research and discovers it it actually called Pinoak Court and it is just down the road from their own home.

As soon as we pull up in the car we are greeted by a friendly security guard, who tells us that we can take pictures of the houses but mustn’t photograph the residents or trespass on their property.

We discover that there is filming there one day a week but it has been necessary for there to be a security team there twenty four hours a day and seven days a week as a result of bonkers people attacking the houses of characters who have been given a wicked role in the story line.

Running through the houses you see here the top one is Dr Karl’s home (or Des and Daphne’s depending on which vintage you are more familiar with.

Next is Mrs Mangle’s house, and below that Paul Robinson’s home, which has been particularly afflicted with lunatics throwing rocks through the windows, etc.

Next is the Ramsey House where Kylie Minogue was first seen in British households trying to climb in through the window from the balcony.

However the security guard was good enough to get a picture of Emma, Matthew and I calling in on the Robinson’s house, where Jim, Helen, Scott and Lucy all called home.

There was no sign of Bouncer anywhere.

Melbourne is home to the Australian Open tennis and of course the Melbourne Cup, which is as close as horse racing gets here in Australia to the spectacle of the Grand National back in the UK, even if it is not raced over jumps.

There is not really any great surf breaks here because the city is in a quite a sheltered spot geographically speaking from the usual ocean swells, so I am not in the area for long, and as a consequence I don’t really have time to see much of the city because I am more interested in catching up with another old school friend than I am looking at these concrete towers.

I am gutted not to have got in the water at Bell’s Beach when it was working properly but that is what happens when you disobey the golden rule of surfing, passing up quality surf when it is available.

Sadly I have no time left in the area and must hit the road again.

I have promised to get my nephew a boomerang during my time in Australia so have to pull up at the Aboriginal Cultural Centre that I see on the road from Torquay towards Melbourne.

I quickly found one for him and also had a look around the centre’s gift shop learning about how to make didgeridoos, and enjoying some of the aboriginal art available there.

I have to resist buying loads of things though, because I have a ton of stuff to send back from Australia already.

Buying the boomerang I wanted I am delighted to discover that there is a boomerang throwing area at the back of the centre where they have supplied a number of them so that you can practise throwing the returning boomerangs without risking your own purchase.

Armed with the knowledge of the correct throwing technique you see here I launch one with all my might.

It turned as it is supposed to but as you see here got stuck in a tree!

I had a couple of attempts but think you need to throw with a little less gusto than I was using, because you have every chance of decapitating yourself otherwise when it returns at pace.

Those of you who have seen the last scene from the movie Point Break may think you know about Bell’s Beach because it is where Bodhi is intercepted by Johnny Utah trying to catch the 50 year storm.

However that scene was actually shot very far away from Australia at Indian Beach in Oregon in the USA.

The real Bell’s Beach has virtually no trees unlike the set of the movie, and is named after the Bell family who owned the land adjacent to the bay. 

It has now been designated a surfing reserve by the local government and as such is safe for all time from unwanted development.

I had been aware of the bay for some time before the movie because the Bell’s Beach surf contest held at Easter has been running for better part of fifty years now, and is still a regular stop on the ASP’s world tour.

Sadly when I arrive keen to bag the break for my scrapbook it was so calm at times that you could actually see all of the sea bed.

More 50mm trickle than 50 year storm! When it gets big you pick up the wave at the section known as Rincon in front of the headland and then surf it around into ‘the bowl’ directly in front of the bay.

I am kicking myself for not going in the other day when it had looked like this but I followed the crowd into Winki Pop. However “People trusted you” Rob. “You’ve got to go down.”

“I’m not going to paddle to New Zealand” in search of a wave but have to get in because like Bodhi I know I am not coming back.

I don’t attach the camera to the board and even consider taking the fins off because the water is so shallow above the rocks, but ride one wave lying prone on my board. Definitely not “Death on a stick out there mate!”

I based myself in a camp site right alongside Torquay’s Surf Beach. This was my pitch and the sand starts the other side of the bushes. I stayed here for a few nights but for most of my stay the weather was atrocious, or more specifically it actually felt like a British winter.

I am sure that the monarch after whom this state is named would not have been any more amused than I was by it. I was still feeling a bit under the weather, probably due to so many cold nights in succession in the mountains and along the coast road, coupled with my insistence that shorts are the only suitable attire because I am on holiday.

As a consequence I stayed warm and sheltered in the van for twenty four hours, using the opportunity to catch up a bit on the blog, which was still lagged a good way behind current events.

I don’t quite get it up to date but make significant headway and am happy to put it to one side once more when I wake up to see these lines of surf hitting the shore.

It is still a grey day but this is the picture of the session if only because there was a brief glimpse of blue sky above me.

I had great fun though here and caught loads of waves in front of the surf lifesaving club.

There weren’t too many people in the water and after catching a hat full of rights you would just walk back along the sand to the point to start again.

I also quite liked the ‘Rob through the keyhole’ view of this shot which was taken as I paddled back out after one wave. I’m clearly getting a lung full of air before goiung under the water once more.

Pretty much the first thing I did after checking in to my caravan park in Torquay was go back a short distance along the Great Ocean Road to check out Bell’s Beach.

I was somewhat surprised however that nobody had paddled out there and instead all the surfers had opted for the adjacent break known as Winki Pop. I asked two local guys why that might be and at first they seemed really helpful however it turned out they were more interested in saving my soul.

I managed to swerve their faith chat by offering my ‘having a religion is like having a penis’ speech, and before long I had put my wetsuit on and had decided to paddle out with everybody else in case they knew something I didn’t.

Access to the water is down a wooden stairway and then out across the rocks you see here. It is my first surf on the south coast and because I have no idea what the water will be like here I am wearing boots and gloves for the first time in Australia. It turned out that I needn’t have worried about the sea temperature which is still the same as it gets in the summer back in the UK. However the real concern turned out to be the rocks.

This picture was taken a couple of days later and shows the rock shelf and assorted boulders that I was paddling out over and attempting to surf above throughout my session here. It made for uncertain footing when wading into the water which never does much for your confidence because you can’t tell what might be underneath or ahead of you at any point later in the session

However the paddle out was actually quite easy and I made it out back with dry hair feeling quite smug with myself.

All is good at this point until you find yourself slightly caught inside on one of the bigger waves and then there is nowhere to go. Even with my bulk it would be impossible to duck dive under the waves with an 8’0″ board so you have no choice but get swept in a bit.

Not normally a problem but I then got stuck inside and as the current sweeps you down the cliffs things start to get a bit problematic.

Where I started the waves are actually breaking away from the shore, but where I ended up they actually break against the cliffs leaving me literally between a rock and a hard place, with a few jagged boulders thrown in for good measure!

I’m not feeling too clever today generally and not at all in the mood for getting obliterated on rocks so pick my board out of the water and then scramble back along the base of the cliffs to the bottom of the stairs where I had go in. It wasn’t too bad for me but three guys I had been chatting to in the water got the same treatment and it took them nearly half an hour just to get safe.

I didn’t blank but there really wasn’t anything to get excited about here and not many picture to share other than the usual ones of me gurning as I try to paddle for a wave. I have seen enough of them even if you haven’t.

A large section of the Great Ocean Road is under the control of Surf Coast Shire which is a real place as opposed to a figment of my imagination.

The centre of the county and the capital of Australia’s surfing scene is Torquay which also marks one end of the Great Ocean Road.

As well as being the home of Rip Curl’s headquarters there is an entire shopping mall here in Torquay, which is called Surf City.

It is dedicated to all things wave riding, and all the usual suspects have a massive retail outlet here. Quiksilver, Billabong, Rip Curl, etc.

It is like surf porn!

The plaza is also home to the Surf World museum, which I can’t resist checking out.

There is a fantastic selection of old surf boards and a wealth of surfing memorabilia from the last hundred years. 

The Bells Beach contest held at Easter just down the road each year is the longest running surf competition contest in the world and there plenty of souvenirs from that event. However I also learned that the beach would not even be in use if the local surfers had not clubbed together to hire a tractor in order to put a road down to the break in the fifties.

Surf world also host the Australian Surfing Hall of Fame in which each of the inductees are presented on a board of their own style.

There is a biography of these outstanding surfers and a detailing the highlights of their wave riding lives

The names in this room are legends of Australian surfing for all kinds of reasons, but there is more than their fair share of world title holders. Nat Young, Tom Carroll, Mark Richards, Wayne ‘Rabbit’ Bartholemew, …