Surf's Up

Here in sports-mad Australia, Jake and I decided we’d go check out the surfing championships rather than the footy (Australian Rules Football, the North Melbourne Kangaroos edged out the Adelaide Crows last night).  Why go to a stadium when you can go to the beach?

Beach vegetation

boardwalk across a small inlet

Torquay surf beach

The Rip Curl Pro Bell’s Beach takes place south of Melbourne and is the world’s longest running surfing championship.  To get there we took the train to Southern Cross Station leaving at 9:30 am, then a bus replacing the Geelong Train to Marshall Station.  We missed the connecting bus to Torquay by one minute and waited a half hour for the next bus.  We got lunch in Torquay at Growlers, a local institution across from the beach.  Decent fish and chips. They had a tv on broadcasting the surfing.  There was supposed to be a free shuttle bus to Bell’s Beach that would stop right in front of Growler’s, but after waiting for 15 minutes or so with some young women, we all gave up on it.  Jake and I opted to walk the 7 km to Bell’s Beach along a nice graveled path along the cliffs.

Bell's Beach

We passed the Torquay surfing beach where a lot of surfers and paddle boarders were in the water.  Then across another headland to Jan Juc’s beach.  One more headland and we reached Bell’s Beach.  It’s not a very big beach and we got there at high tide when it really isn’t a very big beach.  But I don’t think surfer’s particularly care about the beach itself so much as the waves off the beach.  There seemed to be good steady swells and the waves broke starting at the south end with the break slowly moving northwards. 

We didn’t get to the beach until 3pm and the heats were ending at 4:30pm, so we were able to get good viewing sites along the beach.  We tried to figure out the scoring system based on the announcers’ banter.  There were usually 3 surfers in each heat and they had 20 minutes in the water to do several rides.  Sometimes they would start riding a wave, then ride over the top if it didn’t turn into a good wave.  If they got a whole ride in then a skidoo with a ramp on the back would pick them up and take them back out past the breakers. Some of the best women surfers in the world were competing.  Brazil, US and Australia seemed to have the top athletes for this sport.

The audience had people of all ages and from a lot of countries.  The surfers would come in after their rides and be interviewed and sign autographs on the beach.  A bunch of kids in wet suits played at the edge of the surf. There were some serious photographers there too based on the size and complexity of their cameras.

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The surfing was televised live on big screens up in the food/vending/grandstand area.  Rip Curl and a cell phone company had booths up there along with several food trucks.  We found the shuttle bus stop for the return trip, but after waiting about 20 minutes and someone saying they’d heard the last bus was at 4:30pm, we started walking to Jan Juc.  But just then the bus appeared!  It dropped us off at Rip Curl’s big store in Torquay and 50 m up the road we were able to catch a bus back to Geelong that came a mere 7 minutes after we got to the bus stop!  Then the bus from Geelong to Southern Cross came just after we arrived at Geelong!  And then our myki card failed us as we tried to catch a train back to our neighborhood.  Turned out the one time we’d used it on this trip (the bus from Marshall to Torquay) had been outside of the acceptable zones for our month long pass.  We payed the $3.20 we each owed for that bus trip and were able to catch the train in good time back to our place.  So a long day of travel, but well worth it for the waves!