After our inland alpine wanderings we headed back to the East Coast for a week or so.

We caught up with our “Kooks on Tour” surfing mates, Sam & Glenn, in a place called Bream Creek near Marion Bay. Our free camp site was on Barry Kingston’s property. He’s from a 6th generation Tassie farmer family who have been on the land and held title to the farm dating back to convict days. It was a great spot with views over Marion Bay to “Boneyards”, a local surf break.

By the time we had set up camp Sam had already arranged our social calendar for the night. We were lucky to catch up with all the local farmers at a “Pub in the Paddock ” night and later on drop in on one of her WA fiends, Jarryd. He was having a bit of a celebration as he’d just won some surfing award.

The farmers were a a great bunch of country people & made us very welcome. We’d already met some of them. We met Gary & Lisa when we first arrived. Gary is Barry’s son & a keen surfer. He gave us some tips on where to surf & when. We also ran into Meg earlier in the day when we made a wrong turn on the dirt road & ended up at the top of her driveway. We then had to do a 32 point turn with the van in tow. She was lovely & offered us a cup of tea. Evidently it happens quite a bit as their driveway is in better condition than the road. They have just finished building a beautiful homestead & it would be a great spot for a coffee shop (if it had a bigger parking area or a roundabout at the end).

The “Pub in the Paddock” celebration was a farewell for a local farming couple heading back to Scotland. After a drink or two & with the 44gallon drum fire going full bore, the farmers looked like they were settling in for a big night, so we moved on to catch up with Sam’s friend, Jarryd.

Evidently, Sam & Jarryd have been mates since before Jarryd was old enough to drive or borrow (steal) Sam’s car…

So Jarryd had just won some surfing award. It turned out to be Jarryd Foster, Winner of the OAKLEY BIG WAVE AWARDS.
http://www.surfinglife.com.au/news/sl-news/13130-winners-announced-at-the-oakley-big-wave-awards

Sam & Jarryd – Out front of Jarryd’s place with the prize

The Winning Wave

He did this on a borrowed board & borrowed wetsuit as he was working in WA at the time for a week or two & the swell happened to pick up.

I think the party was at one of Jarryd’s surfing mate’s place. After chatting to a few of these guys we decided to leave the young “big wave chargers” to it. As the night progressed so did the sharing of bigger & bigger big waves stories. We had established our surfing status earlier as Glenn had introduced himself saying “Hi, I’m a small wave charger & serial barrel dodger” it was obvious to all that Glenn & I were in a completely different league to these guys. Although Sam had some credibility as she has done a bit of big wave charging back in WA.

The next day we surfed Roaring Beach for 3 hours in small fun waves.

But, the big news of the day, Jayne also had a “big surf” at Park Beach.

Under more of the fabulous coaching of Samantha. She stood up on about 6 waves & even claimed one.

Paddling about in the lineup with Jayne & Sam was a young kid called Finn. He was chatting to everyone & catching heaps of waves. Jayne reckoned “if he can surf then so can I”. He was also a bit cute & Jayne wanted to take him home (evidently Gypsies are allowed or expected to steal children).It looks like I need to buy Jayne some surf gear now, she has a list. Including a new wetsuit, non slip bikini & a light 9′ Malibu board (Hmmm, could be useful)
One day I’ll explain the Rules

Jayne scored more waves at Eaglehawk Neck. I’m now getting a little concerned, as some days she has had more surfs than me… But, I think I’m still ahead on averages.

The surf break “Boneyards” was constantly in view from our camp site and on our list of places to surf but up until now the conditions had not been good enough. Conditions were still not the best but Sam, Glenn & I decided to give it a go anyway. Getting to the surf in Tassie involves more effort & commitment than anywhere else I’ve surfed. Boneyards was no exception & involved a drive for about 6 kilometres on a rough 4WD track, a walk for hundreds of metres thru the scrub over potentially tiger snake infested sand dunes, a walk up the beach for another kilometre or two & then a paddle out near a river mouth for about another kilometre. On the paddle out I was counting paddle strokes. I stopped counting after about 1,200 strokes or so. It was about a 25 minute paddle & we were at least 1km out to sea.
Some of the locals prefer to take their boat out the river & anchor off the break.

Anyway, the waves were better than expected & some where over head-high so it was well worth the effort. We all slept well that night. Tired little penguins…

17 Feb This entry was published on 17/02/2015 at 2:25 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.