Why does it always look so calm from 30,000 feet in the air?

The ocean down hear continues to amaze & entertain me. Surfing in Tassie can only be described with words like, challenging, journey, testing, searching, trailblazing, hard yakka and not for the weak of heart or thonged of foot.

It’s so very unlike surfing some hipster style surf break like Dixon Park, in Newy, where all you have to do is just rock up to the car park, check the surf out in ya unbuttoned button-up shirt showing off just the right amount & right brand of undies. Wack on some boardies & a rashie & swagger down a couple of steps to wander across soft clean golden sand to paddle thru warm (well, something well above 16 C) waves that are maybe, at worst,100m from the shoreline to out the back.

They do it different in Tassie. Here’s the format of a typical “Kooks on Tour” surf trip.

Load up the boards on the truck & jump in, we’re off to catch some waves… It’s just a little drive. There’s a bit of dirt. It’s cold so wear a fleece, & ya Ugg boots. And a beanie. And bring some loo paper.



Bit further…



Nearly there…



Not far now…



And then… The beach! But, you can’t see waves for miles.





Notice there’s no picture of the surf here. That’s because you usually need to park on a rock or the sand/kelp & then wander down the beach hundreds of metres and clamber over huge clumps of kelp & up over rocks as sharp as dragons teeth to look at wild & frothing caldrons of angry ocean. Normally crashing into craggy bays with little or no sand about. You need to do this from a couple of different perspectives, so more walking. The break “allegedly” appears to be a bommie about 500m out to sea. But it’s hard to tell with all the fury of the ocean attacking and unloading onto the shore from every angle.  At which point I find that the iPhone/camera  in still in the car… So no photos of the momentus struggle between the land & the sea in this instance. And, plus, it’s a secret surf spot.

Nothing else to do now but backtrack on all of the above & end up back where you started & surf in some sloppy onshore head high waves. Just wear a thick wetsuit, with a hood. Maybe booties as well. Make sure you get off the wave before the kelp bed as it can beat you up worse than a wipeout and is impossible to duck dive thru.

As you walk, refreshed, back up the beach on feet that are frozen & can feel nothing, try not to step in any rotting kelp. Large amounts of kelp rot & ferment on the beach and can swallow your foot to well above the ankle. 

In this decomposing state kelp has a smell & texture not unlike the worst green rotting remains of some really old unidentifiable vegetable found in some Tupperware at the back of a fridge. But not just any fridge, this is the sort of fridge you’d find in a shared house of “meat eating only” engineering students. What’s left of the vegetable has probably fermented until the end of term when one of their moms comes to clean up the place so they can get her rental bond back. And so, as only the mother who has wiped the bottom of a baby engineer can do, she retrieves & disposes of the goo & cleans her Tupperware. She now remembers that she delivered the vegetation in that Tupperware at the beginning of term. Rotting kelp smells a bit like that, but only if you get a good patch.





I’m considering running guided tours doing this sort of thing as it truly gets you into some rugged, beautiful & bazaar spots/situations. But that’s what Hiluxs & Landcruisers were built for.

So, a surf maybe later this afternoon or tomorrow is looking promising. Again.

I’m home alone at the moment as Jayne has headed back to Newy for more formal board meetings. I’ll meet up with her when I get off the Spirit of Tassie in Port Melbourne in a couple-a-daz. She’s a serial boat dodger.

22 Mar This entry was published on 22/03/2015 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.