From: "vincent barr
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Surfing in OZ.
Date: 3 Nov 1996

Lot's more info on surfing in OZ contained in the links under this URL http://www.magna.com.au/~prfbrown/tubelink.html - hope you get some big ones

From: Riq de Carvalho
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Surfing in Australia
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996
Organization: University of Newcastle

Chris P wrote: > > Is the surfing in Australia better around Sydney on the East coast or in > Perth on the West Coast?

depends whether you're on the east coast or not, lot more people on the East coast, lot more breaks that have names, If you're talking, close ( like 100 mile radius ) to Sydney, That radius would cover most of the breaks they'd consider for say the Coke contest and picks up points like Sandon where they hold the Konica Skins contest. otherwise ask fang about the West I've not gone West........... yet, as it costs as much to fly to Perth from Sydney as to fly to Bali or Fiji

Riq de Carvalho, Oz Grandmaster Kneelo riqdec@ppe.newcastle.edu.au "never lose a holy curiosity"-Albert Einstein

From: Greg Hobson
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Surfing in Australia
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 199> Is the surfing in Australia better around Sydney on the East coast or in > Perth on the West Coast? > >

Chris As for surfing in Western Australia, Perth does suck!!! However some of Australia's, even the world's, best waves can be found 3 hour drive south of Perth. The Margaret River region offers the best reef breaks, for example, Margaret River Main Break which is surfed at up to 20 feet! Lefthanders, South Point and North Point of the Gracetown Area also offer world class waves!

The main difference however between the surf in Sydney, which is very good, is the crowd factor. In the south west of WA crowds are rarely larger than 5 to 10 people. Yet in Sydney crowds can be huge. I am a West Australian so excuse any bias that may be present, I am only telling you what I know. Hope I was of some help.

Stuart Hobson If you have any further inquiries You can E-mail me at: Pertech@iinet.net.au

From: "vincent barry"
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Need a car in NSW for Jan.
Date: 3 Nov 1996

Aiden, if you want to buy a cheapie check out the web site for the Sydney Morning Herald http://www.market.fairfax.com.au/ if you get here and check out the backpacker 'digs' around Bondi, Manly and Glebe quite often I've seen cars, vans for sale outside as well as lifts heading for various places.

whilst in sydney you should surf the Northern beaches (Manly through to Palm Beach) nine footers are common!! The mal is well and truly back in vogue here in NSW (I surf my mal, mini-mal and short boards - depending on the wave conditions. Hope you get some good ones, watchout for sunburn - it's bloody hot over here during jan - march - use ya 15+ blockout... - vb From: Mountain Man Newsgroups: alt.surfing Subject: Re: West oz Date: 6 Nov 1995 13:51:18 GMT 

>I'm an experienced surfer going to West Oz at Christmas. Can anyone shed >some light on any surf breaks (prefferably lefts) around Perth

Trigg ... or if your adventurous try 'the island'.

>and Yallingup.

Breaks both ways, but depends on the swell direction.

>I can only take my 6'4 so nothing too heavy please.

You should be able to borrow a bigger board there if it starts getting average size ... dont forget, West OZ sits just above the "Roaring Fortieth Parallel" and some decent size swell travels around that.

From: conrad@jtec.com.au (Conrad Drake)
Newsgroups: aus.sport,alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Info required on Australian surf
Date: 4 Oct 1996

In article , Della Capanna Paolo wrote: >G'Day. >I'm an Italian surfer. Next year I will be traveling/surfing Australia. >I'd really appreciate if you could tell me about local breaks >(conditions, localism, crowd, sharks...), and maybe include some info on >possibilities for (cheap) accommodation.

There's a really, really good book by Mark Warren called the "Atlas of Australian Surfing". It names and comments on almost every decent break in Oz. Note that QLD = summer surf, WA = winter surf etc. Try asking in alt.surfing - which I can't currently access directly. Other books mentioned on the net: Surfing and Sailboarding Guide to Australia by Nat Young Try some of the following sites too. gopher://gilgamesh.ho.BoM.GOV.AU:70/I9/Australian Weather Information 20Charts/swell_24

http://www.cm.deakin.edu.au/~ludwig/ludsurf.htm http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/tubelink.html

From: njtravis@cse.lbl.gov (Nancy Jean Travis)
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: The Moon Camp - over & out
Date: 7 Sep 1996
Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory

The stringer on the Banks board is 1/4 inch thick, fairly fat for such a skinny gun. The thing is bulletproof, having survived both Qantas and my mistakes. Its nice to see it again, all my luggage arrived yesterday, a day later than I.

The only thing I worried about was possibly losing Jim: 7'2" x 18.5" x 2 3/8" (with the most impressive pink and red DEC PDP-11 grip) On its tail Jim Banks has signed "Capricorn" which is the tropic you pass over to reach the Moon.

While I can't say I caught more waves on the Banks, I swear the reef interludes were gentler as I pulled him better than he towed me. "You're not supposed to judge a board by the wipeouts," the locals advised me, but really the Banks let me play over my head and live, a good forgiving board (less of it to whack me uptop).

On the fifth day, full moon, deep tide, I blew the go-out and got washed into a cave behind an encrusted sharp benevolet rock. After escape and reconsideration I went out again and got knocked into same cave. My last day, good reef tatoos already in place, blood and black-n-blues and that general I'm-happy-my-board-is- still-in-one-piece phase made me quit, swearing I'd come back and buy a cave soon, I could only reckon the Reef was God's way of keeping the crowd down.

The next day I drove south. I got sick in Carnarvon on a local sea food lunch in a rich creme sauce at the Harbour View Cafe, carefully attended to by bush flies. After a week of miso and veggies, you'd be sick too. I was nearly seduced by the facade of civilization at the Billabong Roadhouse. The owners remembered and drank with me. It was one more beer or a two hour drive in the dark to Kalbarri; I left.

Kalbarri is a bitching little resort town with a huge seafood (euuuk) and resort industry. That means they prefer not to have Fang camping in the carparks I reckon. However I go into the most expensive restaurant on the wharf in my camping baggies and a Norwest tee shirt with a bit of miso down the front and the waitress gives me an ocean view table. Well, I did grovel about how starving I was. Then I crept passed the Kalbarri Municipal Police Station and pulled into the lot at Jake's Point very close to the camoflage of bush, and slept a good 9 hours with the same moon in my face, warm air, 16 degrees, lush.

At dawn the Point was so nasty the boys were hiding in their cars and yelling "Girls in Tutus" at each other. The ones out surfing were routinley coming out on the reef and redifining re-entries. It was ugly for a Friday. My knees were much too farked up to even hassle these guys. Besides I'd learned a wonderful Western Australian surf tradition which basically dictates you should never paddle out unless you can improve the situation...or until the sun rises... whichever comes first. I drove back to Perth and the next day to Margaret River. I don't even want to talk about Margs. Fang

From: dp025@seqeb.gov.au (D.Pritchard...Bear)
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: D.J.Files..bits of a surfing life #54 Kirra - djkirra.54 [1/1]
Date: 14 Nov 1996
Disclaimer : Don't believe a word of it.... :-)

The D.J.Files #54 "Familiar Faces" 1985

Malt and Bear were in the parking lot next to the Kirra kiosk. Overnight it had poured in that wonderful tropical way it often does when a cyclone is not too far way. But now the cloud was breaking and fierce rays of sunshine were bursting between like a Cecil B.De Mille special effect. And most importantly, overhead lines were slipping around the groyne and along the rocks in a desperate attempt to reach the cafe. They failed, of course, and were being punished unmercifully for even trying, by a mixture of local lads and international visitors.

The boards were waiting patiently on the ground to be given some wax. M & B were taking a long time to get ready, because in summer you don't need a wetsuit. You _do_ need 15+blockout everywhere, zinc on ya beak,ears and tops of your shoulders. All this takes far longer than slipping sexily into a full body neoprene number. Funny really, not having to do that was one of the big attractions of migrating for this pair.

Eventually tho, they started to put on the wax. Malt glanced up for another look at the waves. Leaning on the rail were a mixed group of guys. Catching the Malt's gaze, a couple of them nodded 'gidday' and he nodded back, saying to Bear "Where do I know those guys from?" "Um...here, possibly", Bear replied, retrieving a Surf Mag. from a seat in the VW. "Oh..hah, yeah", said Malt, looking a bit sheepish. ...

They must have been in the line-up for nearly an hour. They'd probably only had 3 or 4 waves _between_ them. Neither of them were inclined to drop in on anyone, and the place was pretty busy. It was only a week before the Stubbies was due to start. So the International Surfing Circus was in town. And most of em seemed to be out here today. Good to watch tho. Bear went for another wave, expecting to have to back off..again. At the last second a Hawaiian said "Yours, bruh" and after being very patient Bear was dropping down a wave of his own. Being backhand here, he sat into the bottom turn, banked off the lip and set a speed line for the fast-peeling tube of the middle section. There's a continual line of people paddling back outside, and he's trying to keep an eye on them. Then something gets in the way. His vision seems blurred... Now Bear has had one or two (not hundreds tho, I have to say) tube rides in his many years in the water. Mostly forehand, altho he has grabbed a rail from time-to-time and slipped temporarily into a backhand one, and mostly folded up like a tree-frog in a thunderstorm. Knees in ears, head up arse, I'm sure you're all familiar with the position (No, grandma it's _not_ in the Kama Sutra).

But what in fact was clouding his vision, and it took him a second or 2 to register the fact, was the falling lip of this, now A-frame, Kirra tube. Not even a smile crossed his dial. It was all happening too fast. His prime concern was "I can't see, I'm gonna run over some poor bastard!" . He saw people peering up the tube. One or two went "Woohoo!" or "yee-ha!" or similar and in that adrenalin-induced t..i...m...e....s..t..a..l...l, it seemed like minutes before he popped out into the warm sunshine again, as it backed off on the inside. A standup tube! He'd never had one o'those before.

His pullout was smooth enough, but as he lay down again to paddle, it all caught up with him. He howled in delight, and the shakes set in. After getting outside and having to wait another long time, in which he became quite relaxed and resigned to not having another wave all day, he got another, almost identical, wave. Except he blew this one before the pullout. There was a third. Given the crowd and the standard of surfing happening out there, he was rapt. So was the Malt with a similar set notched up. ... On the drive home, Bear suddenly remembered D.J. jokingly refer to Killer Kirra. He'd only ever seen, and surfed, it small. Bear laughed out loud: for once in his life he was one-up on the bastard. Malt opened a dozing eye, quizzically. "Nothing mate", said Bear and Malt reshut the eye.

From: empire@cia.com.au (Chrisª)
Newsgroups: alt.surfing
Subject: Re: Northern NSW TRIP
Date: Sun, 01 Jun 1997
Hey man I am not too sure how many replies you will get but I have surfed some of the coffs beaches, I am actually from Sydney. One of the most consistant and good beaches is Diggers beach, about 4-5 min north of Coffs central. At the Big Bananna turn off the Highway and down towards the beach. There is sometimes a great rip on the south of the beach that takes you around the back in less than 30 secs for about 200-300m distance. At diggers the waves curl real nicely and are very plesant. Also in the Coffs region you may want to try the (10-15mins south of coffs central) Sawtell area. About half of the locals are OK as Surfing is their life. There are a few wankers though if you are cool everything will be cool. Also up north there is Sandy beach (or shelly beach). It is a really long beach and if the sand bar is nice you can get a good surf out there. There are a couple of surf shops in town, they are usually pretty helpful there. Watch out for sharks, particularly on Park beach. the main beach as that is near where all the fishing trawlers come in. You do get some pretty cool dolphines around though which are really peacefull to surf with. It is getting cold, I would bring both a springy and a steamer and rashy and booties. Be prepared ! (just in case the weather changes) Hope this helps