Surfing

15th Monday: Day 1-

We set off for our three day surfing expedition bright and early. We packed the night before so we were all organised. We arrived at our camp site at Gleesons Landing around lunch time. We set up our tents, took our gear out of the trailer and had a quick lunch before heading off to North Berry Bay hoping to fit in as much surfing as possible. All of us run out of the bus desperate to get in the water. The weather was fantastic! No flies, no wind and very hot. The only problem was, the waves looked like ripples in a lake. We met the three instructors named Mark, Longy and Shane. They gave us a quick briefing before and sprinted down to the water for a surf. We placed our boards down beside the rocks and ran along the beach for a quick warm up with Shane. We stretch our legs to make sure we wouldn't get and painful cramps. Longy then demonstrated how to paddle for a wave and stand up on the foam boards. We finally got into the water. At first it was freezing but the wet suits soon warm up the water. The waves were unfortunately very small but as the day moved on they slowly grew. Our first day everyone was quite rusty. But we were all improving and hopefully by the end of the camp all of us would be capable of standing.

Today was a full day of surfing at Baby Lizards. Hopefully the waves were a lot larger today. We all woke up out of our tents, packed our lunch and headed off down the road in our sandy wetsuits. We arrived at our destination nice and early. Yet again the weather was fantastic however the waves only seemed to have grown by a few millimeters. It was a long walk to the beach from the car park. By the time we had walked only 100 metres my arms were already killing from holding the board. Finally we arrived onto the beach. We placed our bags and lunch under the cliff and walked a couple hundred metres down where the waves were breaking better. The wetsuits gave me very painful rash but with a bit of Vaseline it stop the wetsuit rubbing against it. We quickly did a warm up exercise before heading straight into the water. It was a boiling day and the sun was burning our skin. However the water was clear and extremely refreshing. Many people were starting to catch quite a few waves. Duthy and I started to muck around and try a couple of hand stands on the boards. It was very fun and entertaining although large amounts of water seemed to go up your nose when you fell off. After everyone caught a few waves, Mark called us in to play a few games. First was a board rescue, which was an event in surf life saving. First we got in pairs and chose a person to swim and someone to board paddle. I chose to paddle while Duthy swam. The swimmers had to swim out to Dale and then call for help by raising one arm. When the board paddlers got the signal we had to run out with the boards and then paddle all the way out. Once we arrived at our partners, we then both had to paddle back in to the shore. Everyone enjoyed this game, so we played a couple more before heading back to the cliffs for lunch. We were all terribly hungry from the surfing. We were given an hour for lunch so when we finished a few of us went up in the dunes to explore. The dunes were high, very steep and great to do flips off. Our lunch seemed to be more tiring than the surfing. We all soon became bored so we all went off down the beach to finish the day with some more surfing. Over the lunch break the waves seemed to have become a lot larger. Suddenly out of nowhere a group of large dolphins came swimming over towards us. At first I thought they were sharks and I nearly had a heart attack but they soon started jumping out of the water and catching waves with us all the wave to the shore. They were very intelligent and acted like humans. They soon became bored of us and carried on down the beach. The day quickly ended. We packed up our gear and hiked all the way back up the cliffs to the bus ready for a large dinner.

The last day of the surf camp everyone seemed to have very sore arm and leg muscles. But that still didn't stop us. We quickly put on our soaking wetsuits that weren't properly rinsed out and got on the bus hoping to finish the camp with a great surf. We headed back down to North Berry, where we went on the first day. today the wind was very powerful, which made the waves quite choppy and not break very well. None of us really minded so we grabbed the boards and walked down the humongous stair case. Like always we did a quick warm up before heading straight into the water. Today's surf was quite short but we still had enough time to catch some great right-handers. Nearly everyone was catching blue waves not the small crumbly white wash. It showed how quickly we all improved and what everyone is capable of. We finished up near lunch time, since we had to get back to Wambana. We thanked the instructors for their advice and enthusiasm towards our surfing experience and then sat back down on on the bus for a long trip back to Point Turton.