Surfin’ fun

For the first time, in a really long time (perhaps 10 years) I went down the coast for a bit of bodyboarding fun. The last time I went all the way down to as far as Jervis Bay for Black Rock. This time I went only as far as the Wollongong region aka “Coal Coast”. I got up real early to meet up with Pete, James and Mel at BJ’s place at 6am. Sheesh. The sun wasn’t even up at that time.

So we headed down to the Gong, stopping off at Maccas on the way for breakfast. Our first stop was Thirroul. Looked OK, not too many people, but we thought we’d have a drive up north of Thirroul to check things out. I think we drove past probably Austinmer Beach, Headlands, Coledale Beach and Thommos before we hit the end of the road. The other beaches were OK, with one of them looking quite good, but it was too crowded, so we headed back to Thirroul where there were more breaks and it was less crowded.

Heading out at 8am, the waves were decent (around 4ft maybe??) and it was just hollow. Just hollow enough for me to snag a couple of nice barrels. Unfortunately due to my laughable state of fitness at the moment, I spent a good portion of my time stuck in the impact zone getting pummled by whitewash.

Later on we went for a walk to buy some stuff (notably, I finally bought a board leash after not having one for years). When we got back around 11 or so, the waves were still holding their size, but unfortunately, it was mostly closing out and the barrels were pretty much gone.

We headed to Wollongong after that for some lunch, and on the way back we stopped off at Garie Beach in the Royal National Park to see what it was like. That was my first time there, and it was beautiful. Shame about the surf though. By the time we got there, there was a full southerly gale in force, and everything was blown out. But I guess Garie can now be a mission for another weekend 🙂