THE Bells Beach

Near the end of the Great Ocean Road, 100km south-west of Melbourne, a renowned surf beach called Bells Beach is located along a stretch of coastline aptly named Surf Coast Shire (I am not kidding). It is the home of the world’s longest-running surf competition, the Rip Curl Pro Surf & Music Festival. Formerly known as the Bells Beach Surf Classic, the competition was first held in January 1961 and has been held at Easter every year since. Apparently, as early as 1939 surfers from Torquay (Australia not Devon) made their way to surf the waves at Bells but it wasn’t until 1960 when the considerable problem of access to it was resolved. A bunch of Torquay surfers and, bizarrely, an Olympic wrestler named Joe Sweeney hired a bulldozer and cleared the road along the Bells cliff, then charged surfers a dollar to recover his expenses. Interestingly, such is its fame, the last scene of the brilliant and fast-paced action film Point Break starring Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reaves is set at Bells Beach, although it was not actually filmed there. We stood at the lookout for probably an hour watching experienced surfers paddle out around the rocks, where the surf was calm, and out to where it started to break. There must have been fifty or more surfers in the water waiting for the perfect ride. The most interesting thing was that not all of these surfers were in their mid-20s as you might expect. Some were old enough to be our fathers. They rocked up in their cars with full heads of grey hair with their boards thrown in the back, got changed in to their wetsuits, attached their leash and headed down to the beach. There was nothing flashy or showy about these guys. This is just what they did. Like playing pub football on a Sunday morning. Except to us it was the coolest thing ever and they were sort of carrying on a legacy.