Let’s Go To Bells Beach

crazy para-surfing dude

I was sitting at my computer sorting through all my February ‘one photo a day’ photos, trying in vain to upload the folder today when I heard the weather report on the radio.

the 115 steps down to Bells Beach

... and now for the surfing report. Torquay, Jan Juc and Bells Beach all have plenty of swell out there in the 5-6 foot range with bigger clean sets at Bells/Winki. South westerly onshore winds averaging 15-30km/h with gusts up to 50km/h. All the reefs have heaps of waves and we have just gone through high tide so surf carefully out there today.

Oooooooooooooooooooooooo, this got me thinking.... and a quick look out of the window confirmed it...wind, waves, stormy weather. This could only mean one thing, crazy surfers would be out there catching some waves. I gotta go take some photos of this. So I abandon the photo sorting without a second thought, grabbed two of my cameras and a couple of lenses together, oh and the husband who is on annual leave, and headed for the coast.

Finally we arrive at Torquay and go straight to the beach, there are lots of waves, but where are all the surfer dudes? Husband tells me to chill he is only at the front beach to check out the wind direction and he can see that these waves are far too small so we have to drive to the back beaches. ‘Fine, fine, let’s get going’ I say and smile sweetly. I want to get to the action.

We pass a surfing class and I snap a couple of photos, but that is not why I came here so I don’t waste my time with them, I am after the crazy dudes.

the high school surfing class

And we find them at last.... one para-surfer in particular looks like he has a death wish... yay, perfect!

death wish dude

I jump out of the car with my regular zoom lens and start clicking wildly at everything that moves. A surfer, another para-surfer, a wind surfer, a seagull! This is what I came here for... to click, click, click... bliss.

it was far too rough for this sail boarder to stay up

Then I suddenly notice the wind, hooley dooley it was strong, it almost blew me over.  So I ran to the car and grabbed my warm hat and my super dooper paparazzi lens so that I could get some close up shots of the para-surfer with the death wish. He was amazing and was speeding around like it was just another day out there. He must have been doing 80 km/h and when he jumped out of the water he flew up at least 20 feet into the air... very cool dude that para-surfer dude.

But, now you have to picture this...

The wind picks up as I leave the car with my super dooper paparazzi lens in tow. I have to walk about 20 steps to the edge of the cliff to take the photos and I am fighting against the wind every step of the way. I have one hand holding my warm hat onto my head as it is teetering on blowing off into the wild grey yonder never to be seen again, and the other hand clutching the camera around my neck. I gave the tripod to my husband to bring along for me.  

So there we are walking... struggling... fighting to put one foot in front of the other to make our way to the edge of the cliff. The blustery wind pummelling us the closer we get to the edge. But we make it and now to connect the camera to the tripod. That was a feat in itself because of all that wind, and I felt as though this is a scene from a bad movie where they have over done the whole wind thing making it almost unrealistic to watch. But I am not watching a movie, I am in the movie... how bizarre.

Luckily I brought the heavy duty tripod as the other lighter one would have almost certainly blown away. Right, I am set up and ready to photograph the death wish dude.

 Now death wish dude was zooming by me all the way to the left then all the way to the right at the speed of at least 80km/h as I said before, and I found myself laughing as I could barely catch him in my viewfinder. Not only was his speed a factor in my missing him zoom by, but that gale force wind, which I later found out was gusting up to 50km/h, was playing a part in all this as well. You see, my super dooper paparazzi lens has an overall length of 50cm and the wind kept catching it and I could barely swing to the direction it needed to be in as it was being caught up in the wind.

he went up so high 

the waves behind him were huge

My husband saw me struggling and decided to help, so he started pushing on the lens to help me pan across the horizon to catch the dude. It worked very well until he forgot he was helping me pan because he was so in awe of what the para-surfer was doing that he pushed the lens so far over to the right side that I was frantically snapping at... nothing!

Anyway I stood there for a good ten minutes snapping madly away and before I knew it I had accumulated 337 photos. Thinking that was enough for one day and because it had decided to start raining, we retreated back to the car. Surprisingly the walk back to the car seemed to take only 3 or 4 steps because of the tail wind behind us, so the camera didn’t get very wet at all.   

As I sat in the car on the way home I was happy with the photos I had taken, although I had not seen any of my shots yet, as I get terribly car sick and could not risk to look at even one of the photos. But it felt good to be out there in the elements and I was sure I got at least one good shot. I only need one good shot to make the whole day worthwhile.

As it turns out, I got a few good shots today and I am glad I went down to Bells Beach on the spur of the moment. It is good to be random some days and when it works out well, it is a bonus.