Ripping on the south coast...

So here I am, back in Sydney after a week of ‘ripping’, ‘getting smashed’ and other Surfing terminology too numerous to mention or recall.

Monday morning saw myself and a couple of recent acquaintances standing outside Sydney Central YHA in the drizzle waiting for a bus to take us two hours south of Sydney to a town called Gerroa for a week (well, four days) of ‘Surf Camp’. There were around thirty of us, all with varying degrees of incompetence when it came to staying on your feet on an eight-foot piece of floating fibreglass. Personally, I had never so much as set foot on a surfboard before in my life and was standing there wondering what I had let myself in for.

On arriving at camp, we were split into groups of five or six and given a room for the duration. Room 6 comprised myself, Chris (a fellow Englishman), Robin (German), Rico (Finnish) and Jordan (a stereotypically brooding Frenchman who insisted that the weather at this time of year was better in France).

We were then introduced to our instructors – five guys who fitted the bill of ‘Surf Coach’ to a T, ‘Shane-o’ in particular was tall, muscular, had wavy sun-bleached blonde surf hair and a contagious penchant for describing things as ‘sick’. He was the head coach.

Wetsuits (or ‘wetties’) were distributed immediately and everyone got changed and headed straight down to the beach. The patch of sand in question is known as ‘Seven Mile Beach’ (for obvious reasons) and is reputed to be one of the best beaches in Australia for a beginner learning to surf. Its suitability for the novice is apparently due to the fact that the land does not fall away abruptly - rather it slopes gently, allowing waves to form a long way from landfall and persist (or occasionally ‘reform’) until very near to the shoreline. This lazy, languid rolling of the surf results in waves that are not only easier to ‘catch’ but also easier to stay on.

God it was beautiful. Describing a graceful arc around the south New South Wales coast, Seven Mile Beach is as flat as it is long and the horizon is leant an impressionistic air due to the continuous spray rising from the surf. The vivid blues and greens of the Pacific, intensified here and there by the virginal white of the surf, shimmer with the light of the sun and lap sleepily at the pristine sand. Trees full of black cockatoos provide the background and the headland disappears into the distance, impossibly far but invitingly near. There is not another soul to be seen and only the occasional set of footprints betrays a recent visitor.

The first lesson begins with body boarding – essentially the first part of surfing where the surfer lies on the board on their front, spots a good wave, paddles furiously in order to generate speed to catch it and finally ‘pushes up’ with their hands and finishes in a sort of ‘beached seal’ sort of position.

After half an hour or so of this we were brought back to the beach to learn how to stand up on a wave. Gulp. After pushing up on your board, you stand up by using a specific series of leg movements. Back foot first, then front foot, crouch for two seconds and then finally stand, remaining slightly crouched and with arms out. If you have never surfed before but are considering it – trust me when I tell you that any other combination of movements or methods will result in you getting ‘smashed’ – the surfers’ endearingly literal description of being thrown from your board at the critical moment and engulfed in the wave you have just disrespected. It will turn you upside down and hit you repeatedly with your board, it will fill your nose with saltwater, it will make your friends laugh at you and after all this, it will dump you unceremoniously and headfirst into the sand.

Surfing looks easy on television. It isn’t. After the first two days I had only managed to stand up twice and was getting thoroughly fed-up with the whole business - the problem being that if you get smashed, the wave still takes you a long way towards the beach. You then spend the next few minutes paddling back out to get into position again and beginners probably catch fifteen or twenty waves each time before finally standing up on one.

Then Shane-o grabbed me and gave me the camera board – a board with a waterproof video camera mounted on the front end which records you and is then played back in front of everyone at dinner for coaching purposes.

‘Okay, here goes. Get this one right’ I’m thinking as I’m lying there.

‘PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE BRO!!!’ cries Shane as a wave looms large behind me.

I start paddling for all I’m worth and in an instant the wave is on top of me - all of a sudden the coaching kicks in.

‘Paddle three more times. Push up. Count - 1, 2. Back foot. Front foot. Crouch. Stand. Arms out. Shuffle.’

‘Turn bro, turn!’ comes the shout from Shane.

I rotate my torso forty-five degrees as we’ve been taught, looking where I want to go the whole time. I’m surfing across the wave and riding it for real – in a flash I’ve reached the beach.

‘WOO!! That was totally sick bro!’ yells Shane, ‘you were totally ripping!’ It’s probably smaller than any wave he’s ridden in the past five years, but it’s the first one I’ve ever really caught and I can’t hide my delight.

After this the surfing becomes about nothing other than turning on the wave – standing up is the minimum to hope for now and by the end of Thursday I am a complete convert. Everything is ‘sick’ and I start calling everyone ‘bro’ or ‘dude’. All I can think about now is where I can live so I can keep surfing.

If you are ever presented with the opportunity, try Surfing. Yes, the water’s cold to begin with, yes, it’s difficult and yes, it comes with a lot of stereotypes. But wetsuits are a great invention, practice makes perfect, and at the end of a hard day’s paddling, stereotypes cease to exist when confronted with individuality and friends were made quickly over six packs of Toohey’s, the barbecue and a mutual lack of talent on the water.

Will I be surfing again? You bet. Nothing beats that rush you get when you catch a wave just right and I’ll be searching for it for a long time to come. I started the week hoping for a mildly diverting week messing around in the sunshine and came away with a passion.

You little ripper!