Noosa Heads is geographical perfection. A couple of hours North of Brisbane the Coast bends hard left and gives us the Noosa National Park. It’s a surfing reserve. A series of Point Breaks that are pretty darn close to as good as waves can get when the bigger swells wrap around into it. It was first surfed in the late 1950’s. Now it’s surfed all the time by hundreds of people. Hundreds and hundreds of people. In the second half of January I was lucky enough to be one of them.
I even got to do it on a brand new board. Noosa’s Thomas Surfboards make beautiful surfboards of all types, it’s kind of hipster central. Artisan stuff. A shop with a barber, coffee and coolness up the wazoo. The hipsterism isn’t my scene but I like looking at it. If I was younger I’d probably be fully immersed, long hair, beard, tattoos of hand tools, that kind of thing.
The new board is nine foot four with ocean green rails and bottom, a white deck and minimal branding. It’s quite straight and classic looking. They take a lot of risks with the colourways on their boards and to me sometimes miss the mark – but someone else probably loves that swirly purple paintjob. My board’s the Harrison model, named for the current world longboard champ Harrison Roach. It’s the most versatile model of mal they make – the only one where the description includes beach breaks – most of the boards they make are all about the points and ‘tip time’ – riding the nose. I don’t get enough time on point breaks for something so specific. The beautiful thing has finally cleared customs after I had to leave it at Brisbane Airport a week ago in a highly stressful situation. I’m refusing to surf until I have it, and missing some good waves by doing so, hence I’m writing this.
The points were working pretty much the whole time we were there, I surfed about 9 days, twice a day for 6 of them. Recovery time was lengthy. Lots of yoga that just got harder and harder to do but always provided some relief. Afternoon naps. Big feeds. Twice a day, first light and last light, I’d head out to Tea Tree Bay. The light in Noosa at the either end of the day is part of what makes it so special, you’re facing North, so everything is lit from the side. It’s like being in a lavishly produced television commercial for a share float in the 80’s. Tea Tree is a ten minute walk from the ironically named National Park, ironic because parking is the first hurdle to over come. It should be called National Park If You Can. I waited in the car for half an hour one morning, and drove straight into one a couple of times. By morning I mean 6, 6.30 AM. It’s already been light for over an hour.
Surfing Noosa is all about patience, and it starts in the car park. Lots of people just give up, but I was factoring it in to the session.The locals hold parks for each other and although I’m thinking “Assholes” – it’s exactly what I’d be doing if I was one of them so I suck it up.Once you’re out there, there’s a golden sand beach littered with rocks. There’s nothing else there. Noisy Australian birds make their assorted noises from the trees. There might be snakes.
It’s a lengthy paddle out to the point, but the water’s warm and apart from the distance of the paddle it’s an easy one. Once you’re out there, the wait begins. It’s crowded, but as usual, there are quite a few people just floating taking up space – and carparks – as one of the locals complained to me. There are more people who have the water absolutely wired. Which is relatively easy because it’s so mechanical. The bigger sets break right around the corner, the first section breaks on the rocks and even though I was pretty sure I could make that section, the risk of smashing the brand new board far outweighed the desire to take off on the first, very cool looking section.
Just inside that, on the corner, still close to the rocks, is where I choose to take off. Some people, being super fussy will kick out of the wave on that corner once they’ve read it and decided it’s not going to break all the way to the distant sand, and others will try something a bit radical and not make it. This is when to strike, you can snaffle their wave when they fall off. If you’re too close to the rocks, the rip finding it’s way out is a hazard, you have to get over it as it travels up the face off the wave. On the bigger days, that rip actually gets quite gnarly and you can get smashed, held up on the top of the breaking wave and going over the falls. Not pretty. Then you have to paddle around that second section that’s breaking hard and fast.
It’s cool though. You take of pretty quick and steep, dodge the crowd then it mellows out and the wall goes for miles. Speeds up a little bit in the middle then breaks all the way through to the sand and you’re in for your big paddle again. Some waves come through a bit wider, there’s always a handful of people picking them off too. After a set has come through, you quickly paddle into the spaces that have been left by the lucky buggers that got waves and hope like hell the next set comes through before they can paddle 150 metres. I was struck by how much time you have on the wave, that’s where all that fancy cross stepping and walking the board comes from. At Piha on the longboard, it’s more about survival, everything happens much faster. Way more intense.
The population is significant but, patience, the most rewarding virtue. It’s easy too, because the water is so warm. The crowd turns over, lots of people head out and just get 2 or 3 sublime waves then go to work. There are locals of course, the tourists (lots of Brazilians) living in their vans, other tourists (more your sunburnt European) hiring boards and getting in the way, everyone from kids to grandmas that rip or style so beautifully, grizzly old bearded buggers who’ve clearly been surfing the place for years as well as former world champion longboarders who are out there just to make you feel incredibly average even though you’re potentially quite good. The water is full of characters. They’re all part of the experience and there’s some great surfing to watch.
One night, the crowd was light, and the waves got really good on the mid tide. For about 35 minutes I traded these perfect little waves with handful of other surfers as the sun went down and a massive turtle hung around the line up. That was the night I became emotionally attached to the new board. The one that’s sitting at DHL. The one I haven’t seen since I left it at Brisbane Airport placing an enormous amount of trust in some Air New Zealand people I didn’t particularly like.
Noosa has been declared a National Surfing Reserve. And it should be, locals saw what was happening down on the Gold Coast with development and thought “Fuck that” and worked hard to preserve it. It’s super special and well worth a visit. Just be patient, enjoy the scenery, which includes the people and admire the gorgeous boards they make. But don’t buy one. It wont fit on the plane and you’ll have to leave it in Brisbane and nervously track it every 15 minutes as it heads to Sydney from Brisbane and eventually across the ditch so it can sit in customs for a few days before being loaded into a van in Mangere and repatriated.
Here’s hoping DHL deliver on Saturdays.
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