On Saturday we did something that felt super Australian - we went to watch a surf competition! It was the Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach, the second event on the 2018 World Surf League World Tour.

Bells Beach is in Torquay, about 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne.

We don't know anything about surfing so this was pretty interesting. It was sunny day, but a little bit cooler sitting by the water. I applied a lot of sunscreen even though I had on a sweater.

It would have been really helpful to have someone explain it all to us, but it was still a lot of fun to be there. We found a spot to sit right beside the stairs where the surfers ran down before getting into the water and after they got out. We saw a couple of heats of men surfers and then the women started so we got to watch them too. Two surfers would go out at once and they would have half an hour or so to catch some waves. They would get scored (I have no idea how this works, but I tried reading a bit about it here. 

Sometimes they would have to wait a while for a good wave. It was so cool watching them though! They made it look so easy! They would jump up on their board and kind of ride down the wave and then twist and ride back up it and then down again. It's hard to describe but it was really impressive that they had such good balance and control of their board. I thought it would remind me more of snowboarding but it looked a lot different. Even though I had no idea what was going on, you could tell when they did something good because the surfer would ride the wave for a long time and look very graceful as they got their moves in. There were a couple of jet-skis to pick them up when they were done with a wave and bring them back into position for the next one. The announcer would tell them their scores and what the other person needed to get, but I couldn't really hear that well.

A buzzer would sound to warn them when their time was almost up, and again when they were finished, and they would ride their board to the beach and come out of the water. They had a security guard waiting for them, and a bunch of fans and little kids would run up to them to get autographs and selfies. Some of the surfers would just run past everyone and go right up the stairs (I think they were the losers haha).

When watched for a bit and then decided to go to Torquay to have dinner. When we got back to our car we realised we had our first Australian parking ticket! An expensive one! Yuck. Not a good way to end a great day, but we had a nice drive back to Melbourne. There was a blue moon that night, meaning the second full moon in a month. It was huge and bright and lit up the sky, so it was a pretty drive home.

I was excited to get home because it was just one more sleep til Easter and that meant… CHOCOLATE! 

Surfers getting in and out of the water.