Surfing and Goon in Torquay

Torquay - the headquarters of Quicksilver, Ripcurl and other brands like that.

My hostel ended up being a great place, though its quite off putting walking into the common room/kitchen where every one's just watching TV, not talking and don't even look at you. Found myself trying to appear busy, as if that actually mattered!

Through the medium of card games, got talking to some people and the idea of no one talking to me disappeared! One of the only shames about this trip is that I've already met some really nice people who became good friends, only to have to say goodbye the following day or so.

Checked out some surfboards with some new found Brit acquaintances; they're so expensive!! $400 for a decent one and then some. And they seem to get damaged superquickly, too, because they're basically polystyrene with a glass composite on top. I opted to rent a threadbare, hole ridden wetsuit and foam board instead... Wow! I forgot how tiring surfing is - being battered by oncoming surf constantly makes it feel like you're making one step forward and two back. Poor condition, unfortunately, but it was good to get a few waves.

I've also discovered how bad I am at remembering names, so a Danish person I got talking to, I took to calling him 'Danish'. Other people are similarly bad; I got dubbed 'Pinochio' on account of my flailing arms while playing Hot Potato on Torquay beach. Good game, but the forfeit for loosing all 3 of your lives it having the ball kicked at you.

That night a mad Frenchman, called Dennis, with an Afro decided to teach me how to play the Mario Bros. theme tune on the harmonica. Brilliantly simple, and is guaranteed to make people around you smile and reminisce about hours wasted on Video Games. This then provoked another Frenchman and myself to create more Video game sounds, including favourites from Banjo Kazooie and Mario 64!

Surfing the following day, I walked down to the beach with Danish, where he proved to be the slowest walker of all time, which is one of the most frustrating things ever (see the Facebook group, "I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head", to which I am a devout member). The surfing was the best I've had so far, not that I've had much to compare it with. I think there was only about 3 others surfing at the same time! Could have been because it started raining heavily and it was veeeery cold.

Later on, we trundled 100m down the road to the Quicksilver retail shop, where there was a special promotion event or something for their next season of clothing. Free beer and sweets and snacks and freebies and an acoustic guitarist ensued, with my concience telling me I really didn't need another T shirt or nice new hoody, thus my wallet was spared. Take that advertising promotions!

On the next day, we took a trip down to the famous Bells Beach, where the Rip Curl Pro event was happening. Seeing the worlds best surfers surfing 12ft waves is quite awe inspiring. I thought it was funny how all of the viewing attention shifted to Kelly Slater when he came out, to the extent that people were running into the shallow surf (it was getting cold, windy and overcast by this point) to get a picture of this international Surf name. I proved I was the better person by staying sat down and just craning my neck like a tortoise. Watching a fair few heats and deciding it was getting too cold and windy, Danish and myself walked (slowly) back to the bus stop, to be told the free hourly shuttle had left 3 minutes ago.

Eventually we got back to Torquay, and looked around the outlet stores, which were all fully priced and made me thankful for the existence of TKMaxx and H&M. Thus it was time to leave; I had the task of navigating my way back to Melbourne via public transport for my 9pm Greyhound bus. I left 5 hours to get there, thinking that the 4 stages of transport would mean a load of waiting, but no!! The state of Victoria's public transport system is actually good enough to synchronise their timetables.

The following night was an aweful nights sleep though...