RealSurf Surfers' Forum

This is interesting. I remember an older crew of guys from Caringbah talking about a wave in that area years ago. They called it " Mascot Bombora". It's said to have worked at the same time as Kernell Point , in a big swell. Me and a few mates went looking around Mascot but found zip. After that , I always thought it was a myth. On a similar subject , I once surfed Fairlight Point at Manly. It was about 3ft and a fun wave at the time ,I thought ( I was about 13 YO). Does Fiarlight still get a wave sometimes ??

....had many good days at Bonnievale too .......but it was pure torture if yo lost your board and had to swim...

yes, of course fairlight still breaks.
however, no where near the 3ft mark.
down at fairlight baths, in the middle of the bay, where the shallow, rocky shelf sticks out, on a S - SE swell, it hits the shelf and breaks 1 - 2ft at best. the swell comes straight through the heads.
i have bodysurfed it & my brother bodyboarded it in the late '80's, but it's not really a surfable wave - it's too short. and you have to pull out pretty quick otherwise you end up on the rock shelf. there is no wave face - it's just whitewater & shoulder, as there is very deep water either side. this one's pure novelty.
it's good fun exploring the deep crevasses in the rocks, diving for shells & seeing how long you can hold your breath!

I surfed in front of Yarra sailing club in the mid 70's.
What i remember was that it used to rebound off the container terminal breakwater.
i can also recall Maroubra surfers Ernie Thackery and Kevin Davidson srfing closer to the break water

Anyone surfed Sailor's Grave ?......

2nd Reef wrote: Under huge conditions there is a very good left in the vicinity but you can only access it by boat or a seriously long mangrove bash. Taylor Bar, which sits off Dolls Point, also gets a few waves in big south swells.

seen it break one day, that same day a 20m wave was recorded in botany bay. Ive talked about that day before, we checked solander, voodoo, island and bare island from kurnell.
luke fisher wouldnt let me surf bare island as some waves appeared to close out the heads, and a paddle from kurnell point would have been suicidal, we were looking at towra point from behind seeing massive offshore waves go into there.
we tried to do a treck from where the horse riding place was and gave up and surfed the island, point and then southies.

luke later drove past dolls point which had brown 2-3ft faces

Doll's Point, as if

RickyG wrote:I grew up in the Shire and on countless journeys along General Holmes Drive I've looked at the BBay heads and wondered why swell doesn't seem to get in to the Brighton-Dolls pt stretch - I guess it just dissipates in the deep water? Pre-dredging there must have been some options out in the bay in the right conditions.
Dolls pt right near the bridge looks like a good set-up if the swell's there.

Someone above mentioned surfing it as a grommet, has anyone else surfed it or seen it surfed?

Something must have gone on there during that massive swell in '74 or so (waves washed over the Kurnell dunes and into the bay apparently).

edit: didn't mean to sound narky, I surfed it just when I was learning, it had enough grunt to do a stand up when everywhere else was too big.

Thank you to all correspondents for the interesting information.

Special thanks to carvin marvin for the invaluable SW article and photographs.

Apart from Sydney Airport, several other large swell "inside" breaks have been noted in the thread.
From memory: an article in Tracks (1980s?) called these "Novelty Breaks" with (I think) photographs of Neilsen Park and Kurnell.

oldman:
1. Cook didn't think much of it (Botany Bay). Imagine sailing a gazillion kilometres from England, looking at Botany Bay and deciding it wasn't worth
much, and somehow missing what was to become Sydney Harbour, 'one of the finest harbours in the world where a thousand ships of the sail
could anchor', as Phillip would later say.

Joseph Banks certainly thought highly of Stingray Bay (later Botany Bay, in recognition of the many species collected there) and promoted colonisation.

2. Although Cook was an amazing sailor, how he missed that one is quite a story.

Leaving Botany Bay, Cook identified Sydney Heads, but did not enter.
The voyage up the east coast was plagued by continous on-shore SE winds that prevented close exploration of the coast in the squared-rigged Endeavour.

kayu:
Anyone surfed Sailor's Grave ?...

Point or Bombie?

Autumn 1974, Sailor's Grave Point, +6ft.
When we (x3) arrived there where two surfers already in the water, local board builder, Barry Taylor and mate.

Geoff

[quote="surfresea

surfresearch wrote: From memory: an article in Tracks (1980s?) called these "Novelty Breaks" with (I think) photographs of Neilsen Park and Kurnell.

It wasn't "Tracks" but I know the article to which you refer and somewhere in my house I have the magazine. If I can find it I will scan the entire article and post it in here. In addition to a photo of Kurnell Point it has the German Bank (DY), Chinaman's Beach & Agnes Waters.

Thanks Geoff, some nice correspondence there.

Still, it's a great story that one of the great navigators basically sailed by Sydney Harbour, which was later recognised by Phillip.

Not a commentary on his skills, just an interesting aside.

My grandma lived in Banks St, then Brighton, now Monterey.

The name has resonance for me because of that.

He was the star of the Cook voyage. The work he did in identifying and classifying the flora and fauna of this new world has virtually no parallels in biology/botany.

The Cook voyage was a scientific voyage, as you would all know, to witness the transit of Venus (?) But the great discovery they made was in Banks' work.

Just saw this ad for Fairfax pictures archive in weekend SMH travel section.
This link to 2 pics of Bear Island. One pic looks 'modern' by the size of board rider is on. And the other is of staff photographer bodyboarding.

http://professional.fairfaxsyndication. ... 80&RH=1091

skipper wrote:Just saw this ad for Fairfax pictures archive in weekend SMH travel section.
This link to 2 pics of Bear Island. One pic looks 'modern' by the size of board rider is on. And the other is of staff photographer bodyboarding.

http://professional.fairfaxsyndication. ... 80&RH=1091

Someone should tell them it's "Bare" island.

oldman wrote:My grandma lived in Banks St, then Brighton, now Monterey.

The name has resonance for me because of that.

He was the star of the Cook voyage. The work he did in identifying and classifying the flora and fauna of this new world has virtually no parallels in biology/botany.

The Cook voyage was a scientific voyage, as you would all know, to witness the transit of Venus (?) But the great discovery they made was in Banks' work.

And Solander.
My family's got a few of the prints made from Banks' plates.

surfresearch wrote:Thank you to all correspondents for the interesting information.

Special thanks to carvin marvin for the invaluable SW article and photographs.

Apart from Sydney Airport, several other large swell "inside" breaks have been noted in the thread.
From memory: an article in Tracks (1980s?) called these "Novelty Breaks" with (I think) photographs of Neilsen Park and Kurnell.

oldman:
1. Cook didn't think much of it (Botany Bay). Imagine sailing a gazillion kilometres from England, looking at Botany Bay and deciding it wasn't worth
much, and somehow missing what was to become Sydney Harbour, 'one of the finest harbours in the world where a thousand ships of the sail
could anchor', as Phillip would later say.

Joseph Banks certainly thought highly of Stingray Bay (later Botany Bay, in recognition of the many species collected there) and promoted colonisation.

2. Although Cook was an amazing sailor, how he missed that one is quite a story.

Leaving Botany Bay, Cook identified Sydney Heads, but did not enter.
The voyage up the east coast was plagued by continous on-shore SE winds that prevented close exploration of the coast in the squared-rigged Endeavour.

kayu:
Anyone surfed Sailor's Grave ?...

Point or Bombie?

Autumn 1974, Sailor's Grave Point, +6ft.
When we (x3) arrived there where two surfers already in the water, local board builder, Barry Taylor and mate.

Geoff

I must be mixed up, but didn't Darwin say it was the most beautiful harbour in the world, I take it he wasn't with COOK.

^^^
Think he was a fair bit later Dazz.

Trev wrote:^^^
Think he was a fair bit later Dazz.

You're right, b. 1809 :?

Phillip, eh. Thx surfres

daryl:
I must be mixed up, but didn't Darwin say it was the most beautiful harbour in the world, I take it he wasn't with COOK.

According to Wikipedia:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Jackson

The first recorded European discovery of Sydney Harbour, was by Lt James Cook in 1770 - Cook named the inlet after Sir George Jackson, (one of the Lord Commissioners of the British Admiralty, and Judge Advocate of the Fleet). His ship's log notation states "at noon we where...about 2 or 3 miles from the land and abrest of a bay or harbour within there appeared to be a safe anchorage which I called Port Jackson."
[McDermott, Peter Joseph (1878-11-06). "Pacific Exploration". The Brisbane Courier (Brisbane Newspaper Company Ltd): pp. 5. Retrieved
2008-11-05.]

Eighteen years later, on 21 January 1788, after arriving at Botany Bay, Governor Arthur Phillip took a longboat and two cutters up the coast to examine Cook's Port Jackson. Phillip first stayed over night at Camp Cove, then moved down the harbour, landing at Sydney Cove and then Manly Cove before returning to Botany Bay on the afternoon of the 24th.

Phillip returned to Sydney Cove in H.M. Armed Tender Supply on 26 January 1788, where he established the first colony in Australia, later to
become the city of Sydney.

In his first dispatch from the colony back to England, Governor Phillip noted that "...we had the satisfaction of finding the finest harbour in the
world, in which a thousand sail of the line may ride in the most perfect security..."
[NSW Govt Printer (1892), Historical Records of New South Wales, Vol 1, Part 2 (1783-1792) pages 67-70. cited in statusquo.org]

Charles Darwin arrived in Australia in the Beagle on 12 January, 1836.
- http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/pro ... ia/3165690

oldman:
The Cook voyage was a scientific voyage, as you would all know, to witness the transit of Venus (?) But the great discovery they made was in Banks' work.
and
alakaboo:
And Solander.

As well as the scientific and navigationl achievements of the voyage, Banks also recorded the earliest account of surfriding on the west coast of Tahiti in 1769.
This was ten years before the accounts by Cook's crew in Hawaii.
(Although he certainly witnessed it, Cook himself did not write about surfing.)

In the company of Cook and Solander, Banks wrote:

In the midst of these breakers 10 or 12 Indians were swimming who whenever a surf broke near them divd under it with infinite ease, rising up
on the other side; but their chief amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe, with this before them they swam out as far as the
outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness.
Sometimes they were carried almost ashore but generaly the wave broke over them before they were half way, in which case the[y] divd and
quickly rose on the other side with the canoe in their hands, which was towd/(swam) out again and the same method repeated.
We (Banks, Cook, Solander, and others) stood admiring this very wonderfull scene for full half an hour, in which time no one of the actors
atempted to come ashore but all seemd most highly entertaind with their strange diversion.

Beaglehole (ed): The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768 - 1771 (1962) page 259.
- http://www.surfresearch.com.au/1769_Ban ... ahiti.html

Geoff

surfresearch wrote: In the midst of these breakers 10 or 12 Indians were swimming who whenever a surf broke near them divd under it with infinite ease, rising up
on the other side; but their chief amusement was carried on by the stern of an old canoe, with this before them they swam out as far as the
outermost breach, then one or two would get into it and opposing the blunt end to the breaking wave were hurried in with incredible swiftness.
Sometimes they were carried almost ashore but generaly the wave broke over them before they were half way, in which case the[y] divd and
quickly rose on the other side with the canoe in their hands, which was towd/(swam) out again and the same method repeated.
We (Banks, Cook, Solander, and others) stood admiring this very wonderfull scene for full half an hour, in which time no one of the actors
atempted to come ashore but all seemd most highly entertaind with their strange diversion.

Beaglehole (ed): The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768 - 1771 (1962) page 259.
- http://www.surfresearch.com.au/1769_Ban ... ahiti.html

Geoff

Brilliant, sometimes I think with all the hoo-har that gets stapled to surfing these days it's possible to lose focus on the simple stuff.