Got away nice and early with the first stop being Kalbarri National Park. It’s wildflower season and we did a couple of walks to check out the flowers and the lookouts. Worst flies of anywhere on the trip though so we didn’t stay out of the car too long!
We rolled into the town of Kalbarri and we very impressed with how pretty it was. Good town-shui, the perfect mix of the desert meeting the ocean set amongst cliffs and headlands. There are a couple of famous surf spots here so we checked Chinamans (huge and nobody out) and Jakes (looking solid with a few surfers out and weirdly offshore when everywhere else was onshore). Jakes is an amazing spot, we could see it wrapping around the point from a couple of kays away, a heavy lefthander right in front of the rocks and even better land-based viewing than Dee Why point!
It wasn’t looking like quite the square death-barrels that we’d read about in our surf guides but it looked fairly full on at 4-6 foot with the local guys only just making some of the drops. I started wrestling with the fact that there we quite decent waves in front of me versus not feeling very surf fit at all after weeks in the outback and not really fancying taking on such solid surf, let alone on my backhand!
I decided that I’d regret it if I didn’t at least paddle out and suss it so headed back to the car to grab my big board before I bottled it completely! Shouldn’t really have looked back to see a monster set roll through but managed to not wuss out and got suited up and back down on the rocks. The rock jump wasn’t too bad but once in I quickly realised there was a lot of power in the water!
I paddled wide to check it out from the shoulder and couldn’t believe how thick the lips were on the takeoff, a good metre-thick slab of water throwing out towards the rocks! I’ve never seen waves that thick in real life before and had never been in surf as powerful. Anyway, I stayed down the line from the first section and picked off a couple of slightly smaller, wider ones that the locals let go through. Heaps of power and quite hard to control but started feeling better with each turn. I think the photo is my second wave.
Jack and Dani went for a walk (it did take about half an hour to get two waves) and I started to get a few of the more solid sets, heart in mouth on the drop but starting to really enjoy the power and being slightly scared. Even managed to weave through a pitching section for a 0.5 second backhand barrel! I played it pretty conservative but still got some good waves that wound off down the line. I have to say that the locals were quite friendly and even warned me about how much water was moving around and where not to sit. Ended up getting about 7 or 8 waves in total and managed to get back in over the rocks without dinging my board or myself!
We had a nice lunch in Kalbarri and were a bit reluctant to leave, all of us thinking that we might regret not staying a bit longer. The swell was meant to increase tomorrow too which would mean we’d both probably be watching from dry land but it would have been amazing to see Jakes thundering at 8 foot!
We trucked south anyway towards Geraldton and set up in the fairly ordinary caravan park. On the upside it was Saturday night and we were just in time to watch Funniest Home Videos (my favourite show) in the games room. We headed into town for dinner and to check out the Gerro nightlife. Didn’t have a big night but sank a few beers and got to observe some pretty interesting characters.
Surf: Jakes, Kalbarri, WA, 4-6 foot, 1.5hr (79.5 total)
