Manly Beach

So last weekend my friends signed up for surfing lessons at Manly Beach via Unimates, a great club at the University of Sydney that organizes events for international students. Even though surfing sounded awesome, my lack of foresight during the planning process resulted in forgetting to pack contact lenses. The prospect of surfing with my glasses and consequently losing them in the ocean prevented my participation. Since the rest of my friends were surfing, I was designated as the “picture bitch” to take all the awesome pictures of the beach. This actually suited me pretty well since I had a bit of reading to catch up on – a night at Manning Bar and the next day spent recovering shut down most of my efforts at completing school work. This was a relatively cheap event, for about two hours of surfing lead by an instructor for under $50 - not bad at all.

We took the short walk to Central Station and hopped on the free bus that circled around the city centre and rode it to Circular Quay*, where we met up with the rest of the Unimates at the wharf. We sat on the ferry and took a rather picturesque ride through Sydney Harbour, passing by all the major landmarks. The ferry was pretty packed, so I only managed to sneak in a few bad pictures of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. After a short ride, we reached Manly wharf and walked to the beach. After my friends signed their lives away via the consent form (Welcome Week Reps/Frosh – you know all about the infamous consent form). They got suited up in their giant condoms – err… I mean wetsuits – and then did the whole pre-athletic warm-up/stretches, leading to a few rather hilarious pictures of my friends performing some awesome Downward Dogs and Beached Whales**.

After about an hour of some hard lecturing by a rather beardy Australian, they eventually hit the water. At first I thought it was going to be a long day, as most people struggled to get past the first wave, fighting both their surfboards and strong waves. However, I was genuinely impressed by my friends who mostly all managed to get up and start riding their boards back to shore pretty quickly. However, early successes gave way to spectacular wipeouts. It looked pretty difficult, but I think most people got the hang of it and were riding waves back to the shore. After watching and taking pictures from the shore, one of the Unimates Danny gave me his board and asked me if I wanted to try. At first I was pretty skeptical of my odds of survival, with the whole business of just jumping on a surfboard and heading into the pretty strong waves, but since I had pretty much watched the entire process from a distance, I assumed I had competent knowledge not to kill myself. I also figured that even without my glasses I’d be able to discern the shore from and the giant-life-ending rocks. I walked the surfboard out a few metres, caught a wave and then rode it back. Of course I managed to get up for a whole 5 seconds before falling in spectacular fashion. But nonetheless, I can claim I surfed while in Australia.

We grabbed a bite to eat before heading over to 4pines, a bar/microbrewery Luigi, Christian and Jake recommended. After some excellent beers, our group managed to chat up some locals who informed us of their love for Canadians and all the excellent spots in Sydney. One dude named Monty (a proper Australian name) informed me he loved Corner Gas, which was both really surprising and pretty cool since Canadian television usually doesn’t leave Manitoba. We also talked about some American/Canadian stereotypes, which was pretty funny and lead to some interesting revelations! Australians as a whole are pretty friendly and outgoing, although once they’ve hit the boxed wine it’s a totally different story… perhaps there will be a story about the Australians to avoid in Sydney. Anyways, overall an excellent weekend that removes surfing in Australia from my bucketlist.

Now look at this tool pretending he can surf... although he swears he did it!

Best,
Ricksen

P.S: Apologies for the weird sizing on the photos, picassa is a piece of crap. Suck it google!
* Pronounced "Key"... silly Australians!
**This is my attempt at a yoga joke… is that socially acceptable yet? Who knows anymore.