Moving to Melbourne

It's a good thing that you haven't got high expectations going south, unfortunately there isn't any surf on the east coast as Tasmania blocks all the swell. Janjuc is your only option when it's small and bells when the swell picks up. Your just not going to get the class of wave that you are used to on the Gold Coast or the standard of surfing but it will be less crowded(only 50 to 60 out at winki on a w/end).Richmond is a great place to live especially if you like Vietnamese food and sport, just a stones throw from the M.C.G. piss the Lions off Jump on the Tigers bandwagon, Storms ground is even closer if you like that cross country wrestling game.The best advice I can give you mate is unless you love driving as much as surfing, take up a new sport. If your just looking for somewhere to get wet, don't worry by the time you get down here winter will be in full swing, you'll only have to go outside to get wet, have a good time, good luck.

First things first, get yourself a nice warm wettie and a pair of booties.

From Richmond you are best off going to the west coast, about the same distance to west or east coast but you will get more consistent wave and better options on the west. You can surf East coast(Flinders, Mornington) and Phillip Island etc but not as good as West Coast. You are going to be doing a shitload of KM's though and spending a lot of time in the car.

haha! I think Shaun is having a bit of a laugh there, or maybe he's from somewhere above the border and doesn't really know.

Anyway, there are stacks of waves on both coasts of Vic. Head down the West for some right points from Torquay south when the wind is nothwest and there's a bit of swell. Don't bother if it's small as the west coast picks up buggerall swell. However, in Autumn the points down the west coast produce some classic waves. And it's not just Bells & Winki, but they're the 2 best (& most crowded!)

If it's east thru to north, head down to the Mornington Pensinsula or Phillip Island. They pick up heaps more swell than the west coast and there are waves as good as anywhere in Oz. Woolamai is one of the best beachies anywhere (& there are other ones around that are as good but few people bother about) and some of the reefs on the Island can be epic.

From inner Melb, it's probably equal distance down to both sides of the bay, so choose based on wind & swell.

The obvious downer is the water temps, but if you want to surf you've got 2 choices: get cold or wait until holidays to fly somewhere warmer.

:-)

Don't forget the top of the bay (port melb. Albert park etc). Just got to wait for a 20kt southerly to blow for most of the day. Worth it for the laughs (got a decent 10 second ride once). And only 10 mins from Richmond.

Don't forget underneath the westgate when the big container ships are steaming out.

Crip is right on, there are heaps of waves in Vic and not to mention some awesome waves as well you just gotta know where to go. The islands great for example ep's and woollies as metioned, and some. When the banks are on a little further down the road at Killie's and Williansons it can also get pretty good. The east coast is just as great like Bushies, Head injuries, Spooks, and the whole stretch from Rye, Gunamatta and Portsea and if you have a boat well..... theres this other spot.. Inside the bay is a shorter drive from town and it can get good as well. And as mentioned the west coast....

I've surfed the Goldie and the east coast of oz many a time, and the only thing that shits me about Vic is the cold water in winter otherwise the waves are great. At least you wont have to put up with long lulls of tiny swell in winter and the crowds like on the GC.

Enjoy your stay.

Here we go again.

There are countless books, surf guides (both paper and downloaded) and websites like Swellnet to inform even the dullest brain where the surf breaks up and down every coast on the planet and elsewhere including the fucking black holes.

Elsewhere on this site currently there is news of a book on Peter Troy. He didn't his hand held to be the first westerner with a board to find waves all over the planet in the 60's.

Stop toying with yourself, you don't need this site to find waves in Vicco or anywhere else. Just get down the coast and work it out for yourself.

Hope you enjoy yourself down here!

Also another good thing to keep in mind is that we have a shitload of factory outlets down here. DFO's all have Rip Curl, Billabong and Quicksilver as well as Baines Cresc in Torquay have all that stuff. It is way cheaper, if you ae into it.

Dont worry about Floyd, just ignore it, he is a grumpy old fart.

welcome aboard goingsouth.you will not be dissapointed friend. the colds not as bad as made out. there are waves in any wind if there is swell,which there normally is, and you'll love the crowd factor,coming from qld anyway.get your hands on a dvd called 38 degrees south. 1 and 2.dropping in is not acceptable down here.remember this and you'll have a ball and never go back. enjoy.

Struth, I'm almost scared to mention/recommend a book after Floyds post ... but, I have this little pocket size wave Finder Guide that lives in my car, it was great for sussing out breaks when on a mission and when I was living in VIC.

I went camping in the Lake District and camped in a 'bush camp' site just over the dunes from the beach. Didn't realise it at the time but was in front of a break called Red Bluff. It was a fun wave that was working at the time and the camp ground and setting was really cool. Well worth a look goingsouth.

Another time I just took off in the morning and scanned the coast to see what i could find. Instead of turning right onto Phillip Island I carried on left and scored this nice little right-hander that was just on the side of an inlet. I thought it was Woolmai but that's definitely wrong. It might have been Inverloch(?) Can't be sure but you could see the waves from the highway and I just turn off a dirt road and follow the inlet.

I really ejoyed my time in Vic goingsouth, good luck bro, hope you get to score and enjoy the coast scene there.

Mate vicco is so full of hit and miss missions, just when you are about to neck yourself due to crap surf you get a blinder of a session, one that reminds you why you are down in this shithole of a place.
Get used to waves that are a lot different from the Goldy. Mostly they are fat mushburgers, never a barrel in sight and a lot of absolute kooks in the water that have got not a clue. But when you get a good day you will be surprised as to how good vicco's waves can get. Big, clean, powerful waves from a long way away that break for ages.
If you can surf well on a Queensland standard you will be able to get heaps of waves from most of the crowd, feel free to drop in on as many people as you like, it's not like Queensland down here but it is more of a hassle with the crowds because they are all a lot less skilled than the Queensland crowds and seem to be always in the way.

Yeah i grew up down here then lived in Queensland for ten years, but been back for about 5 years(phillip island)

Non local made some good points about the waves and standard of surfing.

Heres my two cents worth.

Waves= QLD are generally better shape and a more consitent shape=easier to ride, either a nice pocket or a long wall often with a peeling barrel, while vicco waves are generally have a more uneven shape and like non-local said often fat and mushy, and the hollow waves we do have a more heavy hollow slabs.

Swells= QLD gets sweet f all and most of the time there gutless left over wind swells, while Vico we get grounds swell one after another, hence heaps more push in the swells down here.

Winds= QLD often goes weeks without an offshore, SE eveyday, NE every arvo, while Vicco, plenty of offshores, more variety in wind direction..although can get long periods of SW's in winter.

West coast vic- they get the real quality waves down here, when it gets good it gets as good as anywhere and get solid waves, but sucks over summer, unless you go way west(which gets the best waves down here in summer).

Phillip island- Almost aways a ridable peeling wave although think fat and mushy with rarely a proper section to hit, consitently ridable but rarely goes off and very tideal plus nowhere really holds solid swells, even on big swells the spots you are surfing are only head high, only real barrels are very heavy reefs.

Pennisula- similar to the island, but probabally more chance of getting barreled at a beachie.

Crowds- yeah less crowded then QLD and quality of surfing lower, but still a lot of ripping groms and a lot more crowded than it was 15 years ago...mostly because heaps more crew live near the coast now and quicker to get to the coast frok city with improved roads, plus all the old local surfing crew now have ripping little groms.

Being a grumpy old bugger myself, I agree with Floyd. Going south I am a little bit amazed that someone would accept a job that would be changing there life and not do any homework before hand. I don't think there was any real need to get so abusive towards Floyd he was just stating a fact you are being plain lazy and a little bit naive to be getting information off a forum as if your not being led down the garden path by some one like myself, then 80% of the genuine idiots bending over backwards to tell you about every break they have ever surfed or wished they could don't have any idea of what they are talking about. As for using that little book as a guide, good luck with that. I would not bother with them personally as I checked the little book out, went to my local area and it was not very accurate when it wasn't sending you down a dead end track it was giving you a completely wrong description of the conditions that it worked on, but luckily it fails to point any where near the best breaks. I think a lot of these books are just made up from misinformation from the net.Hey Floyd here's a good way to get these lazy sheep, get on all these surf spot websites and make surf breaks up, post tons of misinformation, the sheep wont know what to believe and the dick that wants to make money by publishing a book about it will need to actually go and spend a bit of time in each area to verify the information, fight fire with fire.

e wrote:

Floyd you hardcore individual! You all conquering all discovering guru.

How about you do what you want with your life and others can do what they want with theirs?

If you dont like it too bad and fuck off and get back in your hole you sad loser.

I will do what I want in my life, and you fuck off into your new little hole in Richmond,haha you'll have to when it hits 40deg. you'll find out what hot weather really is.

Come on Shaun this is the spoon fed GPS iphone generation,everything worth knowing comes out of a screen.

All those guide books aren't new..they have been around for ages

Nat youngs-Surfing and sailboard guide to Australia 1986
Mark warrens-Atlas of Australian surfing 1988
surf secrets-guide to Australias best waves 1994

A guide to the surf beaches of victoria" by Richard loveridge 1987.....now this book think long out of print gives away 99.9% of the spots even places that only break once or twice a year.

As for the websites...yeah there full of bogus spots and mis-information, must confess ive put in some bogus information for Indo spots myself, in the hope to keep the crowds down etc.

Progress kinda sucks, but theres no turning back... i think sites like this actually crowd the line up more than any of those books or websites, when i was a grom you had to read synoptic charts to know what was comming, now...theres so much info, you can see little pulses and everything, everyone can be onto it, years ago...to catch the windows, you had to constantly check the swell etc.

Bob, come on can't I spoon feed these guys a bit of shit, they'll swallow anything as long as they don't have to prepare it themselves. Indo, I agree with you, we can't stop progress. But we also don't have to blindly go along with it.

With all these guys moving to Victoria to surf the gutless waves I have been surfing for years I'm out of here.

Mmmm, I think I'll move to Queensland. Any tips?

What sort of waves do you like Floyd, I'll make a few up for you and post them on wanna surf.

Whattdayawantmate I got a list of mythical 5 star gold coast cylinders for ya or maybe you'd like one just like vicco, a steep take off followed by a fat shoulder to nowhere.

thanks for the offer shaun but i'll skip. that wannasurf is some website, loose as, but like them all as long as the dollars roll in who gives a toss. all part of the gravy train. that leads me to indo's comment about progress. it isn't. there is an einstein quote about the nature of an object being changed by its observation. so what changes are made when its camed and reported on daily basis? as shaun tomson asks what are you giving back to surfing?

Vicco is like that good looking chick at the bar who never puts out.
She is cold and hard, can have eyes like diamonds, make you run all over the place for her, cost you a lot of money and travel time, let you down at the drop of a hat, and in general drive you mad.
But when she does decide to give you a bit it keeps you on her leash.
Vicco

I always wonder how it could be crowded in Vicco.....

There's that many mexicans up in QLD there couldn't be many of 'em left in Vicco.

Went to Melbourne for a weekend away last year. As much as I could never leave Sydney for Melbourne, or any other capital city, it is a much nicer city down there. As my brother said, the best city in Australia.

But the unspoken part of that sentence is 'as long as you live in the city, not the suburbs' and 'as long as you are not a surfer' and probably 'as long as you don't mind being gunned down by a policeman'.

It has a lot going for it down there, but by god I couldn't live there.

God I reckon Melbourne is a blot on the landscape.

Without doubt one of the ugliest places I have ever seen.

It looks like the city was built by the Soviets: it has that eastern bloc despair, with flat expanses of industrial wastelands.

Well that describes all Australian cities Freeride.

True story.

At least Sydney has a harbour and Nat Park around it.

Well every capital city except Canberra has a harbour, and there are national parks quite close by. So basically they are all cesspools.

I would not readily go back to living in any capital city, but in comparrison, Aust capital cities are considerably better than any others in the world.

When Canberra was founded there were plans to make Jervis Bay Canberra's deep water port.
If you look on some of todays typo maps of the area you can see roads & housing divisions that were never built, layed out in typical Burley Griffin style.
Most are now in National parks & state forest & it makes me wonder if in the future they could develope these sites
Imagine what a hole the place would have looked like if they had went ahead with their plans.

You can't beat Sydney harbour. Port Phillip Bay is good but really is the ugly sister to Sydney harbour. The surf shop index is much higher in Sydney ... Six Ounce in particular is through the fucking roof.

That's cause all the bogan chicks go up to live on the Gold Coast.