First Reef

A surf break at Point Leo, on the Mornington Peninsula, one of the closest surf beaches to Melbourne in Victoria, Australia known as First Reef^{[1][2][3][4][5]} or more colloquially just "The Reef". Until the 1970s there was little or no resident surfing population in Point Leo, so the Reef was mainly surfed by the few transient waveriders who were exploring the many breaks to be found in Westernport Bay.

One of only a few left-handers inside the bay, although it can be a fairly long wave on a big swell, it is more often just a short ride- a take-off peak, a bowl section and a shorebreak. It also "boasts" a very average right-hander that occasionally produces similar results but without the bowl, being more of a wall-type wave with several sections. One of three reefs between Suicide and Honeysuckle Points, First Reef is a sand and seaweed covered submerged igneous reef of fairly regular convex relief, extending perhaps a hundred metres out from the shorebreak where the waves eventually dissipate. Its versatile nature thus caters for beginners and average to experienced surfers alike, but probably is best known as a haven for goofy footers.

Early Surfers

The earliest surfers (using the term loosely to include all forms of the art) were probably body surfers, from when the Armed forces used the area for training during the Second World War,^[6] and afterwards by lifesavers who eventually formed the Point Leo Surf Lifesaving Club in 1955.^[7] Early use of wooden paddleboards was superseded in the 1960s by fibreglass surfboards which became popular as the newly introduced sport of surfing grew. Frequent visitors to the area included daytrippers from Melbourne and other towns close by, part-time residents with holiday houses, and regular campers over the summer season, some of whom surfed the reefs and shorebreaks up and down the beach.

In the early-1970s, the resident surfing population was born with the arrival of two families, almost tripling the number of residents to nearly 20 and with it, producing a handful of the first full-time resident local surfers. Scarcely any other surfers could be found during the week whilst the numbers would swell on weekends if the weather made conditions favourable for good surfing. As Point Leo became more and more popular, fanatic surfers increased in numbers. By the end of the decade, the situation had changed so much with the inundation of wave-hungry surfers from the explosion of this latest "hip fad", that those idyllic conditions are now seldom found, as if they have almost disappeared forever.

The first "wave"

Perhaps best known by the tell-tale nickname of "Reefers" (from their predilection with marijuana use) the main group of year-round surfers was made up of teenagers and young adults mostly from Frankston/Seaford, who started coming down for the weekends in the early-to-mid-1970s, often sleeping overnight in their panel vans and station wagons to catch the best of the early morning's surf the next day.

Although predominantly surfed by goofy-footers, First Reef attracted aspiring surfers in all forms, giving it a "cosmopolitan" atmosphere unlike any other local break - with goofies, naturals, kneeboarders, mat riders, young and old, male and female, beginners and experienced - and occasionally even the odd bodysurfer. This lent itself to a "carnival" type atmosphere like nowhere else in Westernport Bay, more relaxed and hassle-free than the more dangerous breaks with exposed basalt rocks and often bigger, more powerful waves. On hot summer days when the soft, sandy beach was packed, the overcrowding actually made surfing almost dangerous from the sheer risk of being run over by a wanna-be "surfer" not quite in control of their craft.

The second "wave"

Come the 1980s, an even younger bunch of kids (again mainly from around the Frankston area, it being the most populated city nearby) carless due to age, began hitchhiking down and often wagging school, hanging out at the local store, smoking, skating, clowning around and generally causing much harmless trouble (like sleeping in the empty ice box during winter). Most of them later joined and competed in surf comps in the newly formed Reef Riders Club, a splinter group that broke away from the original surfrider's club (from their homeground at the other main surf break, Suicide Point) unhappy with the way their soon-to-be "arch-rivals" were running things.

The "backwash"

Whether it was crazy weather patterns from global warming, or sea valley silting and shifting seagrass beds from dredging the North Arm and altered tidal circulation - or a combination of all or any of these - no-one knows quite why - but for whatever reason the surf in the bay pretty much just stopped working as much after the 1970s, and everyone serious about their surfing moved their focus to the "Beaches" - the coast area from Cape Schanck to Port Phillip Heads that was exposed to Bass Strait, getting all the swell that had mysteriously disappeared. Point Leo stopped being the hub of surfing on the Peninsula, and both the Reefers and the Pointers found themselves holding their surf competitions more and more away from their home territory. This was actually a good thing because the rapid growth had over-saturated most of the Bay surf spots to the extent that the lousy surf conditions forced a kind of much-needed "evacuation", a purging of sorts. It still gets really crowded when the swell is huge, but that's more a result of the Beaches closing out and being unsurfable than a renewed interest by everyone in wanting to surf the Bay a lot again.

References