2011 Kneeboard Surfing World Titles-Phillip Island

[analbirth]

doctors orders russ

[Mike Fernandez]

Wow, only one guy from Antartica, I have a good chance of winning this shindig!

Ok, take it easy, I was kidding, I'm only there for the meat pies, cappuccino's, and the cougars on PI.

[wolruss]

I think they've got all three at the nursing home convention the week after, Mike, stick around

[Mike Fernandez]

I think they've got all three at the nursing home convention the week after, Mike, stick around

I think Waka mentioned it over in Manana.

[mal]

what is the water temp like at that time of year, do the locals wear wetties if so how thick?

[wolruss]

Being from Dunedin I should think you'd be board shorting it with 'that' South Pole Santa guy. Mr John"Antarctica"Cullen seriously Mal, the last three years I've only worn my 2/3 steamer and that was November each year ... should think the water would still have a little warmth left in there. But maybe one of the guys from Victoria could give us a more acurate idea of the temperatures we can expect. I know just about every time I'm down that way we have experienced all 4 seasons in half a day, so I s'pose Im waiting for that more acurate report too.
Just bring a bottle of Bundy's finest with you and that should see you through the worst of it.

Cheers Wolruss

[islandjim]

water temp is at its warmest. I am surfing in boardshorts. and a 1mm vest, mainly for sun protection. Weather is usually settled that time of year. cool nights, and days can range up to mid 30's. Not as unpredictable as Spring. Winds tend to be mild and from the N/W , offshore.
All sounds too good to be true. see you there

[analbirth]

i'm still taking a 2/3 steamer jic. you cant trust these kneeboarders they'll tell you anything for an advantage

[mal]

cheers guys really looking foward to it
mal

[Mike Fernandez]

Looking to purchase one of em Zoolander/zebra wetsuits.

[islandjim]

Mike , you'll just look like a bloody big penguin

[Mike Fernandez]

I figure the guys in my heat, and the women on the beach will be too busy staring at me, and the extra bonus is I'll be an instant local at Pipe.

[red]

Grab Bill Bryson's "Down Under" to read on the 'plane to get you in the mood

Here's a taste (extracted from p17-20):
Let me say I love Australia - adore it immeasurably - and am smitten anew each time I see it. One of the effects of [the world] paying so little attention to Australia is that it is always a surprise to find it there. Every cultural instinct and previous experience tells you that when you travel this far you should find, at the very least, people on camels. There should be unrecognisable lettering on the signs, and swarthy men in robes drinking coffee from thimble sized cups and puffing on hookahs, and rattletrap buses and potholes in the road and a real possibility of disease on everything you touch - but no, it's not like that at all. This is comfortable and clean and familiar. Apart from a tendency among men of a certain age to wear knee high socks with shorts, these people are just like you and me. This is wonderful. This is exhilarating. This is why I love Australia.

And so, because we how so little about it, perhaps a few facts would be in order. Australia is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It was the first continent conquered from the sea, and the last It is the only nation that began as a prison.

In short, there was no place in the world like it. There still isn't. Eighty per cent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else More than this, it exists in an abundance that seems incompatible with the harshness of the environment. Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents. (Only Antarctica is more hostile to life.) This is a place so inert that even the soil is, technically speaking, a fossil. And yet it teems with life in numbers uncounted. For insects alone, scientists haven't the faintest idea whether the total number of species is 100,000 or more than twice that. As many as a third of those species remain entirely unknown to science. For spiders, the proportion rises to 80 per cent.

It is the home of the largest living thing on earth, the Great Barrier Reef, and of the most famous and striking monolith, Ayers Rock (or Uluru to use its now official, more respeaful Aboriginal name). It has more things that
will kill you than anywhere else. Of the world's ten most poisonous snakes, all are Australian. Five of its creatures - the funnel-web spider, box jellyfish, blue-ringed octopus, paralysis tick and stonefish - are the most lethal of their type in the world. This is a country where even the fluffiest
of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. Pick up an innocuous coneshell from a Queensland beach, as innocent tourists are all too wont to do, and you will discover that the little fellow inside is not just astoundingly swift and testy, but exceedingly venomous. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried out to sea by irrestistable currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. It's a tough place.

[Mike Fernandez]

Farking ticks, at least you don't seem to have scorpions.

[diga]

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