By Luke Voogt
Two 14-year-old girls paddled more than a kilometre to surf the biggest Bells Beach waves “in years”, as seasoned surfers watched from the stairs.
Bella Wilson and Angela Ball joined a few big-wave surfers riding swells higher than three metres at Bells on Saturday.
“They thought we were pretty crazy,” Bella told the Indy Tuesday from a surf competition in Queensland.
“But they looked after us and made us feel safe.”
Bella had few words to describe riding the huge waves, the result of a polar stormfront off the southwest of Tasmania.
“It felt like … magnificent. It was hard (to surf) because the wind was really offshore.”
Bella’s Dad Damian took the duo to Southside Beach where they paddled roughly 1500 metres to get out the back of Bells, after a quick pep talk.
“I told them come back if you’re not comfortable,” he said. “I think they got a lot of respect in the surf community that day.
“There were a lot of people standing there that wouldn’t go out and they were all competent surfers.”
But there was little stopping the girls once they heard about the monster swell, Damian said.
“As soon as it gets above six foot they’re glued to the hip and they just go surfing everywhere together. That’s what I was doing when I was (their) age.”
Damian admitted he was worried about the girls getting wiped out.
“I had my heart in my mouth because it was the biggest I’d seen in years,” he said.
“But there was a good bunch of competent big-wave surfers out there who looked after them.
The swell was almost two metres when Damian returned to Bells on Sunday with the girls, who remarked “Gee, that’s small.”
“I said ‘It’s not that small girls, it’s still pretty solid’,” Damian chuckled.
