Most East Coast surfers are familiar with how different swell directions can alter and change their local break, whereas South Australian surfers rarely consider it. I live in South Australia and am used to surfing places like Victor Harbour and Yorkes. I've found there is a large difference between the effects of swell direction in each state.

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In South Australia, swell direction generally stays in the SW quadrant, so most of the time it has very little impact on the wave quality, only occasionally affecting the size of some spots.  Swell period, winds and tides being more important. The period of the swell can frequently get up into the eighteen second range for swells  generated thousands of kilometres away.

On Wednesday morning in Sydney I jumped in the car with Ben Matson to see how different beaches in the Eastern Suburbs behave in certain swell directions. A medium sized ENE swell generated from a ridge of high pressure down the New South Whales coast produced above-average conditions at most breaks. The period of the swell only got to ten seconds but this made little difference to the quality of waves being surfed.

We pulled up to Bondi with most of the swell bypassing the beach, especially the north end, keeping it at around the two foot mark. A few lefts were being surfed down the southern end of the beach. Tamarama, on the other hand, looked as if it was picking up the brunt of the swell with some fun looking four foot lefts. Bronte reef had the occasionally nice three to four foot peaky wave, although it wasn’t lining up enough for anything real amazing. North Maroubra though, was lining up nicely with some great lefts and the occasional right at around four foot. The south end was picking up even more of the ENE swell.

In South Australia we don’t normally see such large variations in size and quality for the same swell with beaches in such close proximity. It was interesting to see that swell direction is just as important for Sydney surfers as other elements such as wind, swell size and tide for scoring great waves.

It would have been great to see the Eastern Suburb beaches experience a south swell while I’m over here to see how a different swell direction affects the same beaches. Unfortunately I’m due to return to Adelaide on Saturday where small waves persist, with no more swell activity on the horizon for New South Whales in the short term.// MAX REDDY

  *Max Reddy is a student at Cornerstone College in Adelaide and mainly surfs Victor and Yorkes. He is doing work experience at Swellnet this week.