Bells Beach
Rip Curl Pro Surf & Music Festival 2010
Ends at Saturday, 10 Apr 2010
The 2010 Rip Curl Pro Surf and Music Festival presented by Snickers.
The Rip Curl Pro is stop number two of the ASP World Tour this year. All the worlds' best male and female surfers will be in town, thrilling spectators on the beach and on the World Wide Web alike as they throw themselves at big Southern Ocean swells Huey will bless us with at Bells Beach over Easter.
While prize money, ratings points and bragging rights are up for grabs, every surfer on the Dream Tour has their eyes fixed sharply on the infamous Bell trophy. They dream, crave and yearn for the unique opportunity to lift up that Bell and ring the neck off it.
Tickets can be purchased at the Bells Beach ticket office onsite from March 30.
For more information on the event, go to www.ripcurl.com.au/events
Full of characters
Bells Beach is a long, generous, well known surf break in Victoria. It has a lot of history and a lot of character. There isn’t much "beach" at Bells, it is mainly a beautiful rocky cliff, with rolling farmland to the north, and the nearby Torquay, home to Rip Curl and Quiksilver. There is a car park at the top of the cliff where you can usually spot local surfers out in the water.
Rising swells
Bells Beach is a rather small bay, situated between two smallish headlands. Swells from the Southern Ocean, which slow down and steepen over the reef-strewn shallows, create the outstanding surf. To the north-east of Bells are sheer cliffs, below which are beaches known to local surfers as 'Winkipop', 'Boobs' and 'Steps'.
Attracting the big names
Over the years Bells Beach has proved to indeed be a rallying point for the hottest surfers in the nation and eventually the world, turning full-pro in 1973 with the help of a jeans company, Amco, and a growing local surf shop and wetsuit business, Rip Curl. Easter at Bells has seen everything from wins by Mark Richards, Michael Peterson, Nat Young, Tom Curren, Tom Carroll, Kelly Slater and Sunny Garcia