Anticipation soared the mind amidst gnarled forest and sweet eucalypt air.

Climbing until we burst out onto a cliff top 1000 feet above our destination.

It twisted and smashed the rail into my face.
 

Salty blackness engulfed me as I fell into the trough of the next wave.  I came up, half off my board, and looked behind to see three metres of rock-wall leering death, while the next wave of grey bore down on me. I paddled furiously and just snuck over it before being fingered by barnacles sharper than any knife. Drifting amongst ruffled swells toward the lineup, my cheekbone puffy and bruised, my forehead bleeding.

I felt a speck on the edge of the world.

I paddled back out, and shivered to hear that a diver was chased out only last week by an 18-foot white that lives in the bay and eats at the seal colony diner around the corner.

You could almost see the energy pulsing as the horizon lifted and a line of pure joy racked itself onto the reef.

 I wanted this one (well, as much as you can want a wave that could kill you)

He bounced halfway down, didn't penetrate and went
back up the face and over again.

I was laughing pretty hard paddling back out, until I realised he'd been down a good 20 seconds. I rushed in to
where his board was tombstoning, but he popped up coughing, spluttering and smiling all at once.

Suddenly at the edge of my sight, a huge flash of grey, I turned to catch the splash as a tail disappeared 20 feet away.
I looked at Drew who, like me, had paled a shade. Then Andy started cracking up in the background, "It was just a seal boys!" Yeah, but they can still bite can't they?

The thing had no back to it as it bent in towards the rocks. Half a minute later and we still couldn't see either of them
in the churning aftermath.



Finally a head appeared, then another, way down inside the point, they had
been rolled at least a hundred feet underwater.

Article Exclusive On the Web For Oceanfever.net by Kieren Perrow
Photographer: Sean Davey