Yallingup:
For a wave favored by older surfers and longboarders, this place can turn on a bit of intimidation. It’s only worth surfing over four foot, and best when it’s six foot plus. At that size, there’s nowhere to hide when long-line sets charge into the line-up, mowing down anyone caught too far inside. You won’t hit the bottom (unless you’re caught inside on the right-hander), but the undiluted power of the place is going to hold you down for a while.
But sit far enough out and have the board volume or arm strength to catch one of these beasts, and you will find yourself in command of a long, charging wall, peeling easily into a long deep channel on the left, or throwing fast sections on the right, which eventually closes out in front of dry reef.
For intermediate surfers, this is the safest way to get a taste of pure power. You don’t need a lot of skill to keep up with the left, but you’ll still get a chance to bury a rail on a serious bottom turn if you want to. Advanced surfers know that if Yal’s is on, there is some seriously better gear going down elsewhere.
Supertubes:
This place was named before people started riding crazy barrels like Teahupo’o or even G-Land, so its moniker seems kind of quaint these days. It’s a pit, for sure, but it’s not heavy by modern standards. Having said that, though, you wouldn’t want to paddle out unless you were of at least intermediate ability. If you don’t make the drop, you’re going to be slammed onto a fairly shallow rock bottom.
The best place to check it is from the small dirt carpark halfway down the hill on Yallingup Beach Rd. It’s not a great view – you’re looking at it from above and slightly behind. Even when it’s cranking it can look to passers-by like a bit of white water washing over a shallow rock shelf, but a trained eye will pick up how well its one quick barrel section is working, and whether there’s enough sand in the channel for a post-shack cuttie on the shoulder.
This break scored a long section in Taj Burrow’s Fair Bits video, where he was towed into it and, instead of hunting the pit, launched himself over the lip into some of the biggest airs of his life. The hippie dudes who named this break back before Taj was born would have freaked out.
Smith’s Beach:
This is the southwest coast’s original ledge, a left and a right. Back when the region was known for its long, walling waves like Margaret’s and Yallingup, surfers looking to avoid the crowds started pushing their single-fins over this shelf at high tide and reaping the rewards with high-speed top turns, barrels or just a fast, smooth slingshot across the dredging reef.
The reason it was such an early training ground for what is now standard wave-riding is the sweet spot in the reef that gives a good surfer an early drop into the wave before the whole thing jacks up. It’s not deep enough to be a back door, but it can set you on an amazing line. It’s OK on low tide if it’s less than three feet, any bigger and you’ll have to wait for the incoming. The bank next to the reef rarely disappoints. Once you clear the spooky dark shallows over the reef and hit the clear emerald green of the sandy channel, you’ll be so stoked that you’re likely to throw down a big hack, just to celebrate. And the closing section on the inside offers big hits to anyone prepared to do a couple of duck-dives to get back out.