Bells Beach Pro 1981.
Simon Anderson on his way to winning the 1981 Bells Beach Pro and ringing the bell. This photo was sourced from the internet so a thank you and a credit to the photographer.
The old FC Holden. Thanks to Kim Fitzgibbon for suppling this image from the Fitzgibbon archives.
In my younger days my mate owned an old FC Holden. His older brothers owned it before him. The exhaust would heat up the carpet at the back seat and smoke would rise up from it. My friends and I decided to go to Bells Beach for the Easter surfing competition in the FC. What a decision that turned out to be! I'll never forget seeing the swell for the first time after coming around the bend at Bells on the Saturday. It looked huge! We had never seen anything like it before and watched in awe as Nat Young surfed at WinkiPop that morning.
It was the year Simon Anderson won on his 3 fin thruster surfboard. It was the first time we had ever seen a 3 fin surfboard after mostly riding only single fin surfboards.
The ocean was alive and every now and then these huge 15 feet plus sets would come through. The swell was still coming up and would peak later that day.
We went into Torquay to get an early lunch and picked up a couple of girls who were hitchhiking on the way back. The girl who sat in the back seat was wondering what she had got herself into. She was very glad to get out of the old FC especially when smoke started coming up off the floor of the car at her feet!
Back to Bells and it was pumping. Simon Anderson was surfing fantastic on his thruster. We were all inspired. That night after an amazing days competition a couple of us paddled out. We finally made it out the back after getting slammed for ages in the Bells shore break. There were only professional surfers in the water. I don't think they could believe their eyes when they saw these very serious young blokes out there paddling around. "Don't worry we'll be all right" we bravely told them while secretly being as scared as we had ever been and not taking our eyes off the horizon watching nervously for the next set of waves.
When back at our camp after such a memorable day I can still remember it being a great night!
Below- Bells Beach Pro 81 Flashback.
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What Surfline said about that famous day.
The surf itself was the real star of the show on Big Saturday. Huge stacks of long interval swell were pouring out of the Great Australian Bight from a tight-wound low pressure system lashing around near Antarctica. Commentators on the contest PA system were whipping themselves into a frenzy of hyperbole. If the surf the previous day had been eight feet, as they’d been saying, Big Saturday had to be 12, 15-plus or more. Double overhead? Triple overhead? With each bigger set, they looked for new ways to describe it.