Heey everyone!

My name is Hannah and I am a 20-year-old Industrial Design student from the Netherlands. I study at the UTS for an exchange of one semester. Today I will share my surf camp experience with Surf Camp Australia.

Before I came to Australia I already knew that I wanted to go on a classic Australian surf camp. I have never surfed in my life before, and what better place to learn than in Australia?! During the O'week I enrolled for the Surf Camp because then we got a 100 dollar discount code, so it was only $265 dollars for a weekend.

There were 3 weekends especially for UTS students, which I thought was a good way for me to meet new people. I couldn't wait to start, so I signed up for the first weekend, from 25th till 27th of August. Later on I found out that some of my new friends also signed up for the same camp :)

Friday

I was picked up Friday after class at the Wake Up! hostel, close to UTS. A big bus brought us in 3 hours to the location of the surf camp, Seven Miles Beach National Park. We stopped on the way so we could eat something at Hungry Jacks (or as we Europeans know it, Burger King). It was already dark when we came there. We got some instructions about the program and then made groups of 7 for the rooms. The campsite was quite nice with a swimming pool and a small shop. After making our beds and putting away out stuff we checked out the beach a bit before we went to sleep.

Saturday

The whole camp was 100 people in total, divided into two groups of 50. Everyone on our room was in group 1, which meant we had to wake up the earliest to have breakfast around half past 6. After a struggle for me to wake up in time we had breakfast and we each got a wetsuit for the weekend. We walked to the beach and there we had to walk to the truck to get our boards. We were divided again into 3 groups of approximately 12 students. Each group had 2 instructors. We made a group name, something like 'sexy lizards' and a group yell.

After that, we got our first lesson of two hours. It was very cool because after that lesson almost everyone could already catch a wave and stand on a board for a few seconds. We walked back to the campsite, had a shower and waited for the lunch. The lunch was very nice! We could make our own bread rolls with schnitzel and a lot of salad. This was good because everyone was very hungry from surfing. After that, we had an hour break in the sun. Around 2, we went back to the beach for our second surf lesson of two hours.

In the evening, we had dinner together. After that we watched all the photos made that day. Surfcamp Australia takes a lot of photos of everyone with a GoPro, which they post on their Facebook page after the camp. They also make a great video of each camp, so you won't forget all the lovely memories :) Here in the right you can see our video, it gives you a good impression of the camp.

After that, we went to the pub with almost every one of the surf camp. They do have live music every Saturday, so this was quite fun.

Around 1 am the pub closed and everyone moved back to the campsite to go to bed, or to the beach to party a bit more.

Sunday

On Sunday our group was the one that could sleep a bit longer. When we arrived at the beach we were very lucky, because we could see some Dolphins swim by in the sea. We got our boards and had our last surfing lesson, this time with different instructors. It is really fun to see how we improved during the camp. Especially the last wave I caught was a really good one! The weather wasn't that good, but fortunately, it only started raining when we finished surfing. Around 1 pm, everyone packed their stuff and we took the bus back to the Wake Up! Hostel.

I know that in the evening there was a party at the Side Bar (underneath the Wake Up! hostel), to finish the surf camp. You get a free drink if you show that you are from the camp. Unfortunately, I didn't go there because I had to catch up with some school work for a class I had for next Monday morning at 9 am. But I am sure that it was fun. I really recommend going on a surf camp for all international students. It is a great way to learn surfing and meet new people. Especially if you go on one of the camps for UTS students. It was a very fun weekend and I have a lot of nice memories from it!

Hannah Vear

Industrial Design

Technische Universiteit Delft, The Netherlands