Snapper Rocks.

About

Snapper Rocks is a sand-bottom right-hand point at the southern end of Coolangatta, where Queensland meets New South Wales. It’s the head of the Superbank — roughly two kilometres of joined-up sandbar that links Snapper through Greenmount and Rainbow Bay to Kirra. On its day a single wave can run the lot. The Quiksilver Pro Gold Coast was a fixture on the WSL Championship Tour for two decades from 2002, and the line-up still draws the heaviest crowds in Australian surfing.

Snapper has one of the widest swell windows on the Gold Coast — anywhere from east-northeast through to south-east works the point, with east- southeast the cleanest. 8s and beyond is enough on summer cyclone swells; the steepest south-leaning swells need 16s or more to wrap in and groom the bank. West to south-west is the offshore wind, and the wave is best on a low to mid tide. Cyclone season runs December through April, with winter SE energy filling the gap from May to September.

Intermediate to advanced. The take-off is in deep water and the wave is forgiving by point-break standards, but the line-up is positional and the locals run a strict pecking order. On a clean Superbank day the wave count per surfer drops sharply with each metre you sit off the rock. Sit deep, wait your turn, and don’t paddle through the inside section unless you’ve been welcomed in.