When it comes to surfing in Nusa Lembongan, don’t let the break names deter you.
Ten years ago, I started my journey there, at the Nusa Island Surf School on Mushroom Beach, founded by local surfer Kadek Bolang. I was pretty surprised the first time he picked me up in a local boat and stopped at a reef, half a kilometre off the island. “This is Lacerations,” he announced. His back had the scars to prove it.
As my last child was finishing school, surfing had arrived in my life. Then I arrived at Lacerations.
Considered a challenging, world class wave, Lacerations can also be friendly. I flash back to my first visit here. I didn’t know about waves lasting for fifty or one hundred metres. Coming from short rides at my local beach break, it felt like a miracle when I was still on the same wave half a minute after I’d popped up. As that first wave lost energy, a butterfly flew into my line of vision. I took it as a high five from a higher power. I was in the right place at the right time.
The view beneath the water at Lacerations is a crazy pavers puzzle of rocks and reef. Ten years on, the water is still clearer than glass, even after the torrential rain and run off this week.
North from Lacerations, is the left-hander Razors. You can take a long paddle out to Razors or grab a local boat driver, who will negotiate the seaweed farms. It’s a wide wave offering occasional barrels and can feel uncrowded even when it’s busy.
Further north is the famous right-hander known as Shipwrecks. Originally named because a boat sank there over fifty years ago, now it really looks the part. Returning after COVID, I was stunned to see a barge transporting a massive crane had lodged onto the reef. Still there and sinking, it became an iconic vista, even appearing on locally designed t-shirts.
I recently escaped back to Indonesia at the last-minute. Two months after the tragic shootings at Bondi Beach, where I live and surf, I needed a mental health boost. Catching up with Indonesian locals, laughter abounds. None louder than when anyone wipes out. It’s a bit of a shock the first time you emerge from a near-reef-scrape to find people in hysterics, but then you catch on. Wipe outs are funny!
It was still wet season. Loud thunderstorms and walls of heavy rain had been blasting across the island since I’d arrived. The water took a few hours to drain off the island and today’s rain became tomorrow’s surf.
Stranded in flooded Tamarind Bay, one night I messaged the Bali Hai bistro at Mushroom Beach to rescue me in their converted flatbed. High and dry in their beachside warung, I ordered the tempeh rendang and a Bintang Radler. Now I had time to read the Tracks issue 604, with Milla Coco Brown giving me double birds from the cover. She’d been to Micronesia, where she won the first ever Natural Selection Surf Competition.
No local women surfed the first time I visited Nusa Lembongan. Then in 2023, I met Julianti Wayan on the waves, and now she’s joined by Desi Putu. I am excited to think there could be a tribe of surfer girls here one day, throwing shakas – or maybe double birds like Milla.
Nusa Lembongan is a small island accessible by fast ferries from Sanur Harbor in Bali. It’s a roaring thirty-minute ride with the four to six engines opened to full throttle across the Badung Strait. Depending which provider you travelled with, passengers can alight onto the beach at Mushroom Bay or Jungut Batu or a dry dock on Telatak Harbour.
I noticed new safety measures since ferry incidents hit the headlines last year. My boat had safety jackets sitting upright on the seats (can safety devices be a little too visible?).
Between Mushroom Beach and Jungut Batu, Nusa Lembongan has its four northwest facing reef breaks. They are all perfectly positioned for the southeast trade winds that arrive in dry season. Around from Mushroom Beach is a beginner friendly A frame appropriately named Playgrounds. It’s close enough to paddle out or you can get a short local boat ride.
On the day I was departing the island, I packed my bag before a final surf. Kadek reminded me, “We have to always be ready for luck, or it won’t happen.” We agreed we were already lucky, no matter what the waves were doing.
As I rode my last wave, Kadek called out to stop me trying to force turns on it. I followed his instructions and relaxed. The healing power of Lacerations came with a gentle touch. My luck had arrived.
Katie McMurray is a Bondi surfer, and writing mentor, who is working on a book about her surf journey, to be published later this year.
