One Beach, One Story · Bells Beach, Australia · October 2026 · 4 min

Bells Beach: A Bulldozer, a Surfboard Sale, and the Point Break Ending That Wasn't Filmed There

A wrestler cut the road in 1960 and charged a pound a head. Two board-makers held a rally to sell boards. Six decades on, it is billed as the longest-running pro surf contest in the world.

Bells Beach, Djarrak on Wadawurrung Country, is five minutes from Torquay and about an hour's drive from Melbourne, at the start of the Great Ocean Road. It is a short strip of sand under a cliff with one of the most famous waves in the world in front of it. The beach and its reserve are on the Victorian Heritage Register. How it got famous is the work of a wrestler with a bulldozer and two board-makers.

The road

Surfers from Torquay were finding their way to Bells as early as 1939, but getting down was a considerable problem. In 1960 a group of Torquay surfers and the Olympic wrestler Joe Sweeney hired a bulldozer and cleared a road along the cliff down to the beach. Sweeney charged one pound per surfer to get his money back. The road is now part of the Surf Coast walking track.

The rally

The first contest was not a championship. It was a Surfboard Rally, organised by the surfing pioneers Peter Troy and Vic Tantau to help sell T Boards, their own brand. It was planned for December 1961, postponed, and held on 26 January 1962. From the next year it moved to Easter, and Wikipedia says it has been held at Easter every year since, now as the Rip Curl Pro, on the World Surf League Championship Tour. When Bells is not working, the contest has occasionally moved to other breaks, Johanna and Woolamai among them.

The longest-running pro surf contest in the world began as a sales event for surfboards. It has been selling surfing ever since.

The ending that isn't there

The final scene of Point Break is set at Bells Beach. It was not filmed there. Wikipedia points out that Bells is a straight stretch, while the beach in the film is a cove with spruce trees on the hill above; the real location was Indian Beach, in Ecola State Park, at Cannon Beach in Oregon. Bells has better film credits anyway: it is in The Endless Summer, the 1966 documentary.

Left or right?

One small thing for the record. The Great Ocean Road authority's own page calls Bells a powerful, long left-hand break. Wikipedia and the surf guides describe it as a right: The Surf Atlas calls it a right-hand point break that works best on medium to large south to southwest swells. Surfers, we are told, have opinions about this.

The name, and the replanting

The beach is named after William Bell, a Geelong businessman and grazier who owned much of the land there from the 1840s; Wikipedia notes that many records wrongly credit a later, unrelated John Calvert Bell. Since 1988 a local group, Surfers Appreciating the Natural Environment, has met every month to replant the reserve, and has planted more than 100,000 plants.

Going

We rate it Book the flight now, if you surf: third on our Australia fame list, plus the contest no other beach has. If you do not surf, it is a car park with stunning views of the coast, in the authority's words, and a set of weathered steps down. The water is usually frigid, in Lonely Planet's word: in 2025 the sea peaked at 19.9 °C in March. There is a public toilet at the car park, and dogs must be on a leash in the reserve.