Almost 1000 years ago, a whole village of Balinese chose to throw themselves off the cliffs at Uluwatu rather than succumb to the invading Javanese. Almost 40 years ago, western surfers started throwing themselves off the cliff in order to escape nine-to-five employment.

A small Hindu island within a massive Muslim nation, Bali has always possessed a unique spirit that has intoxicated surfers since the early 1970s. The discovery of surf in Bali — more particularly, Uluwatu — is the stuff of legends, as it was all documented in surfing’s most timeless and referenced film, Morning of the Earth.

Filmmaker Albe Falzon arrived in Bali in late 1970 with surfers Rusty Miller and 15-year-old schoolboy Steve Cooney in tow, and little idea what to expect. When Albe, with a silent, knowing smile, returned one afternoon from a reconnoitring mission up the Bukit Peninsula, Steve Cooney knew Albe had found something more than his inner glow.

“The road from Kuta to the Monkey Temple was a winding mess of potholes, barely wide enough for two bemos to pass each other,” recalls Steve. “The Balinese were very wary of Uluwatu and regarded it as an evil place to be treated very carefully. When they realised we were actually going to go out in the water they seemed to become nervous and a little suspicious of our intentions.

“As I turned to take the first wave of the session everything seemed to go into slow motion. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Uluwatu at that time was the abundance of sea life. At high tide the dugongs would come over the reef with their calves and loll about in the shallows, going back outside the reef as the tide dropped.

“When we were surfing at low tide they would surface near us and let us know they were around. They were there the whole time and seemed as interested in us as we were in them. There were turtles, reef snakes, heaps of fish, sea birds and sea snakes. We never felt as if we were on our own in the water.”

It wasn’t long before surfers — Australians, for the most part — began to discover the place en masse. They soon realised that while Uluwatu had a magic quality, the whole island was crawling with world-class set-ups. From Uluwatu down the Bukit Peninsula through Padang, Impossibles, Bingin, Dreamland and Balangan, it is a rare convergence of epic lefthand reefs.

 

Ulus is furthest up the peninsula and hosts smaller swells of six to eight feet.

The Peak is the take-off spot on high tide, while at low tide it moves down 100 metres to the Racetrack. On a clean swell, the sections will link up and you can backdoor barrel sections for a couple of hundred metres over the sharp coral reef.

The only route in and out of the break at Uluwatu is through the legendary cave, a quasi-religious experience until you have to paddle back through it on a high tide and big swell. If you overshoot, you will find nothing quasi-religious about being dragged along the dagger-like cliffs for more than a kilometre.