Strickland Bay Surf Season
Western Australia, Australia · part of the Strickland Bay spot guide
Winter is the season. From May through September the offshore average climbs to 2.5 to 2.7 metres with periods over 12 seconds as Southern Ocean lows track under Australia, and the north-to-north-east offshore that grooms the reef blows on 15 to 16 percent of days — June is the most consistent clean month. April and October are the shoulders, with 12-to-13-second pulses and fewer offshore mornings. Summer is small, short-period south-west windswell under the Fremantle Doctor, the sea breeze that arrives from the west-south-west late morning and blows hardest in December and January — straight onshore for a south-facing reef.
The Leeuwin Current keeps Rottnest warmer than the mainland shore in winter: about 18–19°C from July to September and 22–23°C from February to April. A 3/2 fullsuit covers the season; a springsuit does summer. The island draws close to 800,000 visitors a year, but surf crowds peak in the winter swell windows and on weekends, when Strickland is the most crowded break on the island.
Where the swell comes from
Mid-latitude lows in the Southern and Indian Oceans south-west of Australia — the belt between 40 and 50 degrees south — send south-west groundswell 1,300 to 2,300 km to the island; a low near 45°S 95°E is a little over two days away at 15 seconds. Rottnest shows the most southerly swell directions and the smallest mean wave heights of the southern-margin buoys because it is the farthest from the storm belt, which makes long-period, well-travelled groundswell the wave to wait for.
Historic swells at Strickland Bay
Rottnest Search finals day
On 25 May 2021 the biggest swell of the waiting period arrived: the Rottnest buoy was reported near 5 m at 15–18 seconds in the morning, with Surfline calling fading 8-to-10-foot faces early. Contest reports described four-to-six-foot walls with long barrels. Gabriel Medina beat Morgan Cibilic 15.50–7.87 and Sally Fitzgibbons beat Johanne Defay 15.24–11.23.
The Perth super storm
On 24–25 May 2020 drifting research buoys offshore of the Perth latitude recorded significant heights above 7 m for close to a full day, above 9 m further south, with individual waves likely near 20 m, as a storm covered a thousand kilometres of coast. No surf report from Strickland Bay survives for that day — open-ocean numbers only.