Surfing Crescent Head
Crescent Head is a surf town first and everything else second. The point below the headland is a National Surfing Reserve — a long, mellow right-hander that's one of the best longboard waves in the country. These are our guides to surfing it, and to the spots around it when the point isn't doing its thing.
3 guides
Written by Trent and Liss, who live here.
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8 min read The surfing history of Crescent Head How a small NSW village became one of Australia's great longboard towns: the point, the National Surfing Reserve, the Malibu Classic. -
5 min read Learning to surf at Crescent Head Why Crescent Head is one of the best places in NSW to learn to surf — a long, gentle longboard wave, where to start, and how to make a weekend of it. -
6 min read Crescent Head surf guide: 5 spots & the surf report Surfing Crescent Head: the point break, the back beaches, how to read the Crescent Head surf report, and where to paddle out for the swell and wind.
What the point actually does
The wave is a right-hander that starts on the rocks under the headland and, on a clean south-easterly swell with a south-west breeze behind it, runs all the way through to the mouth of Killick Creek — more than two hundred metres on a single ride. It is not a heavy wave. It's long, slow and forgiving, which is why this became a longboard town rather than a shortboard one, and why the 2008 National Surfing Reserve declaration read more like a heritage listing than a trophy. Mid to low tide is the pick.
When it isn't doing that
Give it a northerly, a wind-chopped sea, or a swell too big for the point to hold, and the answer is to go somewhere else. The back beach south of the point picks up more of the raw swell and is usually empty. Killick Beach, across the creek, is punchier and runs five kilometres north. Hat Head, twenty minutes up the road, sits behind its own headland and holds a bigger south-easterly when Crescent is a mess. All three are in the guides above.
The line-up
Civil, by Australian standards. Busy on weekends and through the winter swells. It's a point break, so the usual applies — the person deepest has the wave — and there will be someone out there who has been surfing it since before the reserve existed. Drop-ins are noticed. Say hello and you'll be fine.
Keep reading
More local guides.
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