When the swell is on you can ride a single wave from Snapper Rocks right down to Greenmount, and sometimes all the way to Kirra.

Combine this setup with warm water and near perfect weather and you have yourself a recipe for one of the most revered and contested waves on the planet.

Take a ride.

 The points of the southern Gold Coast are lit up like a Christmas tree.

The cyclone sitting of the coast is fuelling the machine-like perfection, generating corduroy lines of energy as far as the eye can see.

Snapper Rocks, Rainbow Bay and Greenmount are all connected by one huge man-made sandbank, pumped from the mouth of the Tweed.

On offer are flawless turquoise barrels peeling the entire way from Snapper to Greenmount beach. Get on the right wave and you can ride more than a kilometre.

The occasional set wave is rideable from Snapper Rocks all the way down to Kirra beach — if your legs are strong enough to get you that far.

You jump off the rocks at Snapper in to the turbulent foaming whitewash and paddle furiously to clear the rocks.

Immediately you have to contend with a large set and take a couple of deep duck dives before emerging out the back. Welcome to the takeoff zone — one of the most crowded and intense arenas in modern surfing.

You catch your breath and take in the spectacle unfolding before you. Huge waves are forming in front of the rocks and pitching forward into grinding cavernous pits.

Bobbing in your midst are surfing’s elite. The world’s top surfers and a voracious crew of Coolangatta locals vie for position on the main peak.

Wave after perfect wave jacks up on the point and detonates, peeling off down the line where hundreds of surfers wait to pick up the scraps or drop in if they dare.

Blow the takeoff here and you could get slammed into the jagged rocks or knocked out on the hard sand bottom. Not to mention the heckling.

A local paddles in to a wave next to you, misses his takeoff and gets pitched out into oblivion. This puts you right in position and you take the wave.

The drop is sheer and even though you get to your feet at lightning speed you free-fall part of they way down. The board connects just in time, and you bottom-turn just as the pitching lip takes aim at your head.

The Superbank at its recent best

You grab your rail and hold on for dear life as the tube swallows you whole. Amid the hoots you pull out of the barrel and out on to the open face at blazing speed. A moving wall of perfection extends out in to the distance and you carve from top to bottom across the open face, playing on the flawless line of fast moving water.

The power is on tap as you race down the line. The wave fattens out a little in Rainbow Bay so you pump the board to keep your speed. Your legs are burning but you’re not bailing out yet!

Suddenly the wave resumes its hollow form and you stall your board ever so slightly, allowing the wave to catch up to you. You pull in to a perfectly cylindrical tube, the sunlight filtering through the roof of the wave, the rest of the world obscured apart from the small opening getting further and further away.

The foam ball is catching you so you shift your weight forward, power out of the pocket and leave the green room behind.

Surfers hoot you as you come ripping out of the barrel, attempt one last carve and then fall off totally exhausted. The wave peels on towards Kirra, instantly snaffled by the next hungry surfer looking to capitalise on your spent legs.

You ride the whitewash in to the beach to walk around the headland and begin the long walk back to the point where you’ll jump off the rocks and do it all again.