Note submitted by The Island - All photos by Martin Arancet - @martin15a

When former Uruguayan national team player Matías Nóbrega explains why he left Uruguay to live in Australia, leaving his home and family behind, he is very clear: “I want to surf, I want to go barrelling.”

In Australia he has been wandering around here and there, on the East Coast he either found the tubes he was looking for or definitely in the West where (the photos make it clear) he has not stopped going down one tube after another.

Some surprises that it reveals: The west is more populated than most surfers think and when there are few people in the water it means that the sea is too dangerous to kill yourself with or because sharks are abundant.

All in all, it is the place he chose to spend a good time. He says that in one week he surfed the best waves of his life and for a guy who has a lot of surfing experience up there, that is no small thing to say.

Below are some words with the Uruguayan who is dropping bombs in Western Australia.

-How long has it been since you left for Australia?
I came to Australia 15 months ago, in April 2019.

-What made you decide to leave?
I made the decision in December 2018. I didn't know whether to study, stay in Uruguay, continue surfing, travel or what, and one day I woke up and decided that I was going to Australia. I didn't feel comfortable at home, I didn't know what to study, I wasn't very clear about what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to surf. What I like is surfing and I want to surf, I want to go barreling, that was my thought.

Just those weeks I had been talking to Juanja Vargas, a friend who was here in Australia, and those conversations I had with him were a decisive point in taking the step. He ended up convincing me, and I also had another friend, Pedrito Zanotta, who was here in Australia, so I worked that summer selling empanadas and paid for a return ticket, a one-way ticket to Australia, and that's how I arrived at Pedrito's house.

"I worked that summer selling empanadas and I paid for a return ticket, a one-way ticket to Australia and that's how I arrived at Pedrito's house."

-You have been to various places and I imagine you have worked in different fields. Share a little about what you have been doing.
When I arrived, I didn't know what I was doing, I had found myself in a new world. Although I had traveled, I had never done it alone with a one-way ticket. I had to get to Australia. I had savings, but I also knew that I had to work because my mom and dad were no longer there to support me. So, I spent 20 days getting to know the world, adapting a bit, surfing a lot, and at one point I realized that I was running out of money and had to go out and work no matter what. That's when I started off, kind of by accident. My first job was as a gardener. I worked all day as a gardener, and when they paid me at the end of the day, it was really interesting, the sensations that went through my body, because I had never really worked seriously in my life. I had given surfing classes, I had worked as a pizza maker in a hotel with Julián Schweizer as well, but I had never worked seriously for eight hours, or worked for someone, I had never had a boss, and well, that's where the whole experience here in Australia began.

I worked as a gardener, in construction, as a painter, cleaning windows, I worked in restaurants. To extend your visa you need to do farm work, you need to work 88 days on a farm, so at one point Juanja and I went to a field in the middle of the desert to work with cattle, to make fences and to do some hand-holding in the construction of houses that were being built there and we spent 58 days working from sunrise to sunset. It was really hard, I had never experienced anything like that, without surfing, far from the sea, almost no days off and well, it ended up paying off, it was an experience that I don’t regret having done, but I hope I never have to do it again because we suffered a lot, but well, that’s what it’s all about too, the experiences.

After that I bought a van and went to Byron Bay, I was there for three months until I realized that although the waves were good, it was more like Uruguay, there were medium and small waves, beach breaks, some long waves, but it was not what you see in the videos, there were not the big tubes that you see in surfing videos and all that. The days we spent there at the end of last year, we went to Bells Beach, we hooked up and caught a swell that is not normal for that time of year, a gigantic 12-foot swell, we actually surfed Winkipop which was incredible, the biggest and longest rights I have ever surfed in my life and since it was something unusual there were maybe 10 people in the water, I didn't have the right equipment, I had a 5.9 and I had to go with what I had and the truth is that it cost a lot to get in through the coconut breaker below, to catch the waves too, I didn't catch many waves, but I was able to catch some good, long walls.

"We surfed at Winkipop, which was incredible, the biggest and longest rights I've ever surfed in my life, and since it was not common, we were able to have 10 people in the water."

-And, in the same way, you surfed in different parts of a large coastline. Where did you go and what made you end up in the West?
Well, that was basically it, I ended up here in the West, because although Australia is divine, it is beautiful, I felt that I wanted to surf more waves, go tube riding and so on, on the East coast the feeling I got was that it is like Uruguay with a little more consistency.

-It's a very interesting area, it seems like there are a lot of waves and not many people. What can you tell us about the place you are in?
When I arrived in Margaret River on the first day, there was no wind, zero wind. We ended up at Main Break, late afternoon, with a sunset and there were waves that you wouldn't believe, it was incredible, we didn't get to surf anyway, but watching the sunset, seeing the last minutes of light with perfect waves was something very nice and from the first day I knew that I was going to stay here for a while.

I've been here for seven months and the truth is that I have no idea when I'm going to leave and for now I really don't feel like leaving. I couldn't tell you if I'm going to be here one or two years, five or ten or a lifetime, I really don't know for sure. For now I'm here surfing, having a good time, so nothing, I'm going to enjoy it while it stays that way.

The West, the South West, the Margaret River area, there are a lot of incredible waves, but there are a lot of people, you think there are few people, but there are a lot of people, there are times when you go to places, there are tremendous waves and they are really unsurfable because of the crowd, especially in the big waves, you have The Box which doesn't happen very often, for example in summer it is unsurfable because the low tides are too low so it doesn't break, well, there is a big tube, but there is 20 or 30 centimeters of water and nobody goes to surf it because it is basically committing suicide, it is a wave that is very far from the coast and the winds affect it a lot, it is very difficult to surf.

It gets really crowded, at the level of Punta del Este, it gets really crowded sometimes. At The Box there aren't that many people, but there are 10 or 15 people who really have a pretty high level, so it's hard to surf those waves, because you're there, there are 15 of us, there are waves for everyone, but well, we're all trying to get good tubes and the level is pretty demanding.

The thing about the West is that sometimes it can give you days when the stars align and you can find a peak with no one there., with tremendous pipes and you can crown that was what happened to me practically for a week straight in those photos that I sent you.

-You took down a couple of heavy chocolates, where were those photos and how hard would you say it was to surf there?
About the wave in the photos, it's all on a wave called Ulus, which is in Gracetown, a few kilometres from North Point, one of the most famous waves here in the South West. It's a left called Ulus, I guess because of Uluwatu, it must be quite similar. It's a left that isn't that difficult to take, but the tricky part is the last section which gets really heavy, even if you go for the longest barrel, the rocks end up coming out and some pretty heavy steps form and you can hurt yourself.

The truth is that I ended up eating quite a few times in the last section, with water up to my knees and a wave of almost two meters breaking one meter from where I was standing. I went through several critical moments, you could say.

I don’t really know how many barrels I got that week, but there were a lot. The last day of surfing that wave was the most incredible day of waves I’ve ever had in my life. I was surfing alone in the late afternoon, there were two or three meters, I caught four waves, I got five barrels and on one I looked towards the shore and saw some friends waving to me that they had seen a shark at the peak next to me about 100 meters away and when I looked to the side there was no one, I was alone on the whole beach, I went out paddling without thinking and well, I had no choice but to stay an hour and a half on the dune watching the best waves I have ever seen in my life go away by themselves.

"The last day of surfing that wave was the most incredible day of waves I've ever had in my life. I was surfing alone in the late afternoon, there were two or three meters, I caught four waves, I got five tubes and on one I looked towards the shore and saw some friends making signs to me that they had seen a shark."

-How has Covid-19 affected where you are?
Here in Australia it was handled very well, even better in the West, here they closed the internal borders of the State and it never created much of an impact, there were a couple of months when everything was half stopped, but right now life is normal, there are dances, restaurants are opening, people get together to have a beer at the bar and it's as if nothing was happening, there are no cases, I think there are only three cases and in the city, hyper controlled, life returned to normal around here.

-Do you miss Uruguay?
Yes, the truth is yes, a lot, the waves, my family, my friends, I miss them a lot because well, it's been 15 months since I went there and almost a year and a half since I saw my parents because they went to work in Spain a few months before I came to Australia, so yes, I miss them a lot and the fact of not knowing when I'll be able to return is something that is there and is like a stone in the shoe, but well the reality is that life here is very nice, there are very good waves and the quality of life is incredible, if I go to Uruguay, it would only be to visit for a couple of weeks or a month and I would return to Australia again for sure.

-What plans do you have from now on? 
My plans now are to stay here. The truth is that Australia's international borders are closed until next year, that's confirmed, so I'm not going to leave until 2021. I'll probably have a lot of work in the summer and the championships will start here, so I'm going to stay at least until April 2021. I estimate that the plans will be to go to Indonesia and go to Uruguay for a couple of weeks to visit and come back here to the West, where I'm getting settled in and I feel like I'm going to stay for several more years.

I'm not saying for life because I don't think anything lasts forever, but yes, I'm going to be here for a while for sure. The plan is to surf, keep riding tubes and start competing. I had just signed up for two championships that ended up being cancelled due to the coronavirus. Next year everything will go back to normal and that will be the plan, work, surf and compete here in the West.

"My biggest goal next season would be to stand in The Box and get some good waves. This year I only went once and it was pretty heavy. I went there, there were only seven of us in the water, five bodybuilders, me and another board. I spent the first 40 minutes sitting on the peak without taking waves, thinking that this wasn't for me, to surf other waves and start little by little, until one of the waves came to me in the series and nobody paddled for it. I turned around, went down and got one of the best tubes of my life."

My biggest goal would be to stand at The Box next season and get some good waves. This year I only went once and it was pretty heavy. I went there, there were only seven of us in the water, five bodybuilders, me and another board. I spent the first 40 minutes sitting on the peak without taking waves, thinking that this wasn’t for me, surfing other waves and starting little by little, until one of the waves came up and nobody paddled for it. I turned around, went down and got one of the best tubes of my life. I had no choice but to go back to the peak and got four or five more waves in a row until I got a wipeout and hit my shoulder blade against the rocks. I was left with so much pain in my shoulder and right arm that I couldn’t paddle anymore and well, I had to go out. They gave me a helmet for my birthday, which was a month ago. I have a 6.2, I’m ready. The plan would be to go the next swell that comes in and see what happens.

I'll tell you another good story: A couple of months ago a good swell came in and by one of those coincidences of life we ​​left home at six in the morning and ended up at around ten in Yallingup, which was the wave that convinced us and when I got into the water that you enter through a channel that is at the peak; I arrive and I have Jack Robinson, Jay Davies, Jacob Willcox and Taj Barrow next to me.

When the bomb came in, they looked at me and I started paddling alongside Jay Davies and when he saw that I was at the peak, when he saw that I was coming he backed off and I went down head first, I went down head first in a sinister coconut breaker and I cut the leash, there the board was left next to me, when I looked back another bomb was coming and to get away I had to paddle inwards and I was at the peak again but without a leash.

Another one came in and I went into a disgusting hole and that was it, the board went to the shore and I had to paddle out, it was good, it's good to surf with those names, they make you want to improve, they make you go down without thinking when those bombs come in, I've surfed with Jack and Jacob Willcox a few times already, it's something that's good, having those monsters by your side.