IT’S an unseasonably warm winter’s day at Bells Beach, Victoria, and the irony isn’t lost on Japandroids, who are here for a very specific reason: Point Break.

In the closing scene of the ’90s classic, Keanu Reeves’ character looks on as the fugitive he’s tried to nab for nine months – played by the late, great Patrick Swayze – heads out into the water to surf the once-in-a-lifetime “50-year storm” wave.

“The irony was it was a beautiful, sunny day; the waves weren’t even that big,” the band’s singer Brian King later tells me during soundcheck just up the road at Geelong’s Barwon Club Hotel.

Another “ironic” point: the film’s final scene was shot in Cannon Beach, Oregon, not Bells Beach. “We were expecting something maybe a little more thrash-y looking,” jokes drummer Dave Prowse about the tiny swells that nipped at their feet earlier that day. “It was beautiful though.”