Gold Coast $$$$ per wave

" agree to a point but it doesn't fit the scenario for Wurtulla/Currimundi. They've got the offshore structure for refraction but nothing along the shoreline that would have effect similar to a groyne.

My thoughts are that the offshore structure itself plays a role in the shoaling effect on the shoreline, because with a cross-shore current there could be a Venturi-like effect with the offshore structure which creates the deepwater."

There is coffee rock structure there Yocal, as well as some other a grade sunny coast beachies and tip of Bribie. It has an effect.

From what ive always heard and read both D-bah and South straddie were nothing like what they are now before the seaways were put in.

Correct. Both completely man-made waves.

The whole of the Gold Coast is an engineered coastal environment.

Looks like a mixture of rock reef, sand slugs and nourishment for Palm Beach:
http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/documents/bf/pbsp-part-d-report-drawings...

Running a pretty fine line now hey... describing spots. I've learnt my lesson from Dawg's example :P

tom tate has as much chance of charging for surfing as i have of beating Usain Bolt Over 100 metres. Tommy Tait very reluctant to take me on. I have all his and Campbell Newmans quotes plus legislation.
But we have to be smart now, no personalities, but issues, not like the Tweed River Sand Bypass Fuckup where groups were shut up not to speak about the projects fuck up, because they lost the beach monitoring funds. Yes, Me not a happy camper here. Cost quite a few $86,000 dollars.
Thats why i need your inputs, any ideas, but remember, we have large south to north current, big storm surges and we have to include erosion control measures, storm surf safety, but great surfable waves from 2 to 4 feet. Who's in ? I reckon we buy a dredge and create waves up and down the coast. Yes they won't be permanent, but hey, how stoked to see a little a frame.

thermalben wrote:

Not sure on the general crowd status across the Sunny Coast beachies however the points are very busy when they're on.

The Maroochydore to Moolabah stretch is mostly crowed. So is Noosa. The rest doesn't get too bad.

Obviously if its school holidays not so much.

I generally only surf weekdays if at all possible so take this with a grain of salt for weekends.

Sheepdog wrote:

So, f*cking around with sand movements on more beaches is the answer for overcrowding, when f*cking around with sand movement caused the overcrowding in the first place......... Gotta love that logic.....

In another thread, I pointed out that the 'gatta used to have 5 separate point breaks.... It now has one.... Simple as that...... The "superbank"...... More like superwank..... Snapper to kirra, all one bit of sand....

Some photos;

Snapper to kirra today , thanks to humans continually fucking around with sand pumping, just one long bank..... No wonder it's crowded...

Before the sandpumping, rainbow bay rocks clearly visible.... Snapper, Rainbow, and Greenmount separated. All great waves on their day....

Another shot pre sandpumping;

Greenmount back in the "old days", breaking right up close to the rocks, a super fun spot that could handle the ese wind due to being tucked so close to the hill...

Superbank??? Superwank...... Stop pumping sand and turning the gatta into a sand dune......... The crowds will disperse when 1 break is returned to 5 , (snapper, rainbow, greenmount, Kirra, little kirra).... Or just keep fucking with nature.... Woteva......

With all respect i think your being nostalgic SD, or maybe it was better in the period when you surfed there, I know as a grom I always frothed on the lineup shot in "Nat young's surfing and sailboard guide to Australia"

But when I lived on the goldie through the late 90,s through 2000s comparing the before and after id rather it after the sand was pumped.

Before :

Snapper yes was often good but like any wave that relies on sand also had bad periods and was still very crowded and ruled by better surfers who dominated the line up after paddling back out or walk and rock jump/key hole paddle.

Rainbow bay was 90% of the time (when i was there anyway), like how it is in the pics, gutted with deep water or at best a dribbly wave, maybe you had it good but i lived in the area for years and never did, was more a good swimming spot.

Greenmount, yes protected from the wind and at times fun but mostly very gutless after the swells already breaking out Snapper or feeling the bottom for so long, more a kiddies corner type wave.(and always looked better from that up top look out)

Kirra, Okay obviously way better before and the real loss, but in reality, a rare wave and when on super crowded and if you didn't snag one after paddling out from behind the groyne or jumping off the groyne, it was extremely hard to get one with the sweep and if you did even on totally makeable waves you had a 50/50 chance of being dropped in on.

Little Groyne, expect its gone now covered with sand?, yes before could get a sneaky little seash sometimes when small.

The way i see it before it was really only Snapper that was consistent everyday decent wave a two hundred metre or so bank at best, after(or now) there is a 1km + stretch of potential banks/wave, obviously depending on the banks and how much sand has been pumped etc.

Also I dont know about now, but when it first started breaking it actually helped ease crowd pressure on Burleigh and Currumbin.

Its been a long time since ive surfed up that way, but it actually sounds like now could be the best of both worlds?...Kirra maybe not what she was but better than its been with still a good length of sand on the superbank.

Gday, indo.... My point has always been it segregated the breaks..... Scroll down here to my phot of 1985 kirra... Just an average 3 -4 foot day... low tide.... Back in the day of the Bob hawke surf team lol.....

http://www.swellnet.com/forums/f-stop/101456

Perhaps I did get it good, mate..... But the surf was of such a quality back then 70s/80s, it too produced 2 world champions and a plethora of legends..... I surfed the superbank... I surfed the 70s gatta.... More choice...... ps - rainbow was a bit inconsistent, a bit like johnsons..... But it was a great spot on it's day... Greenmount was gutless when small, nothing different to now...... But it's protection and close proximity to the rocks gave gold coast surfers clean waves in an ese...... Something they don't have now.... cheers man.....

ps...... Someone should've picked up on the glaring fault to my argument by now.... A bit slow today, guys..... ;)

alakaboo wrote:

A few points:
Even the people involved in the media release don't think that a surfing tax is likely or a good idea. They are just trying to grab some attention and get the average apathetic surfer on the Gold Coast to think about management issues.

The sand slug experiment in Cronulla was great, and hats off to Andy Pitt et al. but it doesn't have a lot of application elsewhere.
The volume of sand was pretty small, it was part of a normal navigational dredging program (i.e. it was free), it wasn't all placed where it was supposed to be, and it wasn't monitored. There are some nice pics, but they could just be a coincidence, due to refraction off the Prince St seawall etc. If you are trying to convince a government to pony up for an engineering project you need some better data.

You also need a LOT more sand. 50-75k cubes is chickenfeed compared to how much sand gets moved around by a storm (250k+), and how much currently moves northward each year (600k+).

As luck has it, Gold Coast is currently applying for permits to shift millions of cubic metres of sand, and place it along the northern beaches (Burleigh to the Spit).
Unfortunately surfing barely rates a mention anywhere in the plans or modelling.

South Straddie works for a range of reasons. The groyne (it's actually a training wall, to be a pedant) does a number of things, and is important. Same as any headland, it improves the surface conditions on the lee side. It also increases the flow rate and forces the ebb tide delta further offshore. That makes the back banks that focus the swell. And it blocks the inner and outer bar system that is common along that stretch. The length of the walls is important, it has to extend across the normal wave zone. Little groynes won't do all that, and unfortunately the cost of big groynes goes up very quickly once you increase the depth at the end of the structure.
Combine all that with the pumping and you have waves hitting the ebb tide delta and refracting and focussing, passing through deep water so they don't lose much energy, then hitting the shallow bank inshore.

And Palm Beach artificial reef is the preferred option again. Quite a bit on the GCCC website, they are currently in final design stage.

Interesting stuff. Alakaboo are you a professional in this area?

Great stuff Alakaboo, thanks for the input.

Sheepdog wrote:

Gday, indo.... My point has always been it segregated the breaks..... Scroll down here to my phot of 1985 kirra... Just an average 3 -4 foot day... low tide.... Back in the day of the Bob hawke surf team lol...

okay how the superbank became the superwank. Firstly, Steve Lawson who was then in charge of sand placement.. had this pet idea of his to dump the Port Frederick dredges load into the bays. For some reason he wanted all low spots to be filled up so bottom contour was nice and even. I told him i wanted deep water, coming in and hitting sandbank following contour of natural points. So, the bays got flooded, but even worse, before both NSW and QLD govts signed off on project, they had to see it worked. So they pumped 30 days straight, way more sand than natural flow. Conditions were 1 metre swell with light se winds and hence because we havent had a lot of big storm events, specifically nor-nor east- we have one massive sandbank most of the time by the way, little groyne got pulled out.

http://www.swellnet.com/forums/f-stop/101456

Sheepdog wrote:

Gday, indo.... My point has always been it segregated the breaks..... Scroll down here to my phot of 1985 kirra... Just an average 3 -4 foot day... low tide.... Back in the day of the Bob hawke surf team lol.....

http://www.swellnet.com/forums/f-stop/101456

Perhaps I did get it good, mate..... But the surf was of such a quality back then 70s/80s, it too produced 2 world champions and a plethora of legends..... I surfed the superbank... I surfed the 70s gatta.... More choice...... ps - rainbow was a bit inconsistent, a bit like johnsons..... But it was a great spot on it's day... Greenmount was gutless when small, nothing different to now...... But it's protection and close proximity to the rocks gave gold coast surfers clean waves in an ese...... Something they don't have now.... cheers man.....

ps...... Someone should've picked up on the glaring fault to my argument by now.... A bit slow today, guys..... ;)

Hi Sheep dog, Is that the 1970/80,s factor, less people = less crowds?

davetherave wrote:

Sheepdog wrote:

Gday, indo.... My point has always been it segregated the breaks..... Scroll down here to my phot of 1985 kirra... Just an average 3 -4 foot day... low tide.... Back in the day of the Bob hawke surf team lol...

okay how the superbank became the superwank. Firstly, Steve Lawson who was then in charge of sand placement.. had this pet idea of his to dump the Port Frederick dredges load into the bays. For some reason he wanted all low spots to be filled up so bottom contour was nice and even. I told him i wanted deep water, coming in and hitting sandbank following contour of natural points. So, the bays got flooded, but even worse, before both NSW and QLD govts signed off on project, they had to see it worked. So they pumped 30 days straight, way more sand than natural flow. Conditions were 1 metre swell with light se winds and hence because we havent had a lot of big storm events, specifically nor-nor east- we have one massive sandbank most of the time by the way, little groyne got pulled out.

http://www.swellnet.com/forums/f-stop/101456

Hey Davo.... There is so much more than meets the eye..... Have a poke around "anchorage islands", or Companion way, or the mainbrace, or the bowsprit, or the anchorage.... Canals full of "people in the know"...... Ocean access, champagne and caviar..... And when Halliburton are involved, well.....

Apart from all that, did you pick up the Achilles heel of my argument? No one?...... jesus...... UPLIFT!!!!!!

indo-dreaming wrote:

Sheepdog wrote:

Gday, indo.... My point has always been it segregated the breaks..... Scroll down here to my phot of 1985 kirra... Just an average 3 -4 foot day... low tide.... Back in the day of the Bob hawke surf team lol.....

http://www.swellnet.com/forums/f-stop/101456

Perhaps I did get it good, mate..... But the surf was of such a quality back then 70s/80s, it too produced 2 world champions and a plethora of legends..... I surfed the superbank... I surfed the 70s gatta.... More choice...... ps - rainbow was a bit inconsistent, a bit like johnsons..... But it was a great spot on it's day... Greenmount was gutless when small, nothing different to now...... But it's protection and close proximity to the rocks gave gold coast surfers clean waves in an ese...... Something they don't have now.... cheers man.....

ps...... Someone should've picked up on the glaring fault to my argument by now.... A bit slow today, guys..... ;)

Hi Sheep dog, Is that the 1970/80,s factor, less people = less crowds?

No, indo... That's why I pointed out "bob hawkes surf team"...... Lots of people around back then....Good try though ;) Strike one.......

Sheepdog wrote:

indo-dreaming wrote:

Hi Sheep dog, Is that the 1970/80,s factor, less people = less crowds?

No, indo... That's why I pointed out "bob hawkes surf team"...... Lots of people around back then....Good try though ;) Strike one.......

You'd expect 3x as many punters in the water just from population growth. Better roads (and I guess more flexible work) probably mean that blow ins from Brisbane come more often too. Suggesting that this isn't a major issue seems questionable as even say the Sunny coast has vastly increased crowds from when I first surfed it in the mid 90s and doesn't have the same engineering changes.

Gday blow in9999.... Even back in the 2 lane highway days with the lion park, the crab farm, and the oxenford pub the only watering hole till Beenleigh, the crowds were pretty full on.... Lots of guys on the dole selling foilys for for piss money.... Super cheap rentals on the beach.... Milk crates for furniture....

Nah.... the Achilles heel in my argument?.... Here I am whinging about human alterations to surf breaks, sand pumping in particular..... Yet I am comparing this to the 1970s/80s....... Well???? Dbah was/is a man altered setup....... Old Kirra was a man altered setup...... The smart observer would've nailed me on this... "You complain about human interference but reminisce about an era of human interference......
Pretty sad when I have to debate myself........ onya dog...... You got dog a beauty..... ;)

Oh memories milk crate furniture, i even made a bed once held together with zip ties.

indo-dreaming wrote:

Oh memories milk crate furniture, i even made a bed once held together with zip ties.

Luxury..... We used to dream of having a bed held together with zip ties...... We used to live in a hole in the ground...... ;)