Photos, Video of Narrowneck Reef Surf
I surfed it a couple of times around '04 on small southerly groundswells, and recall something along the lines of what you mentioned above. Brief ledgy take off then a surfable, if somewhat uninteresting short ride before it dissipated into the channel (which was typical of the Surfers beachies anyway). Drove past it at other times and there was nothing happening at all. Either way, it certainly didn't offer anything of interest for me to consider surfing it regularly, even though I was living within cycling/driving range.
When i lived on the Goldie through that era I checked it plenty of times.
At best it looked like you guys described, waves would peak up in one small area like it was a small reef ledge even a few boils from memory, but before you could say "theres one" it would back off, go fat, wonky, section, or close out.
Then id get back in the car drive straight to the spit, do the sharky paddle over to TOS and more often than not surf perfect A frame peaks until lunch be home just in time for Ricky lake and Jerry springer, maybe have an arvo nap then if i was really lucky it would be a Thursday and we would hit the Edge for $1.50 Spirits with the lads.
I've never lived that little dream scenario Indo D , but it makes my eyes moist with fondness just to think about.
Couldn't watch daytime TV straight though...
Here's a video from 2003. Looks pretty fun.
Looks better than described in that video. Day of days?
I lived 250 +/- metres to the North of it (Breaker Street) from Jan 1992 until Oct 2014. It had its day but no different to any other sand bank in reality. The bags broke which meant the sand became uneven unlike other natural banks that held more shape. Don't get me wrong, it had its day on ore than the odd occasion, but the baseline structure (the stupid geotextile breaking bags) was poor. Often a better bank formed on the run up to its southern side with the sand moving sth to nth.
I can say having lived in that same street for a long time the banks were rooted once they started pumping sand to create the super bank. In the early mid 90's we got good A frame banks created by rip tides but as the pumpin gained momemtum and our southern cousins rejoiced we got more and more outer bank inner gutter garbage. TOS and the "shit" (pi$$ smelling dog beach) saved the day most weeks.
The best thing I found about the goldy was leaving but each to their own.
Interesting stuff SP. I wonder if the changing banks on the Northern Goldy were more attributable to the Tallebudgera pumping regime than TRESBP?
Despite what opinions anyone has about successes or failures of artificially constructed reefs, training walls, breakwaters, shipwrecks, harbours or any other interventions in the surf zone, good or bad, I'd like to hear from anyone who actually surfed or filmed/photographed surfing on the actual reef itself (not the inner bars or shorey please) but at Narrowneck reef itself, Gold Coast between about 2000-2008.
I remember that from 2006-2007 there was a particularly shallow, ledging take off, sometimes linking up with the outer bar of the beach to the north. Many of these days I was there were some photographers on the beach with zoom lenses capturing the action.
Hope you can help find some history