Outbreak of common sense on the Gold Coast

by **drowningbitbybit** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 9:29 pm

Overcrowding and safety have been a bit of an issue, and the council thought that surf taxes and fines were the way to go about calming things down (thus destroying the entire surf culture and tourism industry of the GC). Fortunately, the surf clubs and the surfing industry are a powerful force in this neck of the woods, so that was shoved off the table, and instead they're looking at building a bunch of artificial reefs and breaks along the coastline

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-30/g ... da/5780058

Just hope they're better than the Bournemouth one... :bang:

by **oldmansurfer** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 10:39 pm

hopefully they can do one at a time and learn from their mistakes

by **jaffa1949** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 11:10 pm

Nice to see.
Anytime government and bureaucrats get directly involved in trying to police surfing in the water, chaos ensues!

Multiple reefs, possibly rocky as opposed to sandbags and a waiver on legal responsibility if you surf them.
There was a case at Bondi where there was a successful suit bought against a council because a guy dived under a wave and hit his head on the sand bank he was standing on and he hadn't been duly warned! ( I would have thrown it out of court he wasn't warned about the water either!)
Anyway a sticker from the bad old days when you had to register your surfcraft. Inflatables excepted!

They even had a regulation as to where you placed them for easy inspection on your board I'm the naughty boy with no rego, and already starting to chop my board down for the short board revolution.

The Japanese guy was the first exchange student to come to our high school (note the glasses! and all of us standing in full kodachrome pose Why oh why are we pointing away from the surf?)

by **dtc** » Tue Sep 30, 2014 11:32 pm

great photo. How many people were surfing back then - my feeling is that the 60s it was fairly popular, but in the 70s and 80s the drop out/aggro culture of surfing put a lot of people off; before a big growth in the 1990s.

Artificial reefs always seem to promise more than they deliver, because no one actually understands the complexities and intricacies of the ocean. Build something here and 3km down the coast something unexpected happens. But hope it works.

by **drowningbitbybit** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:48 am

dtc wrote:Artificial reefs always seem to promise more than they deliver, because no one actually understands the complexities and intricacies of the ocean. Build something here and 3km down the coast something unexpected happens. But hope it works.

There already is one artificial reef up near Surfers Paradise, and I've never heard anyone saying that they've surfed there ever.
I'd be in favour of them building some piers and groynes in the middle of the long stretches of beach to make some more points rather than reefs. It would still be unpredictable but I imagine would have a higher chance of working than a sandbag or two lobbed into the ocean.

...And if someone could work out how to make a left-breaking point on the GC, I'd be really happy :lol:

by **drowningbitbybit** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 12:52 am

Top photo Jaffa! :thumbs:

by **dtc** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:59 am

drowningbitbybit wrote:I'd be in favour of them building some piers and groynes in the middle of the long stretches of beach to make some more points rather than reefs. It would still be unpredictable but I imagine would have a higher chance of working than a sandbag or two lobbed into the ocean.

As long as you dont end up with this (one of the things that didnt work quite as expected) - put in one groyne and you get severe lee erosion, so you put in another. Then another...still, were this photo from somewhere with waves, who knows - it could be point break heaven

: sitges0.jpg (20.78 KiB) Viewed 781 times

by **drowningbitbybit** » Wed Oct 01, 2014 9:49 am

dtc wrote:As long as you dont end up with this (one of the things that didnt work quite as expected) - put in one groyne and you get severe lee erosion, so you put in another. Then another...