Surf’s up in tropical paradise
I NOTICED a waft of backpackers in need of a good rinse rattle into town with a surfboard strapped to the roof of their van earlier this week. Those poor Dutch bastards. Enthusiastic young Euros coming to Australia often fail to realise what a bloody massive place it is.
You can’t blame them — the Netherlands is about 186 times smaller than Australia — but when the hunt for a totally gnarly surf break leads them to Clifton Beach, their faces could wilt a tulip field. Dreadfully sorry Hans, old clogger. We’ve got box jellyfish, crocodiles and the occasional tropical flesh-eating parasite that can skin a shin in five minutes flat, but the only real waves we have are heatwaves.
Imagine if Cairns had actual, surfable barrels — and not just that single artificial Flow Rider impostor at Tobruk Memorial Pool. We would be unstoppable. Certifiable rad lad Kelly Slater has a bodacious proposal just waiting for someone with a lazy $20 million to rip into in Cairns.
The 11-time world champion surfer will open Australia’s first surfing wave pool next month in, of all places, Yeppoon.
He aroused the sleepy boardriding community’s passions when he opened his first surf ranch in inland California in 2016 but this is his first development foray into the Antipodes.
Major investor the World Surf League held its first championships at the California surf ranch this month, offering wave-chasers consistently perfect breakers.
They lapped it up, carving up the perpetual tube like it was nobody’s business.
Slater wants to use his Yeppoon Surf Lakes wave pool as a demonstration facility to show investors across Australia (and the world) what they can get for $20 million.
The pool can offer eight separate waves graded for beginners through to professionals and create 2400 waves an hour.
The sport has been legitimised through its inclusion in the 2020 Olympics and Slater is onto an absolute winner.
Division 9 Cairns Regional Councillor Brett Olds reckons so, anyway.
“Ever since I was a kid, I’ve said the only thing that could make Cairns better is if we had surf up here,” he said. “That’s why I’m so excited. “I feel like a little kid. “Twenty-million isn’t easy to come up with but if the numbers stack up, I reckon a developer will jump on it.
“Otherwise, the council should have a look at it.” He is right. The Gold Coast is a slimy den of sleaze and ’roid abuse, but look at those waves.
Bondi is populated by deluded fools living in vertical rat’s nests, but people still go there because the surf is nice.
In the meantime, Cairns is paradise on earth with everything a tourist could possibly want from a journey to Australia — except a decent wave.
The price tag is not that huge when you think about it.
The council is spending $70 million on the Cairns Performing Arts Centre and wants $40 million to create a new gallery precinct incorporating the former Courthouse Hotel.
Those projects both have merits but the money spent will never be recouped. This is a proposal that could actually be profitable, and with any luck, it would only require the council to work with private developers and forgo headworks charges.
At the very least, it is worth a good look.
There are a few potential spots for it — the site of Paul Freebody’s proposed Adventure Waters theme park at Smithfield, Michael Trout’s Blazing Saddles property at Yorkeys Knob, or even the cane fields where the failed Aquis casino-resort was supposed to be built.
I would do it myself, but I’m a bit skint this decade and I can’t surf … yet.