Dreary Melbourne airport suburb to be dressed in Australia's first ever Wavegarden…
Who would’ve thought a few years ago that building wave pools would become an… industry? There’s Wavegarden in the Basque Country (Oowee, can’t say Spain), American Wave Machines in Solana Beach, California, with its “turn-key surf parks” (and whom I once called and was told that everyone was on holiday and couldn’t be contacted), the on-again-off-again Webber Wave Pools and the most promising of ’em all, Kelly Slater Wave Co,
Lot of heat, ain’t much fire, though.
The first commercial Wavegarden, Wales’ Surf Snowdonia, seemed to make people either sad or angry. Can’t win, huh?
A couple of hours ago, the Western Australian-based Wave Park Group, announced its first Australian pool – at Tullamarine, an airport suburb 20 clicks north of Melbourne. Two metre waves, 32-second rides, we’re promised, in the promotional short below.
Eight months ago, I spoke to Wave Park Group’s Andrew Ross. The former investment banker and lawyer told me he’d had a mid-life epiphany after years in the corpo world, wanted to create a surf biz, visited Wavegarden, saw Taj Burrow riding it and told ’em he’d write ’em a cheque on the spot.
And this is the first of 10 he wants to create over the next decade.
He ain’t sub-letting the Wavegarden technology, either. Wave Park Group either buys or leases the site, all the Wavegarden pieces are bought and shipped to Australia, it all gets put together, a few months of testing, and away it goes.
The Tullamarine pool goes live late 2017, says Wave Park Group.
More details when I either find Andrew’s number (new phone! SE!) or he hits me back via Instagram. @urbnsurf if you’re wondering…
shame someone couldn’t throw ’em an angel ring or get a surfboard to them. No way a grown man who can swim should drown.
fuck yes. this should keep some of those fucken bearded, china surfboard riding, craft beer drinking shoulder hoppers away from the south east. aint nuthen down here but sharks and closeouts.
they’re fine if you want to be crushed into a paste against the rocks.
whats webber got to say about this? does he have a working human sized pool yet? has slater wave pool sdropped any more clips? i could google but id rather you guys answered these questions for me 🙂
thanks in advance
Believe webber now making Kelly’s boards – that is interesting in itself so maybe webber Kelly colab.
Also believe webber diving head long into floating movable artificial reefs – which may be better!!!
Does this mean wen be bends over in defeat? Is Greg now Kelly’s bitch? So many questions not many answers..
meant Kelly webber pool collab maybe
Great. All we now need is an indoor ski slope in Antarctica and pigeon breeding facilities in Venice, Italy.
I think it’s great that Melbourne’s slums will have somewhere to bathe. I’m kidding I can’t even afford to live there.
Wave pools remind me of the evenings when day-shift men would return from the factories in Chevy’s and Buicks, their faces as empty as their lunch pails. They’d read the Times then get quietly drunk watching the ball game on TV as the dimming sun, filtered through a haze of factory smoke, sank low in the Western sky. The possums stirred in the ditches and rubbed their pointed teeth, preparing for the night shift.
After the children were put to bed, husbands would moan and persperate as they dutifully mounted their reluctant, consecrated wives, engaging in brief, passionless coupling… Like fenced livestock, then promptly fall asleep, drooling whisky – laden saliva on the bed sheets,
Ryan Seacrest’s muted voice drones on from living room television sets, the sleepless wives clutch their rosary beads and weep silently.
And here comes the next wave.
As wu tang puts it “weak rhymes that’s mad long. make it brief son, half short, twice strong”.
Get it together i can’t even read these posts that your trying way too hard on
I’m a glass half full kinda guy… so I just leave it to readers to try way harder at… reading.
Wu Tang: A lack of basic vocabulary and sentence construction skills are yelped loudly and strung into lyrical hooks, repeated ad nauseam. Bravo to you and your incredible depth of intellect.
Out of context hood colloquialisms are interspersed seemingly at random, even more at odds with the typically white, smooth-faced and over privileged surfer who strains to sell us on his toughness by yapping along to nothing more than dealing coke and fucking bitches.
No doubt your wife or girl / boyfriend won’t let you do either. I’m sure they’re perfectly fine with the dumb tattoos and talking hip pity hop as long as you keep your nose clean and keep handing over the paycheck at the end of each day.
Shaolin, mutherfucker!
Please shut the fuck up and go away
Where next? Alice Springs?
whats the SE like, I drowned my phone getting swept in the ocean rockfishing.
…oh it’s a dream. I’d like a smaller version, even…
didn’t they get the shade of blue of that sky, that torrid Australian sky, perfect.
Do you, like me, see Louis Buvelot’s Goodman’s Creek, Bacchus Marsh sky in this? Am I the only one?
http://www.artgallery.nsw.g…
spot on.