We are too deep down the rabbit hole now, it's
simply too late to stop. The people need somewhere to live,
something to do for work and somewhere to shred. It really is that
simple.
My head is full of nonsense, so I’m grateful to the
greater wisdom of the crowd here.
I think Chas got that very much
right in his latest vid – surfers can solve world
historical problems. Vis-à-vis wavepools, we’ve now collectively
come to the conclusion that the Kelly Slater Wave Company, with its
“wave system” as Dear Sophie calls it, is a tougher nut to crack,
at least as far as the dollars and cents go, than we all thought
during those heady days of Xmas 2015.
The big-buck corpo model works, but only in shitsville where
land and water is cheap.
In Australia, still the surfing centre of the world, wavepools
only work near people and people live in cities.
Coastal land is expensive, unless it goes ten foot under water
when it rains and you are pairing it with
massive urban development and, well, here we are.
It would be remiss of us though, in this new post-sport phase of
the WSL, if we didn’t at least take the corpo spin at face value
and take a look at the case for.
Me and Starky will go man-on-man about this when the dust
settles. No soft shoe shuffle. His interests are advancing the real
estate concerns of American billionaires and Australian property
moguls and mine are, not.
I’m sure we will get on fine. Couple of UQ boardriders good ole
boys.
In the interim, we can walk a mile in his shoes. You put the x’s
and o’s into the equation and you get a fuck-ton of money going
into a piece of land that made pennies to the dollar growing
cane.
Huge money. Fifteen hundred houses is huge.
I went down to the local monstrosity, what was once a serene
sward of green where cows grazed and a reservoir of cool morning
air fanned a mile of occasionally epic beachbreaks is now an angry
red mess of machines and dirt.
Two hundred houses. Tiny by comparison.
What can’t be denied is the jobs and growth. All the excavator
drivers, surveyors, engineers, planners, landcapers for the little
real-estate showroom. All turning a dollar from a piece of
land and the dream of surf. That’s before the chippies and plumbers
and sparkies and tilers and kitchen consultants and interior
decorators etc get in there.
What can’t be denied is the jobs and growth. All the excavator
drivers, surveyors, engineers, planners, landcapers for the little
real-estate showroom.
All turning a dollar from a piece of land and the dream of surf.
That’s before the chippies and plumbers and sparkies and tilers and
kitchen consultants and interior decorators etc get in there.
McMansions, tastefully done. Plenty of toys in the garage.
Modern, convenient, the subject of profile pieces and a million
insta-perfect shots.
Coolum will be the same. And looking at it with
Hegelian eyes, it really is the ultimate expression of
freedom.
Human spiritual reality has transcended and freed itself of
nature and is something separate and different. That’s roughly
paraphrasing the old Kraut, but close enough to the gist of it.
Trophy tradie wife get the dream house, a little day-time dabble
in anti-vax conspiracy on the side and Hubby gets his go-outs in
the tub, a few sly bumps over at Damo’s house on the weekend.
Did you know Starky promised the people of Coolum a school on
site? I hope that is a proper pinkie promise, because mad if
true.
Imagine little Blayde and Jacxen and Bakardee wik-wakking all
over the first few warm-up waves at the tub before school and maybe
even surfing it for school sport.
Too much, right?
Sure, Mum and Dad will be hocked up to the eyeballs. This is
Australia. But property. Equity. With a wavepool!
As Don O’Rorke said, “It is a simple sum – the only thing that
drags down property growth is when there is no population
growth.”
Australia is growing like billy-o. Unlike Europe and Asia and
the Americas you can’t live in the middle, which means all the
people will have to live at the coast. Even ten- foot under water
Don’s places at Coolum will be worth a squillion.
Coolum is not New Orleans.
No, we are too deep down the rabbit hole now, it’s simply too
late to stop. The people need somewhere to live, something to do
for work and somewhere to shred. It really is that simple.
The wavepool development is an elegant solution to that problem.
It makes Don O’Rorke a shed load of cash and, if WSL doesn’t fuck
up the due diligence, gets them on the same path.
There really is no money in pro surfing, so if they can siphon
off the real estate money we might continue to get our yearly World
Champions.
You think I’m mocking. I’m not mocking.
OK. But, what do you think? I can hear someone ask.
My dream, just a little bit different to Starky’s in the
details, is that the state govt under SARA compulsorily acquires
the land, revegetates it back to pristine wetland with a small army
of dole bludgers, names an endangered frog after Kelly Slater and
WSL jumps on board the Blue Heart thing. Don O’Rorke donates a
parcel of contaminated industrial land near the airport for the
Slater pool and we all live happily ever after.
Yeah, not gunna happen.
Surely we’ve all got wavepool fatigue by now?
Don’t know about you but I am Un Chien Andalou*.
*Debased, pretty much.
