Longtom and the case for the WSL’s billion-dollar wavepool development Part III: “What can’t be denied are the jobs and growth!”

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.