Kelly Slater “urges” Queensland government to approve WSL’s $1.2 billion wavepool-and-six-star eco resort development on former cane farm; will transform Sunshine Coast into “surfing Mecca” says champ

The paradox of the environmentalist businessman…

Self-described pro-environment and wildlife advocate Kelly Slater, eleven titles, slayer of Instagram trolls, has “urged” the Queensland to approve the WSL’s billion-dollar development on 510-hectares, or 1200 acres, of “highly constrained land” near the Queensland beach town of Coolum.

Speaking to Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail, Kelly said the development, which has been stalled by environmental concerns, would create a surfing mecca.

“When people start thinking about surfing in Australia they generally think about Bells or the Gold Coast… this wave would become somewhat of a mecca and put the Sunshine Coast back on the (surfing) map…it will bring a lot of interest to the area and it will be a place that I know a lot of people are going to want to surf and have an ongoing impact on the local area…we have had so many people asking for so long where we’re going to build the next wave including Australia,” he said.

The WSL’s boss of getting pools built, Andrew Stark, described the development as the economic boost the state urgently needed.

“Given the current COVID climate and economic crisis that Queensland is facing, to bring such a sizeable investment and number of jobs to a regions such as the Sunshine Coast is extremely important,” he said.

In a piece written last year, Longtom visited the site and interviewed locals.

His conclusion?

Drive-time from the airport is fourteen-minutes at a hundred k’s heading due north up the Sunshine Motorway. Glancing left at the site which is bordered by the road the presence of water on the ground, despite the drought, is startling. Fifteen hundred residential lots, commercial, retail, hotels plus the wavepool on some of the lowest lying floodplain in south-east Queensland.

What, as they say, could go wrong?

I put boots on the ground at the site. I know this country very well. It’s in my blood. My people come from the Queensland cane swamps. They are Danes, Swedes, Sicilians.

Practical people.

They would understand the necessity of bulldozing the bush to make way for jobs. But I do not. The developer’s eye eludes me. I see trees and bush. Birds, insects, frogs. I feel sad that surfers will be the ones behind the bull-dozers, erasing this wildlife, this bush from history.

From what I can see though, although there is ambivalence, distrust and even hostility to the Coolum wave pool development, that is unlikely to stop the bulldozers.

The greenwashing on the project will be immense.

Next level.

But I wonder, when Kelly thinks about what is being done in his name and looks in the mirror, does he still see an environmentalist looking back at him?

The Courier-Mail also noted that Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Tourism Minister Kate Jones had visited Surf Ranch last year and “publicly welcomed the Coolum proposal.”