Perth's famine of waves set to end with man-made utopia!
In 2016, investment banker Andrew Ross announced a masterplan to dot Australia with a ten-pack of Wavegarden pools, a bullish target he looked like hitting when the first tank opened at Melbourne’s Tullamarine airport in 2019 and with a second in Perth a virtual fait accompli.
Melbourne opened to much celebration from that city’s wave-starved surfers, only for it to be shuttered during the pandemic one year later as that state endured six wretched lockdowns for a total of 262 days, the longest in the world.
The Perth pool, which was going to be built in the Perth suburb of Alfred Cove and, importantly, a few hundred metres from my parents’ house, was shut down by the state government after local activists claimed bushland and marine reserves would be damaged.
A few residents who, let’s be frank already had one foot in the grave, also complained it might impact upon their access to the lawn bowls club there, which apparently carried a bit of sway.
Ross and his company Aventuur shifted their focus to a bleak part of Perth called Jandakot, flat, hot, ain’t much there in that part of town except broken dreams, only for it to be suddenly revealed as home to endangered vegetation and the habitat of the almost extinct black cockatoo.
Now, after investigation, submissions etc, the Environmental Protection Authority has said the vegetation is already degraded so, fuck it boys, y’might as well bring in the bulldozers.
“The vegetation has been impacted by historical clearing and ongoing degrading processes leading to large proportion of weeds and limited canopy connectivity,” said the EPA.”The vegetation is of low to moderate quality foraging habitat for Black Cockatoos.”
The tank takes up fourteen acres and thirteen of ‘em have to be cleared, including “3.15ha of Banksia Woodlands, a state-listed priority ecological community.”
To offset the demolition of the Banksia Woodlands, the developer Aventuur will buy 44 acres of Banksia Woodland on the Swan Coastal Plain and give it to the state in a modern-day version of the Catholic Church selling indulgences, same sort theory as carbon credits and so on.
The tank set-up looks pretty wild, elevated walkways around the pool, caravans around the perimeter mimicking Slater’s set-up at Surf Ranch and a low-rise building which may or may not have been designed by an architect overlooking the familiar wedge-shaped pool.
If you live in Perth, this’ll change your life while simultaneously melting your credit card.
Building starts later this year, we’re told, with gates opening in 2025,
Commented on Disqus? Log out, tap the Disqus button, and your old name and comments come back. The box is ours.
Your comments are still here. Every one of them.
Twelve years of BeachGrit comments came across from Disqus. Connect and we will show you how many are yours. We get your username, nothing else.
Connect Disqus to reveal.
Sammy wrote a cry-time email to head office about me.
Been to Catalina many times from when I was young. Been fishing around the other Islands but never stepped foot on them.
Haven’t been to Santa Cruz Island.
I applaud their conservation efforts on the Island. However, I do object to their actions regarding forested land carbon credits, scheme that globalists like Bill Gates have used.
It’s a long article, but also a glimpse into how TNC views preserved lands. Assets with revenue potential. While Disney may claim they’ve cut their emissions in half, the claim depends upon credits they’ve purchased from TNC.
https://www.bloomberg.com/f…
We really do need more wave pools in Aus.
I live by some of the best pointbreak waves in the country (world?) and don’t even want to surf them with how crowded they’ve gotten.
Also why the fuck has nobody had the brainwave idea of building a pool somewhere you can wear boardshorts? The ones in Waco and the Ranch shut down over winter because they fucking freeze solid, and the other ones are in Melbourne, South Korea and the Swiss Alps. Not exactly places known for their warm climates. But somewhere like the Sunny Coast (or even miles inland for cheaper land) would almost be board-shortable year round and have guaranteed patronage.
Here’s the fucked up thing G:
Under the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, it’s illegal to kill an endangered or protected species. However, wind farms in Hawaii and other places are allowed to operate under waivers and incidental take permits granted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.
First Wind, originally owned by Sun Edison and masquerading as planet savers, pulled the wool over not just the US Fish and Wildlife Service but the State of Hawaii too, making false promises of not only cheaper energy costs at the consumer level but also the subterfuge of a more sustainable planet and renewable energy. They were then allowed to blight Hawaiian places of beauty with their obnoxious windmills.
Sun Edison had a catastrophic failure and rife with corporate fraud, filed for bankruptcy and was sold to an Canadian company Brookfield Asset Management who then fully acquired the SunEdison in 2020.
Kawailoa Wind Farm on Oahu’s North Shore, Kaheawa Wind Power, located on a ridge above Ma’alaea on Maui, Kahuku Wind Farm and Auwahi Wind on Ulupalakua Ranch in southeast Maui are all owned by Brookfield.
Despite the overly generous allowable kill-take quotas of endangered native Hawaiian hoary bats and native Hawaiian seabirds given by the government, all the wind farms quickly exceeded these “incidental” kill amounts and now have the mind blowing temerity to petition the government to kill even more. The carnage is not limited to native bats and seabirds but also include native Nene goose and the endangered endemic Blackburn’s sphinx moth.
Finally, all the virtue signalers and fake planet savers in Hawaii are seeing the farce of this corporate money grab. The fallacy and delusion of wind power is undeniable and its toll on native wildlife is unforgivable.
Add to that that would be that we pay the most expensive electricity in the nation
wow, extra extra swole.
Dunno
But she might’ve had a cockatoo before she came out ?
…and go to confession for some extra hail mary’s and some our father’s for balance before digging up land that used to be bowling lawns…give back some land for graves?
Judging by the rebelnews coverage in Alice Springs it seems the children there might need a wave pool to keep them from bashing the residents and start bashing lips. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
You have failed endangered indigenous fowl 101
Rodney D. explains the plant building concept well in Back To School. “What’s a widget?” Then Kinneson takes his shot! “Say IT!
https://external-preview.re…
The birds sounds like lazy squatters to me. We had something similar along our freeways as well till they had caltrans come in and blew out all the tree’s and bushes and put a fence around the area.
Lololol
seagull’s are now protected species?
Nothing stands or flies in the face of progress. Just ask the soon to be extinct black cockatoos. Maybe the black swans will follow suit. Anyway who cares they are only birds. Maybe they can be trained to talk and be employed to entertain the flocks of eager boarders flying in. If not I’m sure the local zoo will step into the void and give them a place to rest their weary not quite extinct beaks. Here to help.
If this means less surfers coming to the SW, I’m all for it!!
…inneresting to see how they’ll align it. Strong Easterlies in the mornings, Strong sea breeze in the arvo…not an easy call.
If Melbourne is anything to go by they’ll fuck it completely.
It looks like it’s bit in the Lee of the freeway, but the sea breeze, [southerlies] whip through there according to my anecdotal experience and a glance at the wind stats from Jandakot Airport. I reckon they’ll align it to make the southerlies off shore for that reason, as they do tend to come up pretty early as a rule in Summer.
Easy call – make it offshore in the morning and onshore in the arvo. Just the way nature intended.
I don’t think wind exists east of the Kwinana Freeway. Just a burning hot wasteland of industry.
How far from your mum’s house is this one?
Nothing like a couple of native shrubs at the parks entrance to get those earthy organic feels before your eyes get burnt out from the chorine.
That’s not chlorine burning your eyes.
I haven’t surfed a pool in over 30 years . So in all opinion, no idea mode.
It’s the pee!
Breaks up the visual depth of the concrete, great call
chlorine, bromine, ozone, muriatic acid…https://media.s-bol.com/RR78Ww4gm6E…
as soon as he finished its on
American Wave Machine… any plans for an Australian venture?
It will follow you.
So is it a wavegarden? the Boa vista American wave machine Brazzo one looks better
surfed Waco pool last year. Fun spot, actually. No hassling for waves w/ the way they set the lineup, and you basically surf almost nonstop. Only hiccup is figuring out the takeoff, which is pretty weird bc the waves don’t roll toward you like Kelly’s pool, they just sort of burp up in a lump right in front of you.
Like Bintangs
Like Emma Woods?
…the Waco people actually claim it’s like a section of a spot slightly further north, just w/ fewer drop ins and back-paddles.
before or after the federal raid?
BSR a slightly less well-armed cult
It is better.
interference waned. no red flags~licensedt o kill 007…no Superfund Site…BUY!
Not really like carbon offsets. That scheme/scam has blossomed into quite a lucrative “green energy” development strategy, and middleman business ventures.
Its such a fucking hypocritical concept, paying a greenwashing company to get a piece of paper saying someone somewhere is planting some trees and doing some recycling for all the permanent damage I’m causing.
I’m totally shocked (and mildly delighted) that you would describe a capitalist enterprise of commoditizing environmental scorecards to put fat $$ in broker’s pockets as a “scheme/scam.” Stay out of our endangered bird loving marxist lane motherf-ing Adam Smith (or come on in, the water’s chlorine free & the birds are chirping).
Its crony capitalism, buying and selling ideological fantasy, that happens to have a fascinating origin story.
In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise.
Al Gore took office in 1993 and almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime. He led a U.S. initiative to review new projects around the world and issue ‘credits’ of so many tons of annual CO2 emission reduction. Under law a tradeable system was required, which was exactly what Enron also wanted because they were already trading pollutant credits. Thence Enron vigorously lobbied Clinton and Congress, seeking EPA regulatory authority over CO2.
From 1994 to 1996, the Enron Foundation contributed nearly $1 million dollars – $990,000 – to the Nature Conservancy, whose Climate Change Project promotes global warming theories. Enron philanthropists lavished almost $1.5 million on environmental groups that support international energy controls to “reduce” global warming. Executives at Enron worked closely with the Clinton administration to help create a scaremongering climate science environment because the company believed the treaty could provide it with a monstrous financial windfall.