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, 

“My mate said he thought my board had snapped because of the sound but then I realised it had been my shin!”

If it ain’t a Great White coming atcha from below, eyes dead, jaws ready to cleave you in two, now it’s jacked seals turning surfers into bottom bitches.

Cornwall’s Nathan Phillips,  “a local surfing legend”, was shredding at Porthleven, one of the best waves around, last Friday when a seal started giving him heat as he paddled back out.

The animal pulled on his leash, whiplashing his board into his stilt, breaking it in two.

Phillips, forty two and standing six-five in high-heels, was then too big to squeeze into the Air Ambulance and was forced to lay in “stinking” water inhaling a “cocktail of antibiotics”.

“I had just been paddling out and something started tugging on my leash,” he told Walesonline. “It kind of freaked me out because I didn’t know what it was. After I worked out that it was a seal and fended it off, it was just playing I think, but a wave then crashed down on me just after at a weird angle and sent my board flying into my shin.

“I remembered my mate saying he thought my board had snapped because of the sound – but then I realised it had been my shin when I felt my foot hitting the back of my leg. I just started screaming with pain, and my mate dragged me onto his board and told me to start paddling back to shore.”

Phillips is in a Devon hozzy awaiting surgery with his leg pinned by a metal frame.

A GoFundMe has been set up etc.

“He’s currently on morphine waiting for surgery so the least we could do would be to set up a page to try and raise some money for him,” said his pal Alec. “Him and his partner are expecting their next child in only a few weeks too, so it’s not the best time.”

As for seals,

“We do get a lot of ’em down here in Cornwall and they do try and play with you or mess about with you a bit sometimes.”

"This isn’t just something that they do by mistake. They’re very calculated."

It’s yet another curio of the animal kingdom that Orcas enjoy eating the fatty and delicious hearts and livers of Great White sharks.

In a technical sense, it’s impressive how the Orca gets to their favoured organ. They make a small tear near the liver or heart and suck the son of a bitch out.

The method is as surgical as it is gruesome. 

“When they come in after they’ve debilitated a shark, whether that’s a ‘karate chop’ or ramming, then they tend to try and flip it upside-down, and that induces tonic immobility, and then the shark basically becomes catatonic, and it’ll just lie there,” explains Doctor Ingrid Visser, who founded the Orca Research Trust in 1998.

“And at that stage the Orca will come in, and they’ll typically grab it from the pectoral fin, then they’ll give it a good shake — viciously, violently, very, very hard — and when you’re underwater you can actually hear the shark ripping, and it sounds like Velcro being ripped apart.

“And then they’re going for the liver, and that’s the real thing they’re targeting — it’s the liver that they’re after.”

It’s the heavyweight showdown of the marine kingdom, says Visser. 

“When you look at how an apex predator like an Orca hunts another apex predator, you see that they think about this, this isn’t just something that they do by mistake. They’re very calculated, they’re very cautious, and sometimes even when it’s a sure thing they’ll come in very slowly.”

It’s a surprise to learn that killing a Great White shark isn’t that hard. These peerless, top-of-the-chain tanks are just as vulnerable as the surfers, the swimmers and the scuba divers they’re suddenly killing with unprecedented regularity.

And you can do it! 

Just make a rope lasso. Let the fish swim through the noose and when the rope passes those iconic, collectable, priceless jaws and just before it reaches the dorsal fin, pull tight.

Four, maybe five minutes, and the White is dead. Hanged.

“Get ’em on the hook and they go neanderthal,” says a shark fisherman who wisely prefers anonymity and asks that I don’t reveal his home port. “Use a powerhead and if you hit the wrong spot the spot the shark’s going to take off with half its face blown off. Of course, the lasso method ain’t perfect, either. Use the wrong people and they can get dragged over the side.”

Illegal in most places, of course.

"How did he get here? Why was he available for hire on such a Keystone Cops project?"

The guard gates opened after a plethora of security protocol. Fingerprints, copy of my ID, vehicle registration and insurance docs, while another guard circled my car looking inside… not exactly a search, but a look see.

Thoroughly vetted, I drove past the small lake toward the home.

A friend of mine had gotten into trouble with a job and she called in a panic for help. The design room I entered was filled with nervous women chatting because they all feared the silence of their minds.

“I bet you don’t have to introduce yourself often, my name is Hippy”.

She had appeared out of a hidden stairway and I reached out my hand to greet her.

“You a Bear fan? We have a big game tonight.”

I was wearing a Chicago Bear hat.

“I loathe the Packers ma’am.”

The next three minutes were surprisingly alert in terms of her sports knowledge.

The rest of the room went quiet, like a vacuum of anxiety.

“If you guys need anything, let Carmen know in the kitchen, thank you for your hard work” was her exit. Crisp as her entrance had been.

The silence was broken once the gaggle was sure that our client had climbed the stairs.

“How did you do that?”

The ladies were in shock that I held a casual conversation with the woman of the house.

“You’ve met her before?” was all they could come up with.

“No, the Mrs has taught her but as you ladies saw, I didn’t mention yoga.”

Nelson Mandela was visiting the home that evening for a private dinner, fundraiser. Big wigs attending to dine and social network. Wealth doesn’t do Fuckbook, but they do expensive meals.

That morning was all I could think about when Chas typed something about Elo and how successful he is or was.

Something just didn’t feel right about it. Sure, he controls OUR sport and is terrible at his job, but how did he get there? More importantly, why was he available for hire on such a Keystone Cops project?

Let’s assume he had some responsibility for Oprah’s programming becoming a monster hit with middle-aged white women. His association with Harpo Productions has always been his pedigree when questioned about his new vocation.

Oprah is ELo’s street cred.

But who would leave an ascending, very lucrative, high-visibility job in entertainment to run a failing sports entity with limited demographic appeal?

He didn’t even surf.

I can’t think of one incentive he could have to make that particular job switch.

The only answer to such a downward career trajectory was he was fired or given the opportunity to step away with dignity.

Nothing else makes sense. No one would trade Oprah for JMD.

Sophie maybe, you ever see her legs?

But Erik appears to be a permanent bachelor, impervious to the charms of Sophie’s feet.

I left the home that day and met a woman walking half-a-dozen dogs, her full-time job. Stunning, she towered over me and I’m 6’1”. Nordic DNA and genetically perfect, yet cold AF personality wise and there was no way I was getting her to smile.

She interrupted me petting the Labs. I do love dogs.

“We have to bathe the pets,” was all she said, humorless.

As I pulled away, I wondered if the poor dogs had to be bathed because I had touched them?

That’s when the dots connected.

The security guards at the party were female… ish.

The huge staff of house keepers were all female. Landscapers, you guessed it, all female (when have you seen female gardeners?).

Was I the only penis on the property?

Heady times.

Why would Elo leave that world to promote such a horrific schedule end at Lowers?