The Sand Situation
Sand, sun and surf are what South East Queensland is all about. Where other parts of the country offer a smorgasbord of bays and headlands, river-mouths and reefs, the Sunshine State has it’s recipe down: sprawling bleached-blond beaches, scorching sunshine and pumping surf – and plenty of it. Add to this a handful of improbably perfect point setups and you’d be hard-pressed to imagine a better stretch of surfing coastline.
Or you would have been, until a bunch of coastal engineers stepped in and, most likely without ever setting foot on a surfboard, inadvertently created two of the world’s great surfing phenomena: South Straddie, and the Coolangatta Superbank.
Their good work starts just over the border in New South Wales where the Tweed River Bypass System has been pumping sand from Fingal to D’Bah since ‘95. But it’s finest hour came in 2007, when built-up sand stretched from Snapper right through Greenmount and into Kirra. If you were lucky enough to surf the Superbank in it’s prime, it’s not something you’ll forget in a hurry.
Over the past four years, intermittent sand-pumping and storm erosion have seen the bank reduced from super to, well, just really good. But as another surf season approaches in Queensland, there’s an interesting development that’s got the locals talking: the sand’s back, and in force. Could this year see the return of two-kilometre tubes?
John Charlton ducked down to Coolangatta to find out…
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