EDITORIAL
Y
ou couldn’t come up with a more complicated
situation in your wildest dreams - boats versus
surfers versus every other bloody thing in the
water. Throw in rocks, currents, kids, crowds and
it’s an absolute recipe for disaster. But honestly
just how bad is it? In doing our Currumbin story for
this issue, we’ve spent countless hours chasing up
stakeholders, and cutting through the multitude of
angles, opinions and facts to try to present just some
of what is happening. I think anyone that’s lived
here for a while and surfed the place can testify
to some kind of run in or near miss from the many
dangerous things that fly at you in the water there.
The last job on the roster for the story was photos
- which saw me bobbing in the boat channel for
an hour on the first December saturday for 2013 and a glorious day it was indeed, hardly a breath
of wind, almost no swell and sunny.
Over two hours on the busiest day of the year so
far, there was not one fisheries vessel, no coast
guard, no lifeguards (on watercraft) and no sign of
any water police - nobody! You could have driven
one of those racing jetboats in and out at 175km/h
without being caught. Maybe the VMR could have
dobbed on you, taken a fuzzy video and made a
report. I don’t mean that they are not a vital and
respected organisation, but quite the opposite to
be honest - how is the VMR meant to handle this?
Truth is, they should never be put in this position. It
should never fall on them to police the area.
It seems there is still a whole lot more to be done
than just talking and putting up signs - it’s time
our government officials, elected representatives
and water police took a hold of this problem and
allocated the right amount of money and resources
to it - for the sake of every Alley user.
- Luke
It’s easy to throw out opinions and say ‘the SUPs are
out of control’, or there’s ‘too many surf schools’ but what I witnessed on this day was far from any of
that. I saw about 150 people sharing the Alley, on
every manner of craft there is, toddlers on foamies
to 12ft SUPs, skis, longboards - you name it. Not
one incident, not even close. So many people in
the waves, gracious people who were laughing,
sharing and looking out for each other in such a way
that it made the place seem so damn awesome just awesomeness oozing from the waters and the
people within. Then came the boats.
Ten boats came and went in that hour and I
recorded the following stats •
•
•
•
•
7 out of 10 exceeding 6 knots at the north wall,
some by a huge amount
3 out of 10 with multiple occupants, but no life
jackets on, crossing the bar
3 out of 10 looking away or behind when driving
through the surf area
6 unnecessarily cutting through the middle of
the crowded lineup instead of using the ‘north
west’ approach
Just 2 boats with a text book, legal and safe
navigation of the bar - JUST 2/10!
FROTH | Page 14
On the surface there’s a certain sense
of serenity, a calmness and allure- but
scratch that surface just a little and it’s
revealed that there’s more than a few
hidden dangers at Currumbin Alley