Before we delve into where Greg is at with
his final designs and the implementation,
we’ll quickly bring you all up to speed. For
nearly two decades he and his mates have
been running trawlers up parallel to the
banks in the Clarence River down Yamba
way, and the displacing water from the deep
hull logically created a perfect barrelling
surfable wave along the shoreline, at times
resembling some kind of scale-model reef
ledge wave. There was only one flaw though,
they couldn’t get it above about two feet.
In recent years he has spearheaded a
research mission, partnering with Australian
Maritime College scientists to investigate
just how to get that same principle into a
large pool, jack the size right up and make
an efficient system to create the same effect
- this time with a perfect two metre wave in
place of the muddy knee-high ones. Sounds
simple enough, but as we know, man has
failed, and failed again and again to create
artificial waves of power all around the world.
Forget the wave gardens, the sand-bag
reefs and energy guzzling conventional
swimmer’s wave pools, Greg has refined
his hull displacement in a state-of-theart custom built wave modelling tank, and
poured in thousands of hours of research to
produce a working model that will potentially
see an unimaginable array of powerful waves
Ah sweet river wave, how you make us
dream // Photo Webber Wave Pools
LiQUiFY | 42
running in point-break and peak style, fully
customised and efficiently operating in an
oblong-shaped pool.
This will cost a bit won’t it? Sure will, but
hold the phone, global water park builders
Waterplay Pty Ltd have seized the golden
opportunity to get Greg’s designs into
their pools, and are already well down the
pipeline to building a $90 million water park
on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. The
company has a proven record of building
high quality water parks and seem poised to
finally make it happen for the Webber Wave
Pool to become a reality.
Their proposed site, at a property on the
Sunshine Coast’s Steve Irwin Way, has just
passed its first major test with the application
for ‘Material Change Of Use’ (MCU) on
the site getting the yes vote from the local
council - all councillors but one voting in
support of the exciting proposal. There are
concerns though, not about the concept,
but the location. Nonetheless the project
will still have to face rigorous environmental,
engineering and social tests before the
diggers lift dirt, but the project proponents
are confident that construction may begin in
as little as a year from now.
Could it already be swamped by
flooding concerns?