URBNSURF eyeing Adelaide site to build a wave pool for surfers

The days of waiting for swell and winds to align on Adelaide’s fickle surf beaches could soon be a thing of the past with the country’s biggest wave pool operator eyeing off a facility for the city.

• URBNSURF Melbourne: New images show scale of project

The days of waiting for swell and winds to align on Adelaide’s fickle surf beaches could soon be a thing of the past with the country’s biggest surf park operator eyeing off a facility for the city.

URBNSURF, whose Melbourne surfing pool just is weeks away from operation, plans to build 10 surf parks across Australia within the next 10 years. Construction on a Sydney park will commence in 2020 and a Perth park is currently at the development approval stage. URBNSURF founder and director Andrew Ross said his company had been scouting locations in Adelaide for more than two years, and he believed a suitable parcel of land had been found.

However Mr Ross said two factors — a shortage of water and the high price of power — made SA a trickier location than the others.

“We’ve actually been looking for sites in Adelaide for the past Two-and-a-half years,” he said.

“We have a site we think would be ideal that we’ve been pursuing — there are just a couple of structural issues with that site. We’re incredibly excited about South Australia, and Adelaide in particular, being a place for a surf park. It’s just a case of making sure that those structural elements are resolved sufficiently.”

What an URBNSURF wavepool looks like.

Mr Ross said any assistance from the State Government in overcoming these hurdles would be gratefully received.

“While we’re a private operator, at the end of the day we see a wave park as a public good,” he said.

“It’s the aquatic centre of the future, a liquid skate park.”

Surf parks have shaken up the surfing world in recent years, driven largely by 11-time world champion Kelly Slater’s Californian facility that creates perfect right and left-handed waves and last year hosted a world tour stop. In recent years pools have sprung up across the US, UK and Europe and it’s believed that a pool surfing event will be part of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games.

URBNSURF has the Australian rights to the Wavegarden Cove technology, which is capable of producing up to 1000 waves an hour.

“Electric motors are attached to pistons in the water and they move left and right under a pier structure,” Mr Ross said.

“When they move left they push a wave out on the left of the lagoon, and when they move right they push a wave out on the right. The great thing about this modular technology is that it’s very high frequency, so you get a large number of waves, and it’s very reliable.

“The typical full-scale Cove will accommodate 84 surfers per hour. That’s a split of 36 experts — 18 on the lefts and 18 on the rights — and then we have inside zones where you have multiple right and left-handers and whitewater waves. In those zones we can fit 48 beginners and intermediate surfers.”

Artist impression of Urbnsurf in Melbourne.

Mr Ross said while the Cove’s barrelling waves catered for expert surfers, the smaller inside waves opened up the sport to new participants including surfers with disabilities. He said it also had the potential to boost female participation.

“More than 50 per cent of all surf lessons in Australia are taken by women, but out in the line-up only one in 10 surfers are women,” he said.

“So you have to ask why that is, why are we losing these women from surf? We’ve done a lot of research and the facts are that surfing is male-dominated and can be aggressive. Women are often fearful of their board hitting others, and sharks. We can remove a lot of those concerns in a man-made surfing environment.”

Surfing SA, the state’s peak surfing body, has thrown its support behind the wave pool concept.

“We’re behind anything that increases participation in surfing in South Australia,” Surfing SA CEO Craig Potgieter said.

“Adelaide doesn’t exactly have the best waves, particularly on the metro beaches, so to be able to practice in a controlled environment would certainly make life easier.”

Surfing in the city? Could soon be a thing.

Mr Potgieter said having consistent waves to train in would put young South Australian surfers on an equal footing with their counterparts in the eastern states.

“Our biggest challenge, particularly for our high performance kids, is getting in training sessions,” he said.
“We’ve certainly got the talent, but we struggle with the logistics.”

And Mr Potgieter said he couldn’t see any reason why the state government shouldn’t help the project get across the line if necessary.

“The government supports soccer stadiums and football fields and the like — I can’t see why this would be any different,” he said.

Sport Minister Corey Wingard was approached for comment.