Management meets to 'break the Superbank'
A management meeting later this week may see changes to sand flow on the southern Gold Coast. Swellnet has been informed that management at the Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypass System (TRESBP) are considering changing how much sand will flow to various outflow points of the pumping system. The result would be different volumes of sand – and hence different wave shape - at Duranbah, Snapper, and other waves further down the Superbank.
At present, TRESBP pump the sand in a fixed 90:10 outflow – 90% goes to Snapper East, 10% to Duranbah. The recommendations being put to management are to change that to 70:30 and also to pump some sand back onto Letitia Spit (the southern side of the Tweed River) to stockpile and use later on.
The proposals follow years of recommendations from local surfers to mix up the sand flow and have some flexibility in the system so banks can be fine tuned when necessary.
However, it's not only surfers calling for a change. There's been pressure from surf clubs to provide the Coolangatta Bay clubs – Rainbow Bay and Coolangatta – with safer swimming areas. With the current sand configuration there's no safe area to erect the flags.
Last week there was a near fatal collision with a swimmer, an event Swellnet's contact viewed as a wake up call. “If it had been fatal and ended up before the Coroner's Court we'd see changes enforced.” The point being, early action would usurp any need for heavy-handed, top down changes.
If the 70:30 proposal is accepted the surfers would like to see D'Bah's increased allotment distributed at random off the back of the break. D'Bah currently has little sand and by dumping 'sand slugs' off the back of the beach peaks and wedges can be created.
At Snapper the idea is to break the Superbank – for want of a better term. At present, the Superbank is a straight line running for over 500 metres. Not only does this configuration limit safe swimming, it also limits how many surfers the wave can handle.
“If the bank was broken up slightly the crowd could be spread out further. As it is 300 or more people sit in a straight line from Snapper to Kirra.” The theory being that if the sand began to mirror the shoreline again there'd be more waves available for everyone.
It would be the end of the 300 metre ride, and photographers perched on Kirra Hill would no longer be granted an up-the-line view of perfection, but there'd be more waves to ride. Crucially, it wouldn't effect the top of the wave at Snapper, often the best-shaped and hollowest section.
Also, by engineering flexibility into the process, the TRESBP could respond well to storm erosion. “Experience shows that after a storm event we only need 3- 4 days to fix big holes in the Superbank so we can simply change the pumping to allow for that.”
Another recommendation being proffered is the back pumping of sand to Letitia Spit, where it would be stockpiled for future use. Again, this suggestion provides flexibility; it would halt the current oversupply being pumped at Snapper East and provide a ready stockpile for when it's needed.
By this time next week we'll know if TRESBP management has accepted the recommendations and broken the Superbank – with the very best of intentions.
Comments
okay, since I walk from D-bah to Nth KIrra everyday checking sandflow, I can say that my observation has some worth.
Currently the sand profile is excellent for Kirra.
Ifwe had abig swell it would be great. There is also waves further down the point and an inshore gutter for swimming.
Greenmount still has too much sand but it will work along Coolangatta beach where there are some holes.
D-bah, always needed more sand as did Letitia spit for erosion purposes. But surf over there is cranking.
The placement and volume of sand at D-bah is tricky.
If wrong, it will fill out bottom profile causing closeouts, but if done at least at end of groyne length from beach it may work-very heavily determined by swell/wind.
When placed on beach you have the paddle out/near groyne and old wreck creating inshore gutters shaping sandbanks.
Overall a great idea and if surfing banks are okay, drop it out the back of D-bah or in Front of Lovers so it can trickle past Froggies around into the bay.
If u know when meeting is on, or who will be there, please pass on my comments, thanks.
Thanks Dave. Our articles (and their associated comments) on these topics are certainly being read - at some point - by those people making some of these decisions. So thanks a lot for sharing your observations, as they are invaluable. Every little piece of information helps.
Ben, lady from govt, just contacted me, totally false story, see what i have posted elsewhere.
Swellnet has been deliberately mislead.
Nice Try-Misinformation Update.
I would like to thank those responsible for the false information about the Superbank Sandflow meeting headline story on Sweellnet, and other stuff recently.
Remember I saw the original submissions document and I have a witness who will testify under oath of what we read before it was pulled from public viewing.
Also I now know what you are all up to around our local area in other issues. Buy a pushbike soon surfers.
It's amazing what you can learn when you sometimes ask a deliberate stupid question.
Sorry about posting it here, but Ben and Stu, unless you are in on it, The meeting about the Superbank Sandflow meeting was a deliberate, deliberate attempt to mislead Swellnet patrons.
Not on.
Hey davetherave, c'mon ... a few painted numbers can control surf rage, don't ya know?
Documents pulled from public viewing are available under FOI. Just a matter of request made to the right department. Then, the truth will be revealed.
yeah mate
this all started when i announced that i may be going to put my name forward to run in the fed or state or local govt elections.
lot of spin going on, plus a lot of built up resentment.
even have a journo running stories with my last name who people are confusing me with
as those who really take notice, they would have observed that i have not been bodysurfing at all.
i am having trouble walking, let alone being elected to anything.
but yes wingnut
people did put their hand out to get a piece of the cashcow that is the sandpumping jetty, but now realize that it was a bit selfish, especially as it was a COMMUNITY position targeted for all stakeholders/users.
is the same thing going to happen with parking meters at certain spots, as has been asked of me?
please know, i am not a gold coast ratepayer, i dont own a car and please ask council, not me.
yea, there may be something going on, but at the moment, i just dont care.
enjoy your surfing, stay tuned into whats happening in your local area and email council if you have an issue.
parking at beaches, especially the points is an issue at a lot places and will have to be dealt with eventually, be good to see a wide range of beach users involved in the decision making process-before the event.
Would it be possible to pump the sand onto the lookout at Dbah. In this way you could bury the existing high rises and the entire southern end of the gold coast and start again. This may be the best possible outcome.
As long as you wait until Uncle Gary is back from his yearly trip up to Schoolies, I'm fine with that.
It's a special anniversary for me this year, celebrating 10 years of unbroken attendance. Can't believe it took me so long after leaving school to learn about it, I would have been going up for 20 years if that was the case!
You'll be right mate. Leave all the high rises up the north for partying. We'll just redo the southern end
Great to hear Jof, come find me during schoolies and I'll shout you a Vodka Cruiser.
Sounds like a win/win in theory.
Less sand for Queen Kirra. Yay
Ok, I had waves just from the out side of the rock at snapper to a close out reo in front of Mc Donalds back in the Mid eighties. There has always been long long rides when the sand was right before the super bank days. I have even experienced two separate banks peeling symultaneously around the points back in the day with the second bank starting out wide of rainbow. I haven't lived on the coast for a while but have never been a fan of the super bank as there are simply not enough take off zones. Thank god some common sense has prevailed and may be we can get back to natural sand flows and top it up with pumping when depleted only.
Ever noticed how people from the Goldie refer to it as " The Coast ".
Thank fuck they think it's the be all and end all of Aussie surfing....
This all sounds a bit suss to me and not really based on the facts of how the Sand Bypass works.
They can't store the sand at the jetty so have to pump the sand as it comes...this year has been a big year for sand transport due to a steady regime of small S'ly swells and lots of longshore sand transport with no big swells to erode it.
Big numbers for Sep pumped sand.
http://www.tweedsandbypass.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/521117...
Whether changing the ratio of sand pumping from Froggies to D-Bah makes any long term diff to the Superbank is very arguable, especially if the sand if placed offshore at D-bah. That sand will quickly make it's way into the Superbank under prevailing S or SE conditions.
Be interested to know who the source was because it was my understanding that the optimal surf quality came from pumping sand straight off the beach ala South Straddy and that putting sand at the back of the break produced the worst results as far as surf quality goes.
Finally, can the sand be even pumped back across the river to the Letitia spit side? That sounds highly dubious to me and if thats not possible then the whole thing is unfeasible.
Only way then to reduce the superbank is to pump it to the other side of Kirra, to the North and west, which was the original surfer proposal put forward by Wayne Deane and others.
Second what Dave says, the extension of the groyne has had a major impact on sand bar angle and beach width at Kirra. Looks close to being really set up for the next swell.
Definitely FR. It doesn't matter where you drop it... it'll just keep doing the steady march shorewards and to the north and even out within hours, or days at most
Having bodysurfed about 50m off nth wall and about 25m inside tip in late 70s, there needs to be a good bank in that spot at high tide and very deep bank running off sth wall into Tweed mouth. So I suggest a working assumption that 70:30 has not got any goal other than pumping more sand into Dbah. Talk of Letitia point is cheap, building anything there is low value. Big ocean swell can move vast volumes of sand in a short time - looks like Superbank is here to stay while TRESBP pumps 90:10 or 80:20 or 70:30 as their volumes are small compared to big ocean swell. Others may have different opinions.
yeah, I am not sure where this all is coming from, I was told that they couldnt pump/drop sand On Letitia as part of Deed Of Agreement and yeah it has shown, pumping sand high onto D-bah , building dunes, even down Lovers End and letting ocean drag it back works best eventually.
They can always drop v shape slugs along north kirra /bilinga creating waves to surf instead of closeouts but I have as much chance of beating Usain Bolt as that happening..
Too much money involved for these pelicans to ' break the super bank'.. I'm with Gary G on this one.....
Might be a bit of bank making going on down the road
http://www.northernstar.com.au/news/plan-to-dredge-ballina-bar/2798136/
Sounds like "playing god syndrome".
What ever happened to letting nature play a bit of a role in all of this.
Obviously, they will be trying to think whether the current excessive sand is just a wide phase replicating the natural (before the extended Tweed River rock walls) variations between the wide phase and the narrow phase of the southern GC beaches.
Kirra 1952
The whole 'Bring Back Kirra' argument takes on a new dimension when you start flicking through those old photos, eh Wally? I've got a nine page spread on Kirra from a 1962 issue of 'Surf International'. Of 14 photos 11 are lefthanders. If lefthanders broke at Kirra now we'd think something was drastically wrong, and yet that was Kirra in its original pre-Tweed River training wall state.
When we start talking about returning something to its 'original' condition the waters become very muddy indeed.
Yeah, who knows? What we can work out from the old photos is that there were large variations, the wide phase and the narrow phase. Often close together. The right storm could always rip massive amounts of sand away.
This from 1956 gives a very different sand picture. Very little sand at Kirra.
My own uninformed opinion is that the pumping is doing a pretty good job of replicating natural sand flows. There is a wider phase in the sand on the beaches now because of a lack of those big sand moving storms. They'll whack thru again. You want wide beaches going to narrow beaches as part of the normal cycle. You don't want the cycle going from narrow to non-existent.
This page, with a lot of old photos, shows the wide variety of natural Kirra.
http://www.tweedsandbypass.nsw.gov.au/historical-images/historic-photo-a...
Amazing photo that one. Gotta be pre-'63 as the training walls aren't in place and yet the erosion on Coolangatta and Kirra (what you can see of it) is enormous. Highlights what you were saying earlier that large changes to the beach width are expected due to weather events and are not simply caused by the walls. Though the lack of sand between '63 and 2000 left them particularly vulnerable.
On a side note: I was once told by a Bundjalung fella that the Tweed once flowed out at Greenmount and it changed course during a big flood. I can find no historical account of this online (haven't checked the libraries up there) but it's easy to see how it could've occurred.
Thats correct Stu. There are photos of that somewhere.
Kirra has less sand than that now.
For historical interest, for those unfamiliar with the area.
Tweed River mouth 1917
Below is the Tweed River mouth now with the rock walls that were extended in the mid 1960s.
Before the pumping, the sand was up to the end of the south (far) wall and then forming a sand bar across the river mouth. Keeping the sand away from the river mouth is one of the reasons for the pumping, as well as resuming the sand flow to the beaches north.
Wally thanks for taking the effort to upload the photos....really enjoying this thread info. Cheers
Thanks mick-free, but it's not taking much effort and I really like the area.
The sand at Kirra has been an issue for a long time.
Still, I think these silly buggers are taking their protests way too far! :)
Kirra 1940
Thats great then, as I find it fascinating the old photos. Who was first to surf Kirra?
I wonder if there is one old photo somewhere of it pumping pre-surfing
Nice photo from 2005. But, the bad old days.
Far too much sand, more important than Kirra being drowned by sand for board riders, it was just too much sand for families to enjoy the local beaches. No nice protected corner at Greenmount. Families were staying away. People were angry. At Greenmount, you would trudge for well over hundred metres of soft sand to then step immediately in a watery conveyor belt heading north. Businesses were suffering. The Superbank was great though.
You can see what a sand trap the Tweed River training walls would be without some pumping.
Photo just goes to the Coolangatta/Kirra groyne, so it does not show Kirra.
There was also that dredge that took all the sand from the bar and dumped it in the bay. The whole bay is shallower now. The beaches were steeper in the eighties. The waves would stand up. Now you can see them coming from a mile out to sea.
So, what happened at the committee meeting?
Are they going to break the Superbank?
Don't know about the committee meeting, but I spent a couple of weeks at Rainbow Bay earlier this month. I hadn't been there since May. I was really surprised just how much extra sand there is in the last 6 months. There is too much!
Being able to walk around the Greenmount Headland, on the sand, keeping your feet dry, even at close to high tide. Too much.
Kirra is still lean, but that sand will be coming around the groyne pretty soon.
There was never a meeting planned, it was misinformation given to Swellnet. Swellnet should have checked source, as I did and found it was just someone trying to shit stir and get certain comments.
The Deeds of agreements mean the project cannot be changed unless by an act of parliament in nsw and another one in qld. Of course contractor gets paid to pump sand, so he does this to his hearts delight because all he has to do is maintain beach amenity- no official meaning of what beach amenity is, and of course has to keep tweed river navigable.
so please u may all have great ideas and i agree things could be done differently but they wont be spending another cent, mike baird has to pay foy sydney transport/roadworks and qld has to pay for commonwealth games.
so let us call on mother nature to sort it out for us.
although all i will be able to do is watch now, it still is one of the best sites to see in the world- get shacked for me boys.
Thanks Dave that was my understanding too.