Watch: The Surf Lakes Pool is Now Better Than You Could've Imagined
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They've been tinkering! You may recall that surreal, Mad Max-looking plunger powered wave pool up in Yeppoon, Queensland (eight hours north of Brisbane), that first found its way on to the internet back in October 2018. A man-made lake, a giant plunger, and bevy of waves bouncing outwards like a rock thrown in a pond. It looked promising then, but as this 13-minute doco from their latest R&D session shows, it’s now right in that conversation for the world’s best wave pool.
To refresh your memory on the details – the pool is a man-made, eight acre pond in Central QLD Australia that creates concentric waves radiating outwards from the “central wave device” (the plunger). Apparently, this tech can generate up to 10 separate surfable waves from each pulse of plunger. Those waves then hit a variety of different shaped reefs and shorelines to create waves that break at different speeds, shapes and sizes.
Sheldon Simkus
And its there where some serious tweaks must have been made, as the latest footage from a session in August of this year shows some big time improvements: Waves that looked unmake-able, now they’re makeable. Waves that looked slightly rippable, now they’re very rippable, etc..
“My initial thoughts were that it may be a little bit gutless,” says Luke Hynd in the vid, airing out loud the s’silent thoughts near-every surfer has when first exposed to one of these new pools. “And that was pretty quickly destroyed. It turned out to be pretty powerful and solid.”
Indeed the biggest take-away from the fresh footage might be the sheer power of a couple of the breaks here. Sheldon Simkus snaps a board, Occy pulls back on a slab, and this is happening when the plunger is plunging away at just 75% capacity.
Coby Perkovich
Sadly for surfers Googling directions to Yeppoon and looking to make the trip — this pool is a research and development test facility only. That is to say, this exact pool 700 or so kms north of Brisbane is not open to the public, in much the same way WaveGarden’s Basque pool is used to experiment with the tech. However, there is some momentum at the moment from the local council to get behind opening the Yeppoon site to the public. “No dates given just yet but definitely on the cards…” they’ve told us.
We’ll be ready.
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