Greetings from the beach. What a pleasant morning. The south swell seems to be coming in nicely. Huge morning crowd enjoying the fruits of 2-3 footers. Even with the 6:15am low tide the waves are breaking really fat. I guess the sand banks just don’t suit super high or mega low tides. As I write this it looks like the southerly has started to blow (12 knots)…it’s mushy now.
I’ve been asking surfers that have lived here all their lives if they think the bull dozer shifting sand on the beach is a good or bad thing for our waves. Will it make a good bank or will it make it close out? I would love to hear your thoughts. My vox pop revealed it could go either way. We definitely have some rather large holes in the banks that could be filled in…but it looks like the ‘dozer will make the beach straight, without any natural curves that create peeling waves. Your thoughts?
Thank you thank you to all the people that donated to the Aquabumps surf team who are raising money for this Friday’s SurfAid Cup. Donate now
Adios :: uge
The poor guy in the Dozer must be getting worried about you stalking him!
I think for sure the dozer makes it close out. It would be sweet for the dozer to push the sand out near the south end and create a shallow pool near Icebergs . This would create a south-end sanctuary for swimmers and then about a hundred metres down the beach also produce a nice bank. So in the end it would create safer swimming conditions in the south corner and also produce a nice bank a few hundred metres from Icebergs that would break right. But I doubt Waverley Council would ever do this.
Cheers,
Anton
The cowboy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years
Despite the fact i live in Singapore now and thus eat at Christians restaurant waaaaay to much!… I grew up on bondi. Back in the day (when u had to pay your dues in the water, there was real localism and bondi was full of working class people and maoris not yuppies and hipsters..ITN was THE surf club and richard Cram was best surfer) there was a stormwater drain that emptied straight onto the beach. You can still see the old filled in holes in the wall of the promenade (i think)…. anyway when it rained it emptied all the street rubbish and stormwater straight into the beach (yuk!) but it also was like a mini river mouth. Because of that the banks sometimes got really good.
I guess what im trying to say is that moving the sand MUST definitely have an effect. What effect that is i dont know.!
Been here 20 years and I think they should definitely trial a no bulldozer policy for the south end or from just past the Life guard tower. The argument could be made that the council is changing the natural evolution of the beach which is intern affecting the marine ecology. This is also an argument (from memory) on why we can’t build artificial reefs off Ben Buckler or off Ice Burgs. So many surfer in the water, the question is – If we got better waves would we get more surfers? I don’t care I want more and better waves.
A million years ago Council had a bulldozer operator, who regularly pushed sand back into the water, however, he used to do it strategically, unlike these days when it is usually pushed straight back down the beach into the water.
Since he retired there has been no one with his skills to enhance the bay & quite often all that happens is it makes a mess of the surf.
He would probly love a carton of beer and some helpful advice on where to push the sand
Didn’t the beach volleyball stadium for the Olympics create Hossegor like sandbanks or am I just imagining that?
Stadium lefts or something?
Yes, 100%. Was unbelievably good.
But what about the dozer?
Ha, not sure. I wasn’t sure if the stadium banks were because of a dozer moving sand around though to make room for the stadium or because of the actual stadium.
couldnt get any worst…bog rail burgers at the moment
How many surfers are councillors at Waverley Council? I’m guessing none.
Does the Council give a stuff about the sandbanks at South Bondi? Probably not.
The banks haven’t been too bad over the last couple of months because the Dozer hasn’t been around.
Soon we will have a nice straight bank right across the beach because the Dozer is back.
What about all the young activists take up where some surfers left off 40 years ago with lobbying Council to create an artificial reef behind our little reef all the way to beyond the back of the Baths. What a point break that would be!
Big massive boulders would create a break that would catch all that south swell that Bondi cops so often.
These days with social media a movement could gather momentum very quickly starting with Aquabumps as the platform for the forum.
Radical yes. Possible, well that depends on the get up and go of the new generation.
And yes Ben Buckler could do with some boulders as well.
Yes the stormwater drain was perfect for creating banks and the odd sore throat.
Where do they keep that dozer?
where, at the moment, on the beach..
in reply to the thread in general:
i’m pretty sure i’ve seen straight banks during periods when the ‘dozer hasn’t been around.
also, when a really good bank does pop up, like the left that materialised last year for a week or so, the crowds were nuts (more nuts than usual).
give me average Bondi banks any day, but just enough size to keep the numbers down.
Just a word from a maritime engineer… (living in Cymru so no local opinion) boulders for ben buckler eh? Artificial reefs? to be honest they ALL sound like bad ideas to me.
Nature will as nature does.
Trying to force anything to remain “just so” in a submerged position, considering the size of your winter surf, would require some Very Big Things on your seabed (geotubes, concrete or armourstone, etc). And though surfing may be very important, i would suggest it isnt as important as maintaining what little local coastal ecology you have about the place.
Bulldozing beaches to make better waves? that sounds like a cracking idea, and the council are paying for it already, but ingnoring/inadequately assessing the Environmental Impact on you lot – the surfers of bondi. SO KICK OFF!!!
Why is it being done now? Who pays and why? what is the “cost-benefit” for this based on? what about the “dis-benefit” of reduced quality surfing waves? whi do they consult with to reprasent “beach users”? You Bondi Peeps should ORGANISE. Suggest the SLSC would be the natural focus… why arent they kicking off at council for trashing their waves?!! why arent you?! why havent they bulldosed you a new Snapper?
Find a local surfing geomorphologist and/or maritime engineer – they are professionals in this field, will know how to play tunes with council’s own rules, and get you what you want.
i think it’s done because the natural sand movement was changed years ago when the prom was put in.
the sand moves up the beach in the onshore winds and builds up against the wall which in turn seems to make better banks at bondi. the dozer pushes the sand back down the beach and into the water filling up what ever gutters were created by the natural currents of the ocean.
how are the banks now?
we should have a answer to this debate?