SUPERBANK: The Super Debate Over Man-Made Perfection?

What does Kelly think? It looks like he likes it.

The irony is that humans have been devoting more and more time to creating artificial waves on purpose, when Australia did it by accident. To experience Superbank is to make you proud to be a human, even if humans created all that spinning perfection accidentally on purpose. But now go back to that fantasy Rincon scenario, and mourn the death of Sandspit, and La Conchita Point. Remember Sandspit was permanently removed when they took out all that sand, and La Conchita Point became little more than an end section. Tom Curren is still in that tree, now giving speeches on the death of Sandspit and little Rincon.

And that is also the situation in Australia, because the rise of Superbank meant the fall of Kirra, and there are a lot of surfers present and legendary who mourn the loss of what was once considered the world’s most perfect wave.

Wayne “Rabbit” Bartholomew is a first generation Coolie Kid. He grew up within a few miles of Kirra, learned to surf at Kirra, learned to get barreled at Kirra and defended Kirra in the 1970s, when he and Owl Chapman got into a magazine debate over which wave was more perfect. Rabbit was one of the Queensland surfers who spoke up loud at the threat posed by the Tweed River San Diversion Project, and he was not entirely pleased when the Superbank turned his beloved Kirra into an afterthought – an end section. “I totally agree with Owl in the 70's, Kirra sucked big time, for about 400 metres,” Rabbit said in October 2007, for a book called Extreme Surf. “Kirra has experienced huge problems in recent years. The first was when the Big Groyne was shortened by 30 metres (a hundred yards). Before that Kirra was exclusively a barrel: no cute moves out of the lip, all below sea level deep barrel riding. The shortened groyne straightened the bank by eliminating the finger of sand that formed off the end of the full length groyne, and suddenly the wave would outrun you, unless you were being towed in. When Mick Fanning can't make Kirra, it is just too fast for human consumption.”

Mick Fanning and Joel Parkinson are two of the members of the Coolie Kids 2.0 who saw Kirra rise and fall during their lifetimes. Both surfers love having one of the manmade wonders of the surfing world appear like magic in their backyard, but they, like Rabbit, also mourn the loss of Kirra. They are among a growing number of Queensland surfers who would love to see realized what Rabbit has on the drawing board in his mind: “The ideal situation would be to remove the excess sand from Kirra, lengthen the Big Groyne and leave Super Bank as is. That's what we are working on but it could be a long process. Pretty much all the epic stuff you see of Kirra these days is either jet ski assist or not Kirra at all but Super Bank running down towards Kirra. So it ain't Kirra but it's better then nothing. But I'm not that interested about comparing Kirra to Maalaea or Rifles or Super Tubes, they are truly awesome waves that don't rely on sand. I just know that for 40 years I have traveled to places and the locals always say: “When the sand builds here or the river breaks or after it rains, this section is like Kirra.”