But one of the best things we have is
changing the wave during the ride, and
that’s why we persevered with designing a
totally controllable drive system so that you
are not stuck with the same wave shape all
the time.
This way you’re able to choose customised
waves, so you can have the wave angle
change from a fat-hander at close to 90
degrees to the beach, which is great for a
cutback, to a more sharply angled wave for
turning off the top to an even faster peeling
wave that tubes nice and open. And all this
can be happening while the wave is growing
in size. So I can’t see anyone getting bored.
Are you ready to go with the project once
the full green light is given by the council
or are you still working on fine-tuning it?
Yeah we’re ready to go. The preliminary
design is completed and this covers
the mechanical, structural and electrical
components that are required, and how they
all fit together and how they’re controlled.
The detailed design will commence once we
are in contract with the client, and a pool size
An earlier depiction of the technology at play
here // Picture Webber Wave Pools
and wave size maximum has been decided.
That’s standard practice with engineering
on this scale.
Looking at how you started, surfing the
Clarence River waves, to where you are
now - how long has this been a dream for
you and has it taken over your life to get
to this point?
Not my whole life but the first time I got the
method sorted was in 1999.
How are you feeling now it is so, so close
to becoming a reality with the world
watching? Nervous, excited, numb, brain
dead ha ha?
Not nervous at all because I am sure of what
the waves will be like. We’ve smashed the
research side and have really well-proven
science to validate the method, plus I’ve
made over 5000 six inch waves and over
500 one metre waves, so I’m sure of what
they will look like. But this is where the drive
system comes in again, because you don’t
have to hope to get it exactly right within
some tiny tolerance, because all of the