Cyclone Alfred Afterparty: The Gold Coast Is Getting A Sand Shipment From China
“She comes in ridiculously close to the shore, and she’s got a fire hose that spits sand like a rainbow.”
Everything that feels good is bad. You rise, you fall. You hit the high, then crash into the low. No fun for free.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred, according to sir Michael Fanning, brought at least 20 people in his circle the wave of their lives. A beautiful, community-strengthening event, but one with a dirty little aftertaste.
One life gone, 13 people injured. Trees millennia old ripped from their roots, taking with them the concrete roads we built around them. Hundreds of thousands in the dark, from Surfers Paradise to Ballina. Houses, cars, Instagram accounts not tended to — all suffering critical damage. Floodwaters carrying debris and big fish with band intentions. Severe coastal erosion, obliterating any chance of a decent bank along the Gold Coast.
No matter, though. Leave it to a gigantic international machine to fight back against the force of nature. The Nile River, a sand-dredging behemoth of a nautical vessel, is set to sail into the Gold Coast in 12 days to restore balance to the sand. It’s not her first dance, either.
“When she came last time, honest to god, it was so fucked up,” says longtime Gold Coast resident and GoPro godfather, Joel Scott. “It was such a trip. You’d be out in the line up, see this thing, and it’d sound an alarm, and you’d have to get out of the way while it spat sand onto the bank. Along a 10km stretch from Broadbeach to The Spit, you’d have Straddie banks everywhere.”
The Nile River sports neon green skin so bright it’ll fry your retinas, and stretches 150 meters long. She’s a sight, the ol’ girl, and she works like this: Far offshore, she’ll suck up sand from the seabed, gobbling down about 12,000 cubic meters. Before she arrives, she’ll have already mapped out where she’s going to spew her guts to craft the finest topography. Then, she parks herself, and with the elegance of a frog puking up a rainbow, she lets it all go.
“It comes in ridiculously close to the shore, and it’s got a fire hose that spits sand like a rainbow, right onto specific points,” remembers Joel.
The Nile River’s summoning comes, of course, in response to the wreckage left behind by Cyclone Alfred. Her direct target, however, is the north end of the Gold Coast, which means that it’s arrival is unrelated to the upcoming CT stop at Snapper, or the government’s yearly sand dump at Tweed River, where 240 Olympic swimming pools of sand are pumped into the Superbank. Instead, this is about the city council’s plan to lure in holidaymakers for Easter.
“This has nothing to do with the WSL,” says Joel. “It’s all about the cyclone. The City Council’s plan is to pump as much sand back onto the beaches up north before Easter. They’re trying to convince people not to cancel their holidays. The beaches are coming back. They’ve already got bulldozers out there flattening the drop-offs. It’s beach replenishment, with the added bonus of the fucking rainbow spitter.”
The Nile is expected to arrive in Australian waters in 12 days, though as of now, it doesn’t seem to have made much headway.
“I had a look yesterday. The Nile’s docked in China,” says Joel. “Fuck knows what it’s doing there. But it’s meant to be here in 12 days.”
Best she sets sail at once.
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