Watch: All You Need To See From The Last Few Days On The Gold Coast

We’ve had a feed full of it this week, the neatly arranged lines, the sandy cylinders, figures ducking and weaving through shallow drainers and yesterday’s magnificent jet ski blunder. Tuesday it arrived, a tad larger and more unruly than Wednesday, and today it was gone. Short lived as the pulse was, a mind bending amount of time was spent in the Gold Coast shade. Interestingly it wasn’t the usual faces of Snapper, or Greenmount splashed across our screens. Instead those in the know ventured further up the coast to find Kirra, Currumbin and Burleigh Heads were doing things they hadn’t done in years.

Kirra, looking perhaps a little more paddle and user friendly on Tuesday. (Photo: Juan Medina.)

While Stab sat yearning on the sidelines, we began compiling what we could of the recent flurry. A handful of phone calls and emails later and local photogs, Juan Medina and Andrew Shield had gifted us with fresh imagery (below), our filmer pal, Lachlan McKinnon delivered motion picture (above) while Ryan Hipwood, Bede Durbidge and Steph Gilmore provided the recount. Let’s start with Bede’s words.

Everything about this moment screams intensity. Bede Durbidge by Andrew Shield.

“Last last couple of days was as pretty much as good as it gets on the Goldie,” said Mr Durbidge, a credible source to say the least. “Tuesday was six to eight foot and just freight training barrels. We’ve been super lucky the sand on all the points are so lined up at the moment. Sometimes we get these amazing swells and they’re wasted because the banks are average. It was so nice to see it all come together. Everyone is so surfed out now!”

Dom Walsh and something worthy of your wall space. (Photo: Andrew Shield)

“The swell’s been really good, but it’s more the banks that are amazing,” Mr Hipwood told Stab whilst trying to catch up on the life admin he’d missed. “It literally hasn’t done that in eight years. A friend who lives at Burleigh who always surfs it told me it was pumping and back to its original bank, I was like ‘yeah, whatever, heard that before!’, and I went and checked it and was like ‘holy shit!’ It was legit, every wave was spitting. It was amazing. There were waves that were going through unridden that were just ridiculous. I’ve actually never seen it like that, I’ve been surfing there since forever and it was crazy.”

“There were waves that were going through unridden that were just ridiculous,” said Ryan Hipwood. (Photo: Juan Medina)

With the additional current came the great jet ski invasion. “I think people went a bit far with that day, they got a bit greedy,” he said of the motorised floatilla. “Once heaps of skis rocked up it was kind of like, I’m not paddling now cos everyone is going to be stepping off. The lifeguards basically worded everyone up and said ‘look boys if you do step-off’s we’ll take your rego and start handing out fines’. I was stoked, because I knew that half the kooks that couldn’t do step-offs couldn’t paddle the wave anyway, so it worked out better (laughs).

Steph Gilmore, Kirra and the aspiration of every wave pool technician. (Photo: Juan Medina)

“There was lots of energy getting around on the first day of the swell and plenty of current,” said Queen of the bank, Miss Steph Gilmore. “Everyone that had a jet ski got ridiculously tubed at Currumbin and Burleigh. I did have slight FOMO but I just used my arms instead and managed to get a few head dips up at Kirra and Greenmount. The second day it was smaller and more organised. It was a fun few days.”

When sand and reef become interchangeable, Dean Morrison negotiates. (Image: Andrew Shield)