How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Wave Pool
Oscar Schwartz goes surfing in Tullamarine
Just off the freeway, at a chalk-white hotel with curving forms, long horizontal lines, and vaguely nautical themes, wetsuits hang draped over the balustrades. It looks like an image pulled from a brochure for some three-star Gold Coast beach resort in the 1990s. Alas, I’m in Tullamarine. In these industrial flatlands out by the airport, the wetsuits are a curious sight. The closest surf beach is over one hundred kilometres away. But these days surfers don’t need the ocean. They can fulfil their heart’s desire in a pool.
I drive past the hotel at just past 9.30am on a scorching Wednesday morning, and then, a few moments later, I pull into the carpark at UrbnSurf, Australia’s first surf park. It is not quite a fully fledged holiday destination, but it’s not far off. Here, you can find a three-hundred seater restaurant, a function centre, two jacuzzis, a playground for the kids, a bar, an outdoor skate rink, well-trimmed lawns, and a clinic with free skin cancer checks. The main attraction, of course, is a twenty-million litre, diamond-shaped swimming pool, with a pier running straight through the middle, beneath which heaves a patented swell-producing machine capable of summoning powerful, surfable waves, at a clip of around one thousand waves per hour.
There are, in total, eight waves to choose from at UrbnSurf. These range from beginner waves that crumble gently into the pool’s shallows to advanced two-metre barrels that peel fast off the point and hollow out into tubular miracles. Reviewing the wave menu on UrbnSurf’s website a week earlier, I settled for a group lesson on a “fun, gentle point break-style wave” called the “Cruiser.” I signed a series of waivers and paid $139 dollars. For this, I would get a brief lesson, an hour in the pool, and around a dozen “guaranteed perfect 3ft waves that bring nothing but stoke for 12-16 seconds each ride.”
That phrase—“nothing but stoke”—stuck in my head. There was something sinister about it, how it transformed an adjective/state of being (“she was stoked to catch such a sick wave”) into a noun/object of exchange (“he paid $139 and in return we gave him an hour of stoke”). It shouldn’t have ruffled me. I’m not a surfer. And yet, it did—just as when I first heard about UrbnSurf a few years ago, with its pay-per-wave formula, I couldn’t help but feel that some unholy contrivance had arrived in our otherwise waveless city.
To repeat, I am not a surfer. My sentiments about the wave pool arise not due to some commitment to the sport or its attendant lifestyle. My suspicion arises from somewhere more abstract, potentially ideological. I feel about wave pools how I feel about decaffeinated coffee, alcohol-free beer, sex robots, and other pleasures so deprived of their essential substance so as to become nothing more than products of unconstrained consumption.
In other words, before I even arrive at UrbnSurf, on this dread-hot summer’s day, I am bringing bad vibes, brah. Bad vibes, indeed.
*
When I walk through the turnstile, though, I can’t help but gasp. The biggest, bluest pool I’ve ever seen is churning out set after set of evenly-spaced, uniformly-sized, perfectly symmetrical breakers. Surfers glide past one by one in neat diagonal rows. The mechanical prowess of the operation is mesmerising, and distinctly unnatural. Not that UrbnSurf goes to such great lengths to affect an ocean-like atmosphere for visitors. The place is all black shipping containers and concrete. There is no artificial sand in sight, just a few dozen vacant sun loungers, and an elevated lifesaver hut that looks like a high-tech prison watch tower. (Affixed to the hut are conspicuous cameras that track, with facial recognition technology, every surfer’s every move.) The only organically coastal aspect to the scene are the seagulls, which hover above the water, hoping to scavenge… what, exactly? The pool is chlorinated.
At the near side of the lagoon are the amenities and restaurant, where a group of lads sink beers and cheer on a mate who is out in the pool ripping it up in a wedding veil—the perfect start to a long buck’s weekend. I sign in and retrieve my rental wetsuit and board, a big, blue foamy thing. There are six of us in the lesson. Our instructor is tall, lithe, and very handsome. He has shaggy hair cut into a Joey Ramone-style fringe, hoop earrings, and tattoos that carry slogans like “love and peace”—a Rip Curl advertisement come to life. In a gentle, sing-song voice, he guides us through some basics: where to take off, how to pop up, what to do when we fall off (“never head first; the concrete is hard”). Then, we’re ready to head out into the swell.
I should mention: when I said earlier that I’m not a surfer, it doesn’t mean I don’t wish I was. I find the activity extremely alluring—aspirational, even. I adore swimming in the ocean, and in particular, body surfing, with its seductive mix of violence and surrender. Around a decade ago, in a ploy to stop drinking too much on weekends, I began heading down to the surf coast before sunrise on Saturday mornings to face the Southern Ocean. The scariest part was the paddle out. I’d sit on the beach watching the waves for ages, butterflies in my stomach. Eventually, I’d pick a lull between sets, leap into the whitewash, and start paddling like crazy towards the horizon. Sometimes I’d make it beyond the break. Often, in the early days, I missed my chance and a heaving set would rise and smash me back onto the shore, sending my board flying. Humiliating.
At UrbnSurf, I encounter no such problem. A channel running along the middle of the pool functions basically like a slip lane out to the point. We paddle effortlessly, single file, and take our place in the orderly line-up. Suddenly, there is a lurching moan from deep below and the water begins to sway. This is the wave machine coming to life.
UrbnSurf uses Wavegarden Cove, a system invented by a team of Basque-based engineers that, as far as I understand, uses 40-odd electro-mechanical flaps to swoosh water up a tube that runs through the pool’s centre with such great velocity that, when it bursts out of some unseen valve at the top of the pool, it produces a great hump of fast-moving moving water. As the swell rolls towards the “beach,” it refracts against the concrete bottom, steepening as the pool grows shallower, before cresting at the very point where the surfers eagerly await their turns. The whole procedure is choreographed to the inch. There are even symbols painted on the wall indicating the perfect take-off spot.
Wavegarden has been working on these waves for almost two decades. The first iteration involved driving a plough through a 300-metre long lagoon. As the displaced water approached the banks, it shaped into waist-high, peeling, murky brown waves. In 2011, the fledgling company released footage of several pro surfers carving up these artificial, glassy lefts, and then four years later, the first Wavegarden-powered surf park opened in Northern Wales, where visitors could enjoy twenty second-long rides in a pool filled with thirty-one million litres of pure, Welsh rain water.
This was overshadowed only a few months later, when Kelly Slater, the greatest surfer of all time, published footage of him getting barrelled on his private surf ranch in California. Kelly’s Wave, as it came to be known, was so superb—and its rider so revered—that it was all anyone could talk about for months after. Surf historian Matt Warshaw put it in Messianic terms, suggesting that there are only two eras in surfing—before Kelly’s Wave, and after.
Slater’s machine was so powerful that it had a long latency period between waves. It could only make fifteen an hour. Given the vast amount of energy the system took to operate, the cost per wave remained beyond reach for all but the wealthiest surfers. (To hire out Slater’s Ranch for a full day and night costs $130,000. This buys you approximately 120 surfable waves. You do the maths).
Meanwhile, Wavegarden kept plugging away on their tech, and eventually developed the far more efficient Wavegarden Cove system. Its waves were not quite as elegant as Kelly’s, but the machine could pump out sixteen per minute. This brought down the cost per wave by orders of magnitude—and suddenly, surf parks became a viable product for public stoke.
Back at UrbnSurf, the first Cruiser wave arrives. Up first is a sinewy older man with a shaggy beard who effortlessly pops to his feet and glides away. The next guy, young and beefy, thrashes around while trying to get in position. He misses his wave. Another comes through and knocks him sideways into the foam. As we wait for him to vacate the drop zone, two more waves pass by. The woman behind me groans. That’s approximately $20 worth of swell, lost forever.
I’m next. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me as I angle my board towards the shore. I begin paddling, and then feel a great surge of energy carry me forward. I wobble to my feet. The wave is gentle and forgiving, as advertised, hoisting me smoothly most of the way into shore. I jump off, banging my arse on the ground. Thank god I didn’t kook out, I think, before paddling back out for my next turn.
As I bob up and down in the orderly line-up, I notice gun metal clouds streaked with sinews of electricity. A storm is brewing. This is bad news for us UrbnSurf customers. If the lightning travels here, the life guards will have to pull us out. There is an irony to this. In the ocean, rideable waves begin with a tempest out at sea. As storm-thrashed waters radiate into calmer seas, the turbulence organises itself into neat sets that travel vast distances before finding some shore to crash on. Storms are what make surfing possible. At UrbnSurf, they are a class action waiting to happen.
*
Later, I browse photos from my session captured by UrbnSurf’s surveillance technology. (A single photo costs $11.99, but can be viewed, with a watermark, gratis.) In each, I wear a shit-eating grin. It reminds me of those rollercoaster snaps, taken right as the carriage descends down the final plunge, sold as hard evidence of the fun you just had.
In fact, the whole UrbnSurf experience had a whiff of Disney to it. There is something to this, historically speaking. The first ever wave pool was, according to legend, built in an artificial cave beneath one of King Ludwig II’s castles. Ludwig, who ruled Bavaria from 1864 to 1886, was also known as the Fairytale King, due to his penchant for using the royal coffers to build elaborate reconstructions of castles from his most beloved medieval fables. Around century later, Walt Disney used them as inspiration for Sleeping Beauty’s castle, which then became the blueprint for the various replicas constructed in his amusement parks. Naturally, the Walt Disney Company also dabbled in wave pools. The first was constructed in the man-made Seven Seas Lagoon in Walt Disney World, Florida, but it caused severe erosion on the banks of the Polynesian Village Resort and had to be discontinued. In the 1980s, Disney built another wave pool called Typhoon Lagoon that would intermittently pummel guests with six foot slabs of water. It was a hit with the kids.
Wave-making tech has improved vastly since then, but wave pools are still basically simulated thrills that can be enjoyed for a limited time and at a price. Sure, at UrbnSurf I caught more waves than I ever have in the ocean, but the pool’s predictability made the whole exercise arduous and a little dull. The session was a constant up and down, up and down. By the end, my shoulders ached, I was schvitzing in my wetsuit, and I was relieved to finally paddle in.
But this ride-like, exercise-adjacent aspect to the wave pool is really the selling point. It makes the surf park marketable as part of a broader lifestyle, leisure, and holiday package. For example, Andrew Ross, the former oil and gas executive who started UrbnSurf, has since left the company to build Aventuur, a $100 million surf park in Perth, with restaurants, bars, “wellness facilities,” and accommodation. Kelly Slater, still vying for his slice of the pie, will open a surf park on a holiday island in Abu Dhabi this year. And then, of course, there is the water park planned for construction in Saudi Arabia as part of Mohammed bin Salman’s utopian NEOM enterprise. Along with The Line, the 170 km-long wall city, Trojena, the ski resort in the desert, and Oxagon, the floating port, there will be Qiddiya, a full-stack outdoor entertainment experience, complete with sports arenas, a racetrack, a Jack Nicklaus-branded golf course, the world’s tallest roller coaster, and, of course, a wave pool.
I have perused the renders for these adult amusement parks. They are all glass domes, indoor forests, artificial seas—everything pristine, homeostatic, and landscaped for optimum surveillance. They look like so many Elysiums, little worlds within worlds signifying our final triumph over nature in the midst of the sixth great extinction.
They make me think about what the writer Gary Indiana had to say about Euro Disney, in the suburbs outside Paris, after visiting on assignment for the Village Voice. “There are no shadows, no ambiguities or disappointments in a Disney childhood, no sirree bob… If I ran an amusement park, there would be real pirates and gypsies and an authentic criminal element on hand to supply a sense of risk.”
Maybe what UrbnSurf needs is a shark in the tank?
*
A week later, I happen to be in Byron Bay. This is a happy coincidence, as the wave I rode in Tullamarine—the Cruiser—is, apparently, a simulacrum of The Pass, a gentle right-hander that peels off a point near Cape Byron Headland. I am eager to compare UrbnSurf to the real thing, but for the first three days a blistering wind blows in from the north and flattens everything into a frothy mess. On the fourth, the northerly subsides, but the sea goes flat. Hardly a ripple. I resign myself to leaving without getting a wave, until, on my second last day, a swell rolls in from some distant storm and a breeze arrives gently from the east. Perfect conditions.
In the afternoon, I head out with an 8-foot foam board tucked under my arm. A light rain falls. There is almost no wind. The waves are breaking off the point in sublime wheels of blue-green light. The swell is a fair bit bigger than the Cruiser wave, and I’ve had enough surfing experience to know that what looks gentle and mild on the beach can be ferocious and unforgiving in the water. By now, there is a long line of surfers following the break all the way up the beach, at least a couple of hundred. I paddle a wide arc around the line-up so I don’t get in anyone’s way.
For the moment, I’m happy to sit on my board and observe. The quality varies. Lots of beginners nosediving out here. But then, also, some exceptionally stylish riders. There is one woman who surfs on a long, wooden plank, crouched over in a deep squat, drifting and sliding across the green face with cat-like agility. There’s a burly bloke with a handle-bar mustache who shares a stand-up paddle board with his tiny blonde daughter. He steers at the back, while she sits cross legged on the nose, directing him with high-pitched yelps. “Turn left. Watch out!”
Suddenly, the surfers ahead of me paddle urgently towards the horizon. A big set is rolling in, breaking earlier than usual. As it barrels through, the surfers to the right of me get cleaned up, one after the other. I happen to be, almost against my will, in the perfect spot to take it. I turn, paddle, and somehow, get to my feet. I’m hurled forward at great speed but manage to stay standing, turning my nose back up away from the white water towards the wave’s green face. From there, it is a two hundred metre joy ride. I simply stand and let the hydraulics do their work, a grateful traveller.
I paddle back out, wide-eyed and shaking. A short-boarder gives me a thumbs up. “Wave of the day,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s mocking or encouraging me. Probably both. I don’t really care. Thing is, I want another one of what I just had. I want that feeling again.
I take a more aggressive spot in the line-up and wait, eyes glued to the horizon now. Minutes pass without a set. When the next one rolls through, each wave is gobbled up by a better surfer than me. Same with the next. I grow agitated. I’m wave-addled and greedy, chasing the water dragon. I want everyone else to get swallowed up by the ocean, leaving me alone to enjoy its pleasures. Why are those Italian guys taking all the waves? Why is this little kid swimming so close to me? When my next chance does eventually arrive, I paddle too keenly, and slip off the front of my board. Is that stupid grommet laughing at me? What time is it? Agh. Who cares? Who cares if there's a pod of dolphins frolicking over there in the near distance. I need another fucking wave.
*
What happened to me at The Pass is, I think, best explained via a meme about monetary policy. In this meme, which spread during the early Covid days, there are two demonic-looking internet sprites, known as Wojaks, one printing money, and the other crying tears of frustration. “Noooo! You can’t artificially inflate the economy by creating money to fight an economic downturn,” the frustrated Wojak says. The money-printing Wojak responds, blithely: “haha money printer go brrrrr.” On my first visit to UrbnSurf, I was the crying Wojak, overthinking things. “Noooo! you can't artificially replicate the ocean’s appalling power in a chlorinated tub.” Then I caught one good wave and my brain went smooth. Now, I just smile and say, “haha wave printer goes brrrrr.”
Of course, some will never accept the wave pool. The Surfriders Foundation of Europe, for instance, recently wrote an open letter objecting to surf parks on environmental grounds. Wave pools demand huge water and energy consumption, and their construction often implies some sort of ecological destruction. (The Aventuur project in Perth, for instance, will clear woodland where red-tailed black cockatoos make their home.) Others, like surf historian Matt Warshaw, remain ideologically opposed. “Scarcity makes our sport,” he said in an interview back in 2016. “Lack of good surf makes surfing really difficult, for starters, which is great, and then it turns us all into hustlers and liars and travelers and autodidacts, unreliable employees and even worse life partners, and that shit put together is really all we have going for us in terms of surf culture and personality.”
But most surfers I speak to don’t appreciate the romance of scarcity. Like me, they have learned to stop worrying and love the pool, because, well, they are addicted to waves. And unlike the ocean, the pool always delivers. My brother-in-law loves the wave pool. My friend’s neighbour loves the wave pool. Hell, Kelly Slater, the greatest surfer ever, loves the wave pool. I recently asked a woman enjoying a post-surf, late-morning cocktail at the UrbnSurf bar if she felt there was something spiritually awry about artificial waves. She looked me dead in the eye and said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She is a lifelong surfer, and also, a busy woman with a demanding job and three kids. For years, she had to give up waves because she just didn’t have time for the capricious ocean. Without them, she grew depressed. Ever since UrbnSurf opened, she can schedule in one hour a week of pure stoke.
*
After a recent session at UrbnSurf (I’m now surfing intermediate waves), I see the wetsuits hanging from the airport hotel balustrades again, and decide to pull into the carpark and have a look around. The man working behind the desk at reception has kind, depressive eyes and a perfectly shiny head.
“The surfing has been very, very good for business,” he tells me. “People travel from all over just to surf here, and they stay here with us. Just today, someone calls me from New Zealand. ‘Hello, I want to stay at your hotel and surf for a week,’ he says. ‘Ok Mr New Zealand,’ I say. 'You will be very welcome.’”
“And what are they like as guests, the surfers?” I ask.
“These are lovely people, brother,” he says. “So humble and healthy. They wake up early in the morning, before sunrise, even, and they run out of the front door with their boards. And then they don't come back, not even for lunch, until the late evening. Aren't they hungry? I wonder. No. They are satisfied from the waves. Their eyes are wide like children's. You know what I mean, brother, happy eyes.”
“Have you tried it yourself?”
“Me? No, no. I'm scared of the water. But I go up to the top floor here and I can watch. You know, I watched the whole place being built from here, too. I saw them cut down the trees, first. And then dig up the ground. Then they laid all the piping, and poured the concrete. So much concrete. And finally, they filled it with water. And just when it was all ready, brother, Covid came. The pool was ready but there was no one to surf it. It was empty. I would look out and only the birds were there. So sad. They thought it was a lake.”
I ask if he can show me the view over the pool. He shrugs and leads me up the stairs. We look out at the lagoon from a window, where the surfers appear as little mechanical sardines making lines across the pool.
“Beautiful, right?” he says.
“Right,” I say, though from this vantage point, I can see the industrial guts that power the place: air conditioning vents, exhaust pipes, a whole tangle of high-powered machinery designed to bring the ocean’s erratic soul under rational control.
“You know, I like this surfing park. And of course, it is good for business,” the man says. “But there is one thing I find, let’s say, upsetting.”
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes, late at night, when all the surfers have left, they will drain all the water, and there is just a hole in the ground.”
“Why is that upsetting?” I ask.
“It is hard to say, brother, but I don’t like to see it. The problem, maybe, is how quickly it happens. One second there is all this beautiful water, and then, whoosh, it disappears. It is not natural to see so much water disappear so quickly. And for me, it raises some questions. Like for example, where did all that water go?”