THE GIFT OF SURFING The Surf Lakes story… so far. Every so often, we get a perfect day. The sun shines, the wind is calm, the waves are rolling in with smooth conditions and everyone gets a break to themselves. For surfers, this is rare and increasingly becoming an elusive prize. So much so that surfers often trek to far reaches of the world to find such perfect days with waves to themselves. Billabong coined a phrase some time ago: “Only a surfer knows the feeling,” which captured the imagination of people around the world. So, what is it about this sport/pastime/lifestyle that is so attractive and addictive? Why does it cause a diverse group of people to spend money, endure long travel and hardship, sometimes risking life, for the relatively brief moments of riding on a wave? It is simply called “stoke”. The stoke of surfing represents an effervescent joy, excitement and pure, almost child-like bliss that makes time stand still. Incredible moments in time that burn into the memory and cause smiles to form and hearts to race even decades later on. It is a powerful, therapeutic “force” that melts away the world and its troubles, at least for a while. But the stoke of surfing is only enjoyed by less than one percent of the world’s population. Ninety-nine percent of the planet will never know the gift of surfing, unless we take it to them. How can that happen? Only with a surf park that creates profitable operations and makes waves available for people of all abilities, at the same time. This is the key purpose of Surf Lakes.The dream of the founder, Aaron Trevis, grew for many years from a seed of thought to the point where he felt compelled to act. He had to know if the idea of a concentric wave machine would work as he thought and if so, would the world get excited about the opportunity?This question has now been answered. After small scale prototyping to prove the concept, Aaron Trevis, Chris Hawley and Reuben Buchanan formed Surf Lakes Holding Ltd and along with Wayne Dart, Kit Sidwell and a growing team, set about raising the capital needed to build a full-scale prototype, to prove to the world that the 5 Waves technology could indeed produce a variety of waves so that “Everyone Gets a Break”.This motto kept the passion burning through countless long days, funding troubles, failures, engineering difficulties, contractual challenges, and often sheer exhaustion, until finally in October 2018, the first waves rolled out for surfing. By this time they had been joined by former world champions Mark “Occy” Occhilupo and Barton Lynch. The surfing community were thrilled about the first wave pool in Australia to deliver waves to surf, with Occy and Barton joined by a collection of Aussie pro surfers to test it out. Whilst the machine worked very well, the waves did not reach full size before a mechanical issues caused testing to cease. Even so, the 1.8m high waves proved the point. Surf Lakes 5 Waves system had worked and worked very well. The videos and media response from Phase 1 testing were viewed by millions and all were excited about the potential of Surf Lakes 5 Waves technology. Once the company has repaired the prototype Phase 2 testing will commence.
