Want to own the best wave in Western Australia,
maybe lock it up for your own pleasures?
If you surf, you know Gnaraloo. If you’re a
little older you’ll remember Jack McCoy’s Billabong Challenges,
held there in 95 and 96, the world’s best surfers at one of the
world’s best waves, Kelly Slater, Machado, Sunny, Occ.
And, if you grew up in the relatively waveless city of Perth,
1100 clicks south, it was the wave you dreamed about as the cold
winds of winter came. As all the best surfers loaded up their
Landcruisers and headed north on the North West Coastal Highway,
following in the footsteps of pioneers Craig Howe and Charlie
Konstantinidis who first surfed the joint in 1975 after being
tipped off by a Land Rover salesman.
Now, the primary wave at Gnaraloo is Tombstones, long wildly
barrelling left, as you know, but the whole joint spans over over
84,000 hectares and has 65 kilometers of prime coastline along the
southern entrance of the Ningaloo Marine Park, a UNESCO World
Heritage Site.
The sale, which is a combined pastoral and tourism lease,
includes 1500 goats as livestock. The realtor, Jarrad O’Rourke,
emphasises the desire to keep accommodation affordable, reflecting
its rustic roots.
Right now, you got 3 Mile Camp, near Tombstones with its bore
water toilets and hot showers and a little shop that sells basic
food and cold beer, Gnaraloo Homestead with its self-contained
cabins, one-twenty a night, or the big ol Fishing Lodge, ten
bedrooms and room for 22 swingers.
The ginger-topped photographer Scotty Bauer told ABC he wanted
the goats removed, they pests etc, and “I hope it’s a fresh start
for that coastline; it would be great to get someone in there that
has some knowledge about running a camp of that nature mindfully.
The coast is dying. It’s dead in some places – that is a real
concern.”
Want to see how good it gets?
