History of Snapper Rocks

Since before European settlement, the Tweed River mouth entrance has been constantly plagued by strong currents, sand bars and sand banks, making it a difficult, and dangerous stretch of water. It's no coincidence that Captain Cook named Point Danger and Mount Warning when he sailed past in 1770! When strong swells combined with dangerous rocks and sand banks, it was a recipe for disaster for ships and swimmers on nearby beaches.

River dredging had been undertaken in the Tweed since the late 1800s in attempst to improve navigability and these works culminated in the extension of the training walls at the river entrance during 1962-65. Although extension of the training walls improved navigation for a period, the sand bar over the entrance began to reform in the 1980s and 1990s. While the rock walls did help to improve the passage of watercraft for a time, their presence ended up altering the erosion and sediment patterns of the southern Gold Coast beaches, resulting in a build up of sand along Letitia Spit and significant erosion along the southern Gold Coast beaches.

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By 1994 large amounts of sand had moved past the end of the breakwater and created a large, shallow bar at the Tweed River entrance which was extremely hazardous to navigation, especially at low tide. In response to the issue, the NSW and Queensland governments formulated the Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypassing Project (TRESBP), in order to maintain a safe navigable entrance to the Tweed River and to restore and maintain the amenity of the beaches on the southern Gold Coast of Queensland.

The first stage of the project (undertaken between 1995-1998) involved dredging more than three million cubic metres of sand from the Tweed Bar and entrance to create a navigable channel. The sand was pumped out via outlets at Snapper Rocks and Kirra, and it did an excellent job of replenishing the beaches in Coolangatta's Rainbow Bay.

While that pleased the sunbakers, the natural tides and currents quickly worked their own magic and turned the fresh sand into a massive bank stretching between the two pumping outlets.

When the northern and easterly swells began to hit this new bank, a brand new type of wave was formed, and in big swells, under the right conditions, the superbank becomes a combination of the original Rainbow Bay surf spots: Snapper, Greenmount and Kirra. In Autumn 2002, local Surfer Damon Harvey managed to ride a 4-6 foot wave the entire distance from Snapper Rocks to Kirra - earning him a slot in the record books as the person to ride the longest ocean wave at over 1.5km (about four minutes in length).

Because dredging is still happening, the bank is constantly changing on a daily basis, so every season brings a new type of wave and a new type of bank. In March 2006 a storm, generated by an off-shore cyclone, sent 5m+ waves crashing into Rainbow Bay, and much of the bank was washed north to Surfers Paradise. Dredging should see the bank re-formed and back in action by Winter 2006.

Sand Dredging Statistics (courtesy of the Tweed River Entrance Sand Bypassing Project)

PUMPING

Sand pumped in last 12 months (as at 31 December 2005)	724,931 m 3
Total Pumping (Since March 2001)	3,305,557 m 3

DREDGING

Sand Dredged in last 12 months (as at end of 30 September 2005)	176,189 m 3
Stage - 1 (26 Apr 1995 to 26 May 1998)	3,047,549 m 3
Stage - 2A (1 Apr 2000 to 20 Oct 2002)	1,062,618 m 3
Stage - 2B (7 Feb 2003 to 30 September 2005)	577,007 m 3
Total Dredging (Since 1995)	4,687,174 m 3