It’s been ridden by all sorts of people. And most of them have one thing in common: taking video of the monster slide while riding boards (usually of the boogie variety) and posting it to social media. This has the local town council nervous in this world of litigation we live in: Tweed Shire in New South Wales is looking to close down Clarrie Hall Dam for fun altogether because it fears the stunt poses an imminent drowning threat.
Clarrie Hall Dam spills into a steep slide where fun hogs gain speed before plowing into the large catch-pool at the bottom. And that’s what has officials in the town worried: “It’s got a large flip bucket at the end which is an energy dissipating device and with any significant flow you can be held underwater in that flip bucket and drowned, obviously on the way down you can be rendered unconscious and drown,” said the council’s head of water, Anthony Burnham.
The dam has essentially always been illegal to ride but now, thanks to that uptick in social media views, it has become too visible and overrun. So the council wants to somehow make it completely off limits to the general public (the surrounding structure has apparently been vandalized, allowing tresspassers a trail into the unintended fun park). Damn kids and their boogies….
