In 2012, following a massive storm, a video swept across the Internet showing Australian surfers riding waves in front of the Sydney Opera House. On Tuesday, it is back doing the rounds.
At the time, the footage seemed too good to be true — Aussies surfing massive waves in a normally flat harbour in front of an iconic landmark — and it was. The original video was posted on YouTube on June 6, 2012, with surfers saying a 100-year storm created the freak conditions.
According to “Darren Jackson”, the YouTube subscriber who uploaded the video, “Marcie and Frimmy scored an epic sesh with no one else out.”
Storyful debunked the video at the time, stating that, among other obvious production flaws, the landmarks were not correct and that waves could not form in the deep water or be coming from that direction.
On Tuesday, wild weather similar to conditions seen in June, 2012, hit Sydney and the video popped up on social media streams again. Not helping the debunking cause were tweets on Tuesday morning from radio duo Fitzy & Wippa, along with news site The New Daily.
Surfs up bro. #SydneyWeather https://t.co/FIwXqTaP0e
— Fitzy & Wippa (@fitzyandwippa) April 20, 2015
Image: Joel Meares
Three years is like a decade in Internet time, but one thing is certain: It is still impossible to surf waves of this size on Sydney Harbour, so quit your frothing.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement(‘script’);js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}; _msla(“//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js”,”twitter_jssdk”);
