Woodfordia Folk Festival- Lake Gkula ProFab®Geotextile

Project Background:

The Woodford Folk Festival is an annual music and cultural festival held near the semi-rural town of Woodford, 72 km north of Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of the biggest annual cultural events of its type in Australia. Every year approximately 125,000 patrons attend the festival over a 6 day period.

The Woodford festival experience is deep, rich and colourful. It is based on a vision of inclusive and creative community, culture and tradition passed through generations, expressed through story and ceremony. The site, a former barren dairy farm, has been carefully regenerated with over 120,000 subtropical rain forest trees, orchids, ferns and sedges, planted to create a habitat for butterflies and wildlife.

Festival organisers wanted to offer a natural swimming hole as an additional experience for festival goers, which lead to the development of Australia’s largest all natural conservation and recreation lake, Lake Gkula.

Problem:

Costing more than $1.5 million to build, including funding from the Queensland Government, Woodford’s new addition has sourced all of its water from on-site dams and a bore.

The festival organisers were acutely aware that they were developing a watering hole in drought conditions, and they therefore ensured it was partly powered by solar energy. The Woodford team are working towards running the lake entirely on renewable sources.

To ensure the above could be achieved, the swimming hole’s pond lining system needed protection. This meant that a cushioning geotextile would be required to ensure strong resistance to damage for years to come.

Things to consider when selecting a cushioning geotextile:

1. Understanding the long-term properties and stress analysis of your selected barrier system

2. The guidelines and testing used to determine the characteristics of your geotextile: mass; thickness and puncture, based on Australian and International Standards.

3. The elongation capacity of the geotextile, as this will dictate the resistance to damage.

4. The mass of the rolls of the geotextile – generally the larger mass rolls of geotextile provide the best cushioning protection.

Solution:

Crucially for both the lake’s biodiversity and for human swimmers, the entire body of water is chemical-free, using pumps and injectors to keep both a constant water flow and high levels of oxygen.

The water is pushed through two wetlands, which act to purify the lake while also encouraging microorganisms to thrive. The system is based around a natural filtration system of gravels and living plants and microbes to filter the water so it is safe for swimming.

Global Synthetics supplied our Profab AS801 Nonwoven Staple fibre geotextile as a protection geotextile for the special highly flexible liner that was used to seal the pond.

When used as a protection layer, this geotextile acts as a cushioning barrier between a geosynthetic lining system such as in a dam or landfill cell.

Defending the geomembrane from any damage from external forces coming into contact with the liner and reducing local stresses is imperative. This ability to act as a protection layer enables structural fill and base courses to maintain their reliability for longer periods of time. It is therefore paramount that the correct nonwoven needle-punched geotextile cushion is specified, selected and installed.

Results:

Profab® AS801 was selected based on its excellent cushioning, puncture resistance and tear resistance to meet the design criteria for this application.