Despite two days building retaining walls with earth-moving equipment, at 4am this morning, 10-12' walls of foam came in without knocking and literally pulled the rug out from the Supertubes contest site.

WPS photographic guy Peter Wilson was up in the dark and straight on the scene: "The force of the waves caused damage to almost all the contest infrastructure. Huge shipping containers being used for offices and storage were actually floating through the site as the water washed through.

"Hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage has been caused to audio, video and computer equipment as well as structurally to the buildings."