When the 2026 Aussie Masters Surf Life Saving Championships rolled into Kirra Beach on the Gold Coast, the racing took the spotlight. Behind it, a quieter job had to be done flawlessly: keeping every jet ski, rescue boat, beach buggy and generator fuelled and ready to go. That is where Ampol and GO Industrial came in, under a banner the two brands now share with Surf Life Saving: Fuelling the Frontline.
Ampol has backed surf lifesaving in Australia for years. For the on-the-ground fuel infrastructure, they turned to GO Industrial. The result was a self-contained, solar-powered, self-bunded fuel setup that sat quietly on the grass behind the dunes and kept the whole event moving.
The challenge: a fuel station on a beach
A surf carnival is a demanding place to put fuel. You have thousands of people, a packed event footprint, sand and salt everywhere, and a fleet of petrol equipment that cannot afford to sit idle waiting for a top-up. Trucking fuel in and out through a busy event area all day is slow, and it introduces exactly the kind of hazard organisers work hard to design out.
The brief to GO Industrial was simple: give the event a reliable, safe, self-sufficient way to store and dispense fuel on site, with no reliance on mains power and no fuel trucks weaving through the public.
What GO Industrial supplied
GO Industrial built and delivered a complete fuelling package for Ampol and Surf Life Saving Queensland, made up of three parts working together:
- Self-bunded diesel and petrol tanks, co-branded GO Industrial, Surf Life Saving and Ampol.
- The GO Solar Pack, a standalone 12V solar battery skid that powers the pump with no mains supply.
- A Piusi EX50 dispensing kit with a meter, in-line filter and nozzle for clean, measured fuelling.
Self-bunded diesel and petrol tanks
The tanks on site were GO Industrial self-bunded tanks in both a 4,000 litre diesel and a 4,500 litre petrol configuration. Self-bunded means each tank carries its own built-in secondary containment, a second skin around the inner tank that captures any leak or overfill before it can reach the ground. On site they sat on bright spill bunds as an extra layer of protection, which is exactly what you want when you are storing flammable liquid metres from a public beach.
Everything a refueller needs is laid out under a single lockable lid: clearly marked fill, dip, suction and spare points, so checking the level or filling the tank is a quick, controlled job. The petrol tank is placarded as a flammable liquid and the diesel as combustible liquid Class C1, with the warning and no-ignition signage built into the unit.
The GO Solar Pack: power with no power point
The standout piece of this build is the GO Solar Pack, a 12V solar battery skid that lets the pump run completely off-grid. There is no generator humming away and no need for a 240V power point anywhere near the tank. As GO's team put it on the day, Queensland being the sunny state does most of the work.
The skid is feature-packed but simple to run:
- A large tilted solar panel on top, angled to catch the sun and keep the battery charged.
- A 120 amp-hour sealed lead-acid battery, which is more than enough to drive the petrol pump through a busy day.
- A Victron charge controller managing the solar input cleanly.
- An auxiliary charger inlet, so on a run of cloudy days you can top the battery up from a generator or mains power instead of relying on solar alone.
- A full safety control panel: main isolator, pump isolator, emergency stop, pump start and stop, and a low-battery indicator light.
The whole unit sits on a mild-steel, powder-coated frame that is transportable and forkliftable, so it can be placed wherever suits the site.
Designed to keep power out of the hazardous area
Here is the clever safety detail. The pump connects to the solar skid with a simple Anderson plug on an 8 metre lead. That length is deliberate: it lets the dispensing pump stay on the tank while the skid, the battery and all the electrics sit well outside the hazardous area around the petrol. You get the convenience of powered dispensing without putting the power source where the fuel vapour is.
Clean, measured dispensing
Fuel is dispensed through a Piusi EX50 12V pump kit. It is a tidy, proven setup: a flow meter so every litre is accounted for, an in-line Water Captor filter that pulls water out of the fuel before it reaches the equipment, and an automatic nozzle for fast, controlled fills. For a fleet of jet skis and buggies being turned around all day, clean fuel and accurate metering matter.
What it kept running
All of this exists to serve the frontline. At the Aussies, that meant the Surf Rescue fleet: beach buggies and side-by-sides patrolling the sand, inflatable rescue boats launching off the beach, jet skis running rescue and patrol on the water, and the generators keeping the event powered. Petrol equipment, all of it, all needing a reliable fill point close at hand.
Reliability is the whole point
For Ampol, the value of the partnership comes down to one thing.
"Reliability is 100% of what we need. Ampol prides itself on quality products and solutions, and we need that from all our suppliers. Having GO Industrial as a reliable partner has made it easier, and gives us the confidence to know that when things go wrong, we've got the support we need."
That support is ongoing, not one-off. As Jason put it, Ampol has been impressed with GO Industrial's level of sales and service, with the GO team responding quickly whenever something needs servicing or a new tank is required. It is the kind of relationship that turns a piece of equipment into a genuine partnership.
Got an unusual application? That is exactly what we love
The Surf Life Saving build is a good example of how GO Industrial approaches a brief. Rather than forcing a standard product onto an awkward problem, the team engineered a solar-powered, self-bunded, plug-and-play package around the real-world constraints of a beachfront event: no mains power, no fuel trucks through the crowd, and a fleet that cannot wait.
If you are moving fuel somewhere tricky, a remote site, a temporary event, a job with no power and no easy logistics, that is the kind of work we enjoy most. Talk to the GO Industrial team at sales@goind.com.au or 07 3204 2240, or explore our self-bunded fuel tanks and we will help you build the right solution for the site.