The Riddle of the Sands

One topic, one question has now replaced all others as, day by day, I beach-pass other familiar dog-walkers, each of us inside our scientifically-required, two-metre protection bubbles: “… will it come back?”

Those unfamiliar with Lorne may think I refer to the pestilence – but no!  We are in Lorne, and when beach walking in Lorne, it is all about the sand, and – well – there just isn’t any!

People keep stopping me, as if I were some savant Merlin, with the question: “… do you think it will come back?”

Turning on my glass-half-full version of myself, I beam with confidence and say: “… history says it will come back … it has before, and it will again.”

But privately, inside, I quake with apprehension that this time might be different and that: “… no, maybe not this time” might be a more accurate bet.

Longer memories may recall the ‘1958 tidal wave’ … well, it wasn’t a tidal wave [I have dubbed it that], but an uncommonly high tide – a tidal ‘surge’ – that coincided with the mother of all easterlies. Seawater surged across the sward now used for Frisbee-throwing, kick-to-kick footy, and the children’s playground. Parts of the protective sea wall were damaged, and several sea-front beach-boxes were washed away. The golden crescent of Lorne beach sand became ‘sand … what sand’?  In a panic, a series of groynes – one of rock [it still remains] and another eight of wood [later removed in 2006 for the World Surf Lifesaving Championships] – were installed to coax the sand back.

Then – again – in June 1973, an [edited] ‘Lorne News’ report read:

“… an exceptionally heavy swell recently pounded our coastline. The Lorne pier received such a battering that three piles lifted from the sand while the bottom deck warped and buckled [NB: there was a lower deck on the old pier].  The heavy swell was accompanied by unusually high tides that flooded the foreshore lawns and submerged the Erskine River Caravan Park beneath the tide-swollen river”.

Two truisms come to mind:

[1] history has a habit of repeating itself.

[2] nature is very good at remodelling and repair.

With these in mind, my glass-half-full optimism predicts all will be well and that the sand cover – now so sparse at the North Lorne rocks and beyond the Vera Lynn car park to Shelly Beach – will return. Be patient, says my half-full glass: nature will restore this sand-poor aberration

But scratch too deeply at a half-full glass, and it will begin to leak.  ‘Now’ is shaping up to be subtly different from ‘then’. ‘Then’, the ambient basal sea-level was stable. ‘Now’, it is rising – perceptibly – and within a single human life span.

Rock shelves never dampened by the high tide now routinely submerge. All along the coast, erosive evidence of the encroaching sea is seen. To be truthful, this time, it does seem a little scary. If this has happened in my lifetime, what will the coast look like when my grandchildren reach my age? – or beyond, to their children and grandchildren? For now, tidal damage from rising sea levels is more observational than threatening – except for the rather prominent erosion on the Great Ocean Road evident at Apollo Bay2 [see photos from an ABC report of the erosive damage close to the GOR].

The pines at the North Lorne carpark seem – sadly – on their last legs, despite pleas to shore up the eroding carpark edge and save them before they fall to the sea. Vera Lynn is being undercut, too. The pier can look more like a pontoon than a pier at high tide, with waves in a recent storm crashing about and over it. This time, rather than a one-off audition in nature’s schedule, these changes seem more like the first episode of a series …

I shudder at the thought that my optimistic reassurance “… the sands will return” might this time be tinged with a soupçon of doubt, for there does appear to be subtle yet identifiable coastal remodelling underway. Of course, it has ever been thus – though in the past, over centuries, millennia, and era. To see traceable coastal loss in half a lifetime is more than a little sobering.

That said, I worry that “perhaps, this time may be different” conjures the spectre of alarmism, the shrill anguish of which I habitually avoid where I can. Alarmism is relentless nowadays – despite that its doomsayers are almost always counterproductive: so, troubled and mirroring an ostrich, I decide to retire to my deep Otway frog pond, to enjoy its carefree sounds, and watch the grass grow!

It seems clear where our Lorne sand is hiding. Watch the bay on any day. Compare the once rarely breaking, water-heavy swell inside the pier of 30-50 years ago with the splendid, breaking, and often now easily ridden bar that, on a good day, now extends widely across the bay. Indeed, my surfing son tells me it is easy to touch the bottom out there now – and that never was. So, the sand is out there – we just can’t easily see it.

It would be interesting to see old sounding data and compare the depth of Loutitt Bay, then and now. I think it probable that while the sea level is rising, so too is the seafloor. That is the hiding place! The sand that once graced our beach coves is now changing the seafloor – and proving a mecca for our surfing children and grandchildren.

So, as I beach-pass others inside my two-metre protection bubble and am asked [from a demure distance] “… will it come back?”, I am now less sure of my answer “… it has before, and it will again”.

Maybe this time, my answer should be a little more circumspect.

“… maybe”.

John Agar

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