Huge tides wash away Main Beach sand dunes where $2 million Oceanway will be built

Ratepayers are funding more than $2 million on a section of Oceanway at Main Beach where sand dunes are being washed into the sea by king tides.

Ratepayers are paying more than $2m for a section of Oceanway at Main Beach where sand dunes are being washed into the sea by king tides.

Residents contacted the Bulletin after watching foreshore fencing collapse and bulldozers brought in by council in a desperate attempt to restore sand to the dunal system.

“I’ve spoken to workers around here,” a resident said. “They say the tides are just getting bigger and bigger. I just don’t know how they build the Oceanway after this.”

Council officers this week put up safety signage and closed off the stairway at Woodroffe Avenue where there is now a dangerous cliff face drop to the beach.

The Woodroffe Ave beach access area will become the most northern part of the $2m Main Beach South Oceanway project, which is in the design stage by council.

Once completed next year the focus will turn to the next section at Main Beach North, from Woodroffe Ave north to the Southport Surf Life Saving Club linking with The Spit.

But the sand scapring shows many beachfront properties have no land in front of their boundaries with the erosion right back to the protective A-line rock boulder wall.

The council said the dunal system would be restored by sand replenishment from using the sand by-pass system at The Spit.

Several residents monitoring the tides and keeping a daily watch on erosion warn the dunal system is not stable enough to support a concrete pathway.

The Surfers Paradise Beachfront Protection Association (SBPA, which launched a legal fight against the council on the Oceanway path between Surfers Paradise and Broadbeach, has major safety concerns about construction of these sections of the planned 36km pathway.

The association warned the $6.1m Surfers South Oceanway would be an environmental disaster after designs show most of it cannot be protected from big seas – leading to potentially millions of dollars in repairs.

In the letter to the Mayor, an SBPA spokesman wrote: “The final drawings of the Surfers South Oceanway show more than 90 per cent of the concrete pathway will be built east of the A-line (a rock wall in the dunes). I fear this will have disastrous impacts on coastal erosion and put people and property at risk.”

The association has sent the Bulletin recent photographs of machinery toppling over on unstable dunes fronting work on Garfield Terrace.

“The association is concerned about any construction on such eroded dunes,” a spokesperson said.

“A concept plan on council’s website shows a four-metre-wide path to be built on what is currently barely two metres in width. To try and get machinery onto such a constrained site, as they have in Surfers is simply ludicrous.

“With a fence collapsed and public access stairs at the end of Woodroffe now prohibited to the public, one wonders how the public would be safe traversing a concrete path. It is looking like the council’s claims of a continuous path 36km length of the coast is not feasible.”

Main Beach South will be a path four metres wide and stretching for 330 metres, according to council. Part of the project would include dune planting designed to “further increase resistance to coastal erosion and improve dune ecosystems”.

Area councillor Darren Taylor said the designs for Main Beach South had “yet to be formalised” and once finished could be circulated for further public consultation.

The planning for the Main Beach South section would be completed in the next six to 12 months with work on the ground to continue next year.

“The sand by-pass system will be a big part of maintaining that beach replenishment,” Cr Taylor said.

“We are still completing the southern stage designs. Then there will be consultation. It will be split up into two sections.”

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