Gold Coast beaches: eroded sand dunes to be rapidly fixed by Council

Wild surf over the weekend has left some of the Gold Coast’s most famous beaches decimated and heavily eroded. Now there’s a rush on to get it fixed quickly for the last days of the school holidays.

GOLD Coast City Council is scrambling to patch up eroded beaches across the region after wild surf decimated sand dunes.

Acting Mayor Cameron Caldwell said 30 tonnes of earthmoving equipment will be deployed to fill in scarping on affected beaches.

It coincides with the school holidays and an influx of tourists visiting the region.

Scarping on the Gold Coast’s beaches this morning Picture: Luke Mortimer

One of the beaches hit the hardest was at Narrowneck, which lost about 2m of sand, while about 1m was chipped away at Burleigh.

The beaches will be repaired as part of the council’s annual beach maintenance budget, which Cr Caldwell said stretched into the millions of dollars.

The Coast has had pounding surf for the past few days. Pic Mike Batterham

Speaking in the rain at Narrowneck this morning, the acting mayor said council workers were “monitoring our beaches daily” and the erosion would be fixed by the end of the week.

“Some of our exposed beaches, particularly here at Narrowneck, have been impacted severely (by scarping) but we’re going to get our beaches back to their beautiful best in coming days,” he said.

“Council has an extensive program of making sure our beaches are safe and secure.

“When there are severe weather events we can move in very quickly and restore beaches to their pristine condition.”

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Acting Mayor Cameron Caldwell inspected Gold Coast beaches this morning. Picture: Luke Mortimer

Cr Caldwell said some work was already underway but the “heavy machinery will roll out with the sunshine”.

The repairs at Narrowneck and other exposed beaches comes after ex-tropical Cyclone Oma wreaked hundreds of thousands of dollars damage on beaches in February.

Cr Caldwell said the $1.5 million Narrowneck Sea Wall was under construction and would “protect our shoreline from these major weather events”.