Mayor Tom Tate says all Gold Coast beaches will be open for summer, but a fix still seems to be far off

GOLD Coast Mayor Tom Tate has declared all the city's beaches will be open for the summer after a long campaign to repair the battered dunes.

Romain Fesquet throws a sandbag into position in front of beachfront homes at Nobby Beach to help combat storm surges. Pic: Glen

GOLD Coast Mayor Tom Tate has declared all the city's beaches will be open for the summer after a long campaign to repair the battered dunes, but a long-term fix is still years away.

The city's beaches were devastated by buffeting winds and monster tides caused by ex-tropical cyclone Oswald in January, prompting a massive effort to fix one of the country's biggest revenue earners.

The Gold Coast Bulletin lead the campaign to ensure the beaches were back open for business.

Gold Coast City Council trucks and heavy equipment work on the beach at Nobby Beach. Pic: Glenn Hampson

Cr Tate said the repair of the city's sand dunes was well underway.

"Every single beach is open after repairs taking place from Main Beach to Duranbah," he said.

"Beaches are something we all treasure."

But some Nobby Beach residents have started taking matters into their own hands, sandbagging the beach behind their homes in preparation for the storm season.

Christian Dixon and Romain Fesquet helped a friend sandbag his Nobby Beach home because the nearby dunes were still suffering from erosion.

Nobby Beach before the storm season. Pic: Glenn Hampson

Yesterday, Cr Tate held a celebration with council workers at Currumbin Beach, which was recently declared Australia's cleanest beach by the Keep Australia Beautiful organisation.

"The announcement that Currumbin is the country's cleanest beach vindicates our work to fix the beaches," he said.

Cr Tate said he was getting weekly progress reports on how the repair works were going.

Council recently finished pumping sand from Tallebudgera Creek to shore up Burleigh Beach, but sandpumping from Currumbin Alley was still taking place to build up the dunes at Palm Beach, he said.

A $30 million long-term solution to protect the beaches from future cyclonic events is yet to be implemented.

Nobby Beach. Pic: Glenn Hampson

But the Mayor said the design phase of the three-year plan, which will include repairing sections of the seawall and building artificial reefs, would begin towards the end of the year.

The council's vocal push to get the State Government to commit $15 million towards the long-term solution caused a major row between Cr Tate and Premier Campbell Newman.

It even brought in then-Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott, who promised to bring the two men to a negotiating table after the election.

But Cr Tate said that was not needed as he and Mr Newman spoke on a "regular basis".

However, the Gold Coast City Council will fund the entirety of the $30 million plan.