Our Coastal Reserves team has begun beach nourishment and dune stabilisation works across three sections of our coastline at Skenes Creek, Mothers Beach and the Apollo Bay Harbour Beach.
As a matter of priority, beach nourishment at Skenes Creek began this week. The work will address observed erosion by nourishing the beach and dune system adjacent the two access points and the main car park.
Sand will be taken from the Point Bunbury groyne in Apollo Bay, with this removal having no impact on that area. The team is also engaging the support of coastal engineers to explore additional short-to-medium term options to alter the alignment of the river mouth to further manage the erosion issue.
Works at Mothers Beach and the Apollo Bay Harbour Beach will focus on dune slippage. Following a recent incident at Mothers Beach, our team put up additional safety signage and bunting and are now implementing dune face shaping works to improve dune stability.
At this stage we will not be undertaking beach nourishment to support this work as we are confident the natural sand drift should refill these compartments. We will however continue to monitor the sites and provide updates should we need to nourish the beaches.
These works will each take half a day to complete and will be dependent on contractor availability, weather and tides. Access to the locations will be restricted during this time. We will pop up a social media post when we have confirmation of works commencing and thank the community in advance for your cooperation.
Although these activities are short-to-medium term focused, we are committed to implement the strategic long-term management of coastal hazards through adaptation planning along our coast in alignment with the Victorian Resilience Coast – Adapting for 2100+ guidelines.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Apollo Bay Victorian Coastal Monitoring team for their continued support with providing data which contributes to evidence based decisions.