A BULWARK AND A PARK IN ONE.

Evening Star, Issue 11894, 23 May 1903, Page 7

A BULWARK AND A PARK IN ONE.

THE DOMAIN BOARD'S WORK. BUILDING UP A BEAUTIFUL BOULEVARD. On Wednesday of this week the Ocean Beach Domain Board paid their annual visit of inspection to the large strip of ocean frontier property of which they arc the guardians. It was hoped that there would bo a representative muster of the members, and Mr J. Jacobs, the secretary, provided wrriage room for all; but ten o'clock, the hour of the rendezvous, found the first-comers wondering what had become of the others, and after waiting for twenty minutes it was decided to make a start, trusting to pick up later on the absentees who had not sent excuses about inspecting a newly-bought piece of ground, or proving five yoke of oxen, or attending upon a bride. The members who did attend were Mr J. H. Hancock (chairman), Mr Isaae Green, and Mr D. Stirling. Mr Braithwaite telephoned an explanation of his absence; of the other missing members nothing was seen or heard all the morning. The" party first drove out to St. Clair and had a look at the baths. The dressingboxes have been newly painted and done up inside; the rough stones taken out of the bath j the diving pedestal near the outer end of the terrace removed, so as to prevent anv other accident like the one by which Mr Kirkham lost his life; the washout between the caretaker's house and the breastwork has been filled up with concrete; and the caretaker's house has received needed interior repairs. The work here done under the supervision of Mr Stir-ling-is such aR to make the baths much more comfortable for bobh the bathere and the caretaker; and further improvements arc authorised in the way of asphalting the yard inside the gate and erecting more up-to-date sanitary, conveniences. At no time in recent years have the baths been in a better condition than they are at present. The party then walked along the beach fronting St. Clair, the ugliest portion of the property. The wave 3of the high tides swirl into this corner with devastating effect This, however, is only au inter mittent troubk. One combination of wind and tide washes out the sand ; but it ail comes back when the conditions change, and it is hoped that before long these variations of thft St.. Clair beach will be permanently cured. Air Hancock announced to his fellow members that he had seen Mr E. R. Ussher, of the Public Works Office, and that gentleman had informed him that a contract had already been let for an experimental groin, and that the work would be very shortly commenced. This groin is to be made by the department. The exact site has not been mentioned, but presumably it will be somewhere about the end of the tram line, and it is confidently hoped by those who have watched the drift of the sand that the groin will cause the beach to make up permanently. So sure are the Board of the success of the groin that they regard the St. Clair beach as fairly provided for in the way of protection against the assaults of the South Pacific The destruction that is going on from the land edge is another matter. There is a considerable amount of traffic through the unfenced sections on to the Beach; the romping of children on the slopes also bringß lown a lot of sand; whilst the tramping of horses causes much mischief. The remedy for this trouble is really the concern of the persons who own the abutting sections. Mr P. Mitchell has fenced off the sea side of his property alongside the hotel, and this fence is standing firmly, protecting the upper surface of the section and the slope below as well. On each side of this protected property, however, there is a gap used for traffic, and the eternal breaking down at these points is gradually lowering the sections and leavinc them vulnerable to the attacks of storm and high tides. The Board are practically powerless to prevent this, as their authority begins at high-water mark j but if the owners. make the line of fencing complete on top it is probable that the Board would do something, in the way of saving tho slopes, and in this suggestionbased not upon anything that the members have- told us, but upon bur. belief in their reasonableness and their desire to serve the public—there Is perhaps a solution of the difficulty, which really constitutes a menace to the foreshore at St. Clair. On the eastern side of the tram line the sandhills are wasting away by feet per month, and every small boy who gets an afternoon's sport by racing down there is contributing to the risk of some huge disaster. From the rear of Mr John Wright's section along by Mr Anderson's property there is a good strong range of sandhills well bound together by marram grass and lup'n. The Occupancy keeps the traffic out, and the hills are standing all right at this point. Travelling east, the first tender spot abreast of St. Kilda is opposite the Racecourse Hotel. The party entered the sandhills here, and were very much pleased to find that the protective works are making a rapid improvement in appearance and usefulness. A wire-and-scrub fence set up eart and west for twenty-six chains has caused an immense bank of sand to-accu-mulate, almost'hiding the fence. This embankment, which runs parallel to the edge of the water, is about a chain in width and quite sft high, and it constitutes an efficient rampart against the ocean. A number of short groins, of _ similar construction, start from the low fringe of sand alongside the roadway and point towards the main embankment. There are twenty-six of these short groins, some of them extending to the east of the Central Battery. A few were made simply of wire and posts. Thev Ftand bare on flat sand. The others, that are built up with scrub, have all gathered a quantity of sand about them, and the total accumulation must run to thousands of tons. Where the sand has settled in a state of repose the marram grass seed has shot up thickly, and when the contemplated work of extending the north-and-sc-uth fences to the outer barrier is completed there will be a perfect network of groins in which the marram will soon take charge. The scheme is to put in marram U> bind the sand, then to sow or plant lupins m the shelter of the marram. In this way the nucleus of a forest is of-in* made. The lupin is already well established on the inner spots where the marram has made firm cover, and at one place, opposite the end of the beach tramway line, a row of Pinus mantima is added as a third growth, and is doing well. That is the sequence:—Marram on the sand, to bind it • Inpm in the shelter of the marram; trees in the protection of the lupin. Even now the lupm is a great adornment, and when trees get a hold the foreshore will be a beautiful park. The Board propose to continue the outer breastwork to meet the fence surrounding the part of the sandhills newly, taken m by the Agricultural and 1 astoral Society as an addition to Tnhuna Park. This new fence will be seven chains long. It has been decided to ask tho A and P. Society to either plant marram on their recent enclosure or to give the Board the money to do It with. , The protective talne of these operations is simply inestimable. The beach is now reasonably safe where four years a/ro the sea was breaking through to St. Kilda, with the result that St. Kilda property has gone %Jl geh m Va,tte? ftnd I"'the course of ^ r two the w*ll be SttSni "f™ as the top of Mount j F°i r ■Plfndld result the public are here the business was seen and exSaimfd Oof representative on the trit. *«„ P •, 1 for it tfcat the operationehere P g 0 n B oTSe cleanly and inoffensive, and tW of oTr readers who care to spend a Saturday after noon in a walk out that way wiff notfce with pleasure that the bare Stretches of drifting sand are being converted into m-ettv