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Otago Daily Times, Issue 13585, 5 May 1906, Page 7

OCEAN ISTCACH DOMAIN BOARD. Tin', annual report of the Ocean Beach Domain Hoard presents no very special features, but it is reading to those who lake an interest iti the city and its environs. The facts set out, modestly enough, in the report must be allowed to disclose a very satisfactory state of affairs, a state very different from that wliieh impressed itself upon public, attention a few years ago. We have heard but little, we are glad to be able to say, of sea encroachment at St. Clair and at the Ocean Beach generally of late, and note, with pleasure the absence of any particular prospect of a revival of the subject. Yet the advances of the ocean at St. Clair a few years ngo, its affection for what, had come to be regarded as permanent- terra firiua there, and its curiosity to see what lay within the samlbills at St. Kilda, undoubtedly constituted a grave cause for alarm at the time. However, it does not take a vevv critical observer to note the great improvement that has been efleeted during the. last year or two, aifd the Ocean Uracil Domain Board can certainly with reason congratulate itself on the comparatively small cost at which present results have been attained. An almost- unexpected success appears to liave attended the establishment of groins upon the shore nfc St. Clair. These simple and inexpensive structures, running out at right angles to the sea and constructed of substantial wooden piles, have, at Urn expense of a few hundred founds, to ail

appearances brought about results to achieve which it was a few years ago seriously anticipated that a scheme involving the expenditure of many thousands woukl bo necessary. Wo learn from the report that groins at a total cost of £500 have not only effectively stopped erosion of tho foreshore, but have built up the beach from four to six feet over an area of many acres. Such success lias, in fact, attended the construction of what was for a time considered by some to be 110 better than a rather costly experiment that the Domain Board intends now to consider the advisability of asking the Government to complete this excellent work by placing one more groin of a substantial nature (extending it somewhat further seaward) midway between tho two at present showing. Then the planting operations undertaken in regard to the Sandhills have also palpably had effect in raising the level at the foot of the Sandhills for an extended distance, and that clearly defined cut in the sand which denotes erosion by tho soa at the hill base is 110 longer visible. There is such a considerable element, too, as wind erosion to be considered, and the planting of marram grass and lupins seems to have had its expected oli'ect in arresting the sand drift. At St. Kilda the efficaciousness of scrub groins in sandy foreshore reclamation is admirably exemplified, and it is pleasurable to read what tho Dqard has been able to achieve in respect to the crumbling, drifty area of sandhills approaching Tahuna Park. In this particular vicinity is the site recently granted to the St. Kilda Council for a band stand; and this may well load to the question, Why is sneh a seaside resort as St. Clair without a band rotunda P The fate of the structure at the Second lleach has not been very surprising, for the site was too much out of the way. What a magnificent asset the city has in such an adjacent sea-front 011 its southern boundary as is presented by the broad Pacific is not always fully realised perhaps, but such a picture as St. Clair and the Ocean Beach presented last Easter Monday, for instance, is not readily forgotten. The shore was that day, as it has been times without number, the delight of thousands,*and the tram traffic returns were an indication of the popularity of the seaside localities at holiday time. Popularity of that sort is worth catering for. Wo have heard no suggestion that the improvements effected by the Ocean Beach Domain Board nro likely to he other than permanent, but presumably time alone will lie the absolute test of that, Meanwhile the Domain Board is to be congratulated on what it has achieved, and if the last clause of its report is optimistic, we like its suggestiveness none the less. It reads: "The Board's planting operations should only be regarded as preparatory to the greater work which must follow, When the last patch of sandhill is covered with verdure, and the encroachment of the sea no longer possible, it wilt then be the duty of the municipal representatives to lay it out with walks and drives, and make plantations of such shrubs and troes as shall turn this mice barren waste into a magnificent marine park not to bo excelled in ally other part of New Zealand. In the meantime the sea no longer encroaches at >St. Clair, nor is the sound qf a gale any more a terror to the people of St. Kilda." The work done by the Ocean Beach Domain Bomxl is not jcast instructive in showing how Nature and the elements themselves can be utilised 111 repairing the ravages of the latter.