SEA AND SAND DUNES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 14393, 10 December 1908, Page 4

SEA AND SAND DUNES

THE DOMAIN BOARD'S INSPECTION,

The Ocean Beach is a scene of incessant warfare between land and water, ami an annual inspection of the frontier of silver sand shows to what extent ono or the other has prevailed. Tho Ocean Beach possesses remarkable characteristics, one of which is the undertow that makes it such a dangerous place to bathe from, and incidentally shifts so many tons of sand. For this the tremendous inrush of billows to the Brighton Bight is mainly responsible. The heaped-up waters find an easy egress by tho narrow channel between White Island and Forbury Head, through which they pass at tho rate of three miles, an hour, thus causing a scour, which, though felt most severely at St. Clair, att'ects the whole foreshore right down to Lawyer's Head. In these struggles between Ocean and Mother Earth, man, being mainly a land animal,' takes the part of tho latter, and were it not for the Ocean Beach Domain Board a, high spring tide, accompanied, by a heavy gale from southerly,, might result .in a '..ooded St. Kilda. _In emergencies like these, man always seeks a butter, and this has been found in the sand, buffeted to and fro by the sea and blown about in clouds by every wind. Not a very stable material for a rampart against the ocean, but with a little ingenuity and a great deal of perseverance the Domain Board 'has succeeded beyond expectations and has practically got that most shifty of earthly elements in, chains. Scrub fences were erected to act as revetments, and the sand drifted and covered theni, precisely as it blotted out. the cities' of the, Pharaohs. More fences were made and in turn cohered, and the coarse, hardy sand grass, spreading and growing steadily, served further, as it were, to bind the compact. The public strolling by the waves on Sundays are not likely to be dazzled by what the Domain Board has accomplished. It is not;showy work, and it is almost monotonously gradual. They may notice the top of "a" fence just appearing above the sand, or the absence of a. lagoon here., and there, but they do not associate these phenomena with human effort. People have a way of putting all this sort of thing down to magic; whereas the worthy members of the Ocean Beach Domain Board, are not exactly magicians, though they may have prevented the waves from revenging themselves on. the homes in adjacent suburbs. One of the annual inspections referred to above was made yesterday morning by Messrs J. 11. Hancock (chairman), J. At!;1o, W. Burnett, Isaac Green, F. Anderson, and G. Hodges. The inspection commenced-at St. Clair, and was in every ■respect most thorough. The wind, which blew with violence, held possession of tho beach, and seemed to take.a frenzied delight in catching up clouds of sand and hurling it in stinging defiance in the faces of the party, who had a breezy morning of it, but who stuck to their guns and emerged sand-covered but triumphant. The chairman of the' board, expressed him--1 self thoroughly satislied with the progress made since the last annual inspection, and pointed out how the one weak spot (tho gully running in behind the band rotunda) was being rendered impregnable. Mr Hancock has tho-name of being an enthusiast, which, when ono considers the shocking examples of certain English villages and skeeples fathoms under tho North Sea, is' hardly ' surprising. In addition to the scrpb fences running transversely, another, just outside these, has been constructed longitudinally, and this, it is hoped, will do away with the two lagoons which, after a spring title, have long formed features on either side of the St. Kilda approach. This approach has been considerably extended, and a raised road now reaches within reasonable distance of high water mark. Part of this lias.already been covered with clay, and in time the , public will be able to walk to tho sea-sbore-on solid ground, instead of struggling 'thereto anklo-deep in sand. j At this point of the proceedings the board was met by the Mayor qi St. Kilda . (M.r M'Farlane), with the request for parmission to talvo 15ft from the beach approach and include it in the rotunda grounds. His Worship explained that they liad £100 to spend, and that it was' proposed to erect an iron fence on the boundary and to plant trees. Mr Burnett objected to an iron fence as being unsightly. Mr Hancock said he had 6een as many as 1000 people on this approach, "on a Sunday afternoon. It had been stipulated that this, tho main access- to the beach, should not be less than a chain wide. He had a very great objection to having Sis space in any way curtailed. Quite an animated discussion ensued, and it was finally resolved to. permit tho St. Kilda Council to take 15ft t from the npproach, provided it shifted 1 the opposite fence back a similar distance, if necessary, and on condition that a picket, not an iron, fence, was erected. ■The policy of the Domain Board for the coming year is the same as usual—tho 'formation of sandhills and the gradual beautifying of a strip of wilderness. The futuro holds for enthusiasts a vision of a green and' stately avenue, bordered by trees and shrubs, extending from Lawyer's Head to St. Clair, over what were once merely sand dunes.