HOW MUCH LONGER CAN AN OLD SEAWALL LAST? DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE LESSONS TAUGHT BY NORTH CRONULLA’S PRINCE STREET SEAWALL

Abstract

Within the traditional lands of the Dharawal people, the headlands, beaches and sandy dunes of Gunnamatta / Cronulla are long recognised as important regional environmental, social and economic assets. With early settlers holding large tracts of land, once connected to Sutherland by a steam train from 1911, the seaside holiday village of Cronulla was quickly subdivided and became a permanent town, with increasingly expensive infrastructure built along the foreshore. The sandy beach and dunes of North Cronulla, where the main settlement was established, has a well-documented history of being impacted by coastal erosion events over the past 100 years. Modification of the foreshore started around 1919, using dune sand to infill the low-lying swamp in the hind-dune, creating more ‘useable’ land. The recommendations and forward plan to prolong the life of the Prince Street Seabee seawall will be the subject of this presentation.