Steady as she goes and a bit north

2012 has been a big year for CCPA’s beach survey team of Brian Saye and Bob Stack

They have not only

–   completed four surveys of the entire beach from Wilsons Headland to Jones Beach

–   and computerised all that data into graphics that we can understand (see below)

–  but they’ve also recently become accredited quad bike riders which has really made the process easier and faster.

As Brian says “there may be an illusion (or two) in this initial data , such as not yet picking up the effects of the sand traps, but we’ll work those out over time. And Jones Beach is a bugger to get the gear to so has had only one survey. It’s a high priority after the Christmas break”.

As you can see from this view looking down on the beach in front of the village, Brian and Bob took measurements every 100 m (eg between S37 and S38). North and south of the village they took measurements every 200 m (eg between S38 and S39). A critical survey measurement is the beach’s height above average sea level (referred to on the graphs as AHD for Australian Height Datum)

Here are the views of the rest of the beach looking north to Wilsons Headland  and  south to Jones Beach

At each measurement point all four surveys are colour-coded so it’s easy to see how the beach is changing.  For example, take a look at an enlarged view of  S38  at the northern end of the village. While the beach hasn’t changed much near the Bowling Club at S22, its clearly grown at S52  near Wilsons.

The initial conclusions from this data are that the beach around the village has been stable during 2012 with a lot of sand deposited from January to June which has since been taken away and has now shown up at Wilsons Headland (hence the title of this page “steady as she goes and a bit north”).