An entrance to the Big Bay beach from Eden on the Bay and the Waters Edge development has been closed temporarily for safety reasons.
Suzette Little, mayoral committee member for area north, said the beach level had dropped since the beginning of the year, creating a dangerous gap between the bottom step and the beach.
The wooden staircase, she said, had been designed to draw stability from the lower beams buried in the sand, but now all of them were exposed.
Visitors can still access the beach from three other entrances further south.
In September last year, the City started short-term dune rehabilitation at Big Bay.
It is now appointing a specialist coastal engineering and modelling team to advise it on a long-term rehabilitation strategy.
Ms Little said rehabilitation would include reshaping the dunes and possibly repositioning them. Before the work started, the concrete boat ramp used by the Big Bay Lifesaving Club and other emergency services collapsed, also because of the drop in the beach level (“Damaged Big Bay slipway removed”, Tabletalk, July 13, 2016). The boat ramp was removed soon after and replaced with a semi-flexible more robust gabion.
