After two major storm events wrought havoc and raised questions about the impact of a new seawall promenade near the surf club, North Wollongong Beach has copped another pummelling in huge seas this week. Meanwhile, Wollongong Council says it will press on with multi-million-dollar plans to extend the wall to the south.

As recently reported in The Illawarra Flame, North Wollongong beach was covered, firstly in mountains of seaweed following a wild east coast low in March. Then in April, mountainous seas deposited and exposed tonnes of rocks and pebbles. 

Long-term locals, including North Beach Daily's Kel Giddey, said they'd never seen the beach looking so bad. Kel posed the question: has the construction of the new seawall and steps below the surf club changing the shape of the beach to the north had an impact?

"The new steps are beautiful, but you can't help but think that it's had an effect on the beachfront," Kel said. "I've never seen so many pebbles on the beach. I don't know where they've come from but we've never seen them in this volume."

Seawall extension plans on track

Council has confirmed that its multi-million-dollar plans to extend the seawall further south to the North Beach pavilion remain on track.

A Council spokesperson said stage two of North Wollongong Beach Seawall Renewal is programmed for construction over the next two years.

"Work is currently planned for the 2026 calendar year. This is a joint funded project with Council and the NSW Government."

In winter 2024, Council started preliminary work on the second stage of the project, driving a number of screw piles into the ground below the sand. The then Lord Mayor, Gordon Bradbery, said the extended seawall would "replace the ageing crib wall with a fit-for-purpose seawall that'll help protect this precinct from coastal erosion and the impacts of climate change".

Providing climate change protection

Council's Coastal Zone Management Plan says the works are needed to provide protection and "manage overtopping" of the land behind the beach as sea levels rise with climate change.

"The seawall is aimed to retain the current alignment of the beach and salient, and Stuart Park behind," Council's plan reads. "If no protection is undertaken here, it is likely that as sea level rises and there is reduced dissipation across the surf zone reef, the salient will experience higher rates of recession and erode quickly, as the salient re-aligns with adjacent shorelines. This would result in extensive erosion of Stuart Park which is likely to be highly unacceptable to the local and regional community."

A NSW Government document, Draft Guidelines for Assessing the Impact of Seawalls, says seawalls can affect recreational beach amenity, public access and surf conditions, including changes to wave patterns.

The guidelines say proponents should include a draft seawall management plan with their development application, which should include:

• Actions, resources and timeframes required to ensure the structural integrity of the seawall so it continues to meet its design criteria in the most cost effective way;

• All planned activities for short-term, medium term and long-term maintenance, repair, monitoring and impact management;

• Proposed management responses if any increased erosion of the beach or adjacent land is caused by the presence of the seawall. Such responses should include the type of monitoring required to check if erosion is occurring and beach nourishment proposals for managing predicted off-site erosion impacts. The source and suitability, e.g. grain size of sand for beach nourishment should be identified in the draft seawall management plan.

  

The second stage of the North Beach seawall is funded under the NSW Government's Coastal and Estuary Program, with Council receiving $3.9 million towards the project. Construction is expected to begin after the next summer school holiday.