The is usually not this tall, said Robert Hill. “There are usually 150 meters of beach in front of here,” he said, pointing down past flowers and beach bushes. “That’s all the beaches along the way.”

Today, water is flapping at the base, not at Hill’s house, but at its neighbors. Over his head, a crane swooped back and forth, lifting a concrete block 20 m high into the air, putting it gently in front of his neighbor, Peter, on the beach – a protective wall where the veranda broke and the lawn had sunk into in water.

On Wamberal Beach, 90 km north of Sydney at New South Wales Central Coast, houses bend to the sea.

Drone footage from Ocean View Drive, Wamberal on NSW Central Coast.

Last Friday night the storm stormed. The inhabitants of Ocean View Drive woke up and found the ground had slid out from under them. The wave has grown and grown and, in the words of resident Margaret Brice, “it has just appeared and destroyed the sand dunes and damaged them”.

Standing on the deck in the sun with his old rugby shirt, Hill, 81, has spent more than 40 years watching the ocean enter.

The stairs to her house go straight up from the beach, divided into a beach garden: salty, hard little beach flowers and a large striped sansevieria tongue. “The worst is on foot there,” he said. “But that was years ago. Back in the 70s. “

Storms and erosion in Wamberal is nothing new. Dr Tayanah O’Donnell from Australian National University said that for beaches (“known high-risk locations”) “the time will come when people will have to accept that they can no longer live there”.

That house destroyed in 1974 and 1978 and a big storm almost did the same thing in 2016.

“This has been happening since the 1970s and almost as usual every four or five years, there is a big event,” Hill said. “What happens in the event of a very bad storm is that storms come from the southeast, they come around The Skillion, and they come like fishing rods. They enter and explore the beach. “

Residents like Hill say the solution is for the council to build permanent revetment walls – known as sea walls. He rejected the argument that the houses themselves were built too close to the sea. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Not in my view.

“This area was subdivided in the early 1900s, and there have been beachfront properties here for more than 100 years.”

This is bad luck, not risk, which has caused the homes of his neighbors to fall while he remains standing, he told the Australian Guardian. “I’m just lucky there’s more sand in front of me, at this time,” he said. “On another occasion, they could be fine, and I could be expelled.” He pointed to the sand. “For years it’s been piling up and it’s like money in a bank.”

On Monday, residents of the 18 most affected land were evacuated. The owner along the strip is very angry.

Chris Rogers, whose house was directly affected, said the council had dragged his feet on the sea wall, and even prevented residents from taking other protective measures such as the siege of sand.

“Because of them, we are here,” he said, as he packed up to evacuate his house. “They have stopped people trying to protect their homes, they have refused AK.”

Margaret Brice lived a few doors down, on the outer boundary of what she called the “green zone”, where it was still safe to live. The edge of the yard had very large cracks, steel bars protruding from the ground.

“Now it’s illegal to walk on my deck,” he said.

Brice said the council had promised as early as 2002 to build a seawall.

“In the early 2000s, when I bought this house, it was a coastal zone management plan that they would build buried stone embankment walls … And that’s why you were allowed to build on the beach.”

Brice and Rogers say residents have offered to pay for the seawall.

“The solution is very simple,” Hill said. “Dig a hole in the front, fill it full with stones, then cover it again with sand. That is not a difficult proposition. “

But others, including O’Donnell, said the land should not have been built in the first place.

“[The seawall] It may be the right short-term solution, but it will come with huge economic and environmental costs, “he said.

“Revetment walls are not cheap and environmentally friendly disrupt the natural formation of coastlines. The coastline is meant to move. Hard structures such as revetment walls can make this natural movement occur further along the coastline. “

Residents and councils in many other areas in Australia face the same dilemma. In Stockton Beach, north of Newcastle, which has been repeatedly hit by coastal erosion, the council has sought to defend the community by bringing sand to fill the void. The latest plan involves importing 80,000 sand trucks at a cost of $ 52 million.

In Byron Bay, the owner of a beachfront property has spent two decades in Australia marathon legal battles with the council over the seawall which residents want to be repaired and have offered to pay for, but have repeatedly tapped again.

Similar argument has been raging for decades at Sydney’s Collaroy Beach, who suffered massive erosion after the 2016 storm. A proposal for a sea wall there received great opposition from surfers and environmentalists because of its impact on the coast.

O’Donnell said Ocean View Drive residents may have to walk at some point.

“Climate change will continue to worsen weather patterns and coastal events as we have seen will become more common places. It is nonsense to build, or rebuild, on a soft coastline; it makes no sense if the land is not used for its highest and best use at a certain point in time. “

Local resident Susie, who refused to give her family name, lives three streets behind the coast line.

“I’ve lived here all my life, it’s been going on for a number of years,” he said. “Personally, in 1974, when that happened, I think they should have taken back the land at that time.”

He believes land on the seashore must be converted into a community area, or if a sea wall is built, it does not have to be fully funded by taxpayers.

“I think when the owners buy their property, they should know that this is an erosion area, they will conduct an investigation,” he said. “It’s like a 100-year flood – you can be guaranteed as much as you think nothing will happen to you, Murphy’s Law, will happen. There is a big risk that you take when you want this lifestyle.

“I know some of the residents here, they are great people, the most beautiful people, the most sincere people you can find, and they have worked very hard to buy this beautiful property, so I really feel it. But by saying that again, you must know, the possibility of erosion, and this happens, once again, is on the card.

“I truly believe the council must reclaim the land and make it more of an area of ​​community, where the community can enjoy it, everyone can enjoy it, rather than a few rich people.”

Brice and Rogers reject the idea that the wall is only for them.

“This is not just our home,” Rogers said. “The beach is destroyed. What I mean is – we got another storm? Is that violating? All of this is gone. “He pointed to the main road and the houses behind.

“There are lots of people who say, ‘Oh yeah, you own a house, blah blah blah.’ Nobody can use the beach. If you take your dog walking, you can’t do it now. If you want to surf, you can’t. If you look for fish, you can’t. Because they have let the beach crumble. “

“We are not children of silver spoons,” Brice said. “This isn’t about throwing stones at a rich person, saying ‘Too bad, haha, you lost your sight.’

“It’s about protecting the entire Wamberal. There are hundreds of houses behind us, with very few foundations and far lower levels than us. We sat nine meters above sea level. The road is three meters tall, you count, if it’s the dune. Very scary. “

The Central Coast Council did not respond to specific questions about the revetment wall, but directed the Australian Guardian to information on its website about walls.

Each sea wall could eventually cost between $ 10,000 to more than $ 30,000 per meter, and must take into account the impact on the environment and “the impact on public access and ease of the beach”, the council said.

“The solution is complex, requires input and approval from a number of parties, and no funding model has been previously developed to implement the work. The agreed funding model is a central element to provide a terminal protection wall structure on the Wamberal Coast. “

The working group is currently investigating a solution, he said, and “consideration of the expected impact of climate change will also be needed”.

O’Donnell said the wall that protects public assets such as roads and infrastructure is an “attractive option”, but “in my own experience and research, taxpayers don’t really see it that way – and there is public sentiment that those who don’t benefit from the wall must not pay for it “.

Back at Wamberal Beach, Rogers packed up. He has a place to live, with a neighbor, who has another house in Sydney. His daughters immediately start school again.

“I did not build too close to the sea,” he said. “We build, we buy and build, if you are allowed to build, you build efficiently. What’s the problem, eroded beaches, it happens all over the world. And the way to stop it is to build a revetment wall. It is not us. “

Brice said, “We have done what we were allowed to do. We have not built illegally. We have done what we have done in the usual Central Coast Council construction plan … under the stipulation that they will build a wall.

“We haven’t built too close to the sea, the Central Coast Council has [not] prevent the sea from coming too close to us. “

A few streets behind, Susie was not impressed.

“I almost bought a property here some time ago, but returned that it was in one of the 100 flood zone zones, and you know – there are other places that you can buy, in other areas, and you can have a beautiful view.”