Tweed Shire News
COAST CARNAGE
COAST CARNAGE
Illegal dumping wreaking havoc on ‘loved to death’ Tweed Coast
By MARGARET DEKKER
There’s no other way to put it except carnage. Carnage in broad, harsh daylight.
Walking 50-metres from one car park near Black Rocks to the next heading south towards Wooyung, and illegal dumping abounds – in all its disgusting forms.
.. The unsanitary human ‘dumps’ with tell-tale sodden toilet tissue half-buried in the scrub; the dumped green plastic bags of dog ‘dumps’ – one hurled on a limb and still dangling, sweating in the hot morning sun; the horse ‘dumps’ piled up on the walking track; the dumped garden waste – one trailer-load emptied in the corner of the car park, another tipped over the Council fence, each bringing more introduced soil, noxious weeds – think Asparagus weed, ‘Morning Glory’ or Coral Creeper – and insidious vines and seed banks to the natural ecology; and the dumped debris from households, picnics or yet another big night around an illegal fire in the bush. Goodness, there’s even an oil ‘dump’ from a grease-and-oil change done in the carpark.
“It’s pretty devastating for the local biodiversity,” Bill Hoskins Pottsville Dune Care Coordinator said.
“Every weekend, most of these carparks will be full of people camping, lighting fires, it’s not a very pleasant place to be.”
Speaking of fires, we count four recently extinguished. In just 50-metres. (Just as well it’s not dry ..)
Together with Bill and fellow volunteers, Terry Clarke and Roger Pearson, we walk over to the beach. Overnight a 4WD has driven off the emergency access track and across the sensitive dune network to park up and light up the latest illegal bonfire in pole position. The campfire’s aftermath of hidden, broken glass and charred native timber is a stark reminder of the crimes here, against this precious coastline.
After 25-years of journalism, even I am shocked by the extent of trouble in just one patch of Pacific paradise.
It’s an irony not lost on stalwart volunteer Bill Hoskins, the coordinator of Pottsville Dune Care.
“They visit this part of the coast because it is a little bit remote, it’s a little bit daggy and there are still so many natural qualities that people look for, that they want to get away from the concrete and busyness of the Gold Coast and Byron Bay, but it’s slowly being loved to death,” Bill Hoskins said.
While volunteering their time, skills and experience every week, dune-carers like Bill, Terry and Roger resort to ‘potty humour’ (literally, here in Pottsville) to cope with the dirty setting.
“That’s an ongoing issue as well for us, as a workplace it’s pretty hard work because you’re constantly dodging where people have gone to the toilet,” Bill Hoskins Pottsville Dune Care Co-ordinator said.
When they haven’t been vandalised or removed, Tweed Shire Council signs – “No Parking 11pm–5am” make it clear overnight camping is not allowed. But still they park-up in droves.
The cumulative toll of these ‘innocent’ camps and their fires, foodstuffs, rubbish, toileting and showering on the sustainability of this unique coastal environment, are endless and some not so obvious.
“What happens, for example, campers come along and remove dead timber which is important for habitat and important for maintaining biodiversity of the bush,” Bill Hoskins explained.
But the number-one threat remains domestic garden waste.
“By far the biggest impact is local people and their contractors, dumping their garden waste in the dunes, that has the biggest impact on biodiversity.
“People are just too lazy – ‘why don’t we just go and dump it in the dunes!’ and the impact that has on biodiversity is immense. There’s one little plant called Coral Creeper that somebody had in their garden at some stage in the past and they’ve dumped it in just about every carpark on this bit of coast, and while it’s not a significant weed at the moment, it has the potential to be one.
“Which in the long-term is going to have a potential significant impact on the coast because if you don’t have a natural, native banksia forest which has got a large biomass protecting the dunes, and all you’ve got are these crappy weeds, the dunes are a lot less resilient and able to cope with major storm events and erosions, so we have to keep on top of the weeds,” Bill Hoskins said.
Bill has spent 9-years trying to keep this stunning stretch of ‘now-not-so-secret’ coastline clean. Pottsville Dune Care has been at it for three decades.
“You’ll never beat the weeds entirely but if you can tip the balance in favour of the native plants, that’s what we try to do so that they get a chance to hang on,” he said.
As the three men point toward the bigger challenge of suburban crawl, a swelling Tweed Coast population and the growing stream of visitors and campers, priced-out of neighbouring coastal ‘hoods and caravan parks.
“It’s certainly under pressure, particularly with issues around affordable housing for people and there are some genuinely homeless people along here, and that starts to impact on the bush, and in the last ten years I’ve been here, there’s been a significant increase in the number of people visiting this part of the coast.” Bill Hoskins said.
It’s a subtle but looming crisis, with Tweed Shire Council’s capacity already stretched and no easy solution in sight.
“Council has limited resources. You could put additional rangers on to deal with the problem but that would mean an additional cost to ratepayers.
“It’s the people themselves who are doing the wrong thing that we need to somehow target, it’s not just a compliance thing. If we could somehow educate everybody as to the impacts of their activities on the bush, but that’s a difficult thing,” Bill Hoskins Pottsville Dune Care Coordinator told The Northern Rivers Times.
And there’s another real and pressing factor.
“The problem we have is we’re old, the average age is over 60 .. and there aren’t any younger people coming along who are interested in doing the work or taking it over, that’s the big issue we have,” Bill Hoskins, Pottsville Dune Care Coordinator said.
Sadly, one of many.
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