Pelican Point residents build seawalls despite scepticism of rising sea-level threat
Still, almost all of the homes in the small South East town that face directly onto the ocean now have home-made sea walls in front of them.
The local District Council of Grant is preparing a coastal adaptation strategy for the town, along with other areas under threat from rising sea levels and rougher seas caused by climate change.
With legal costs rising, the council and the Coast Protection Board abandoned legal action in 2017 against property owners who built sea walls decades ago.
These first unauthorised sea walls were built by some homeowners on crown land up to 30 years ago but experts say they can exacerbate wave damage to neighbouring properties.
Both the council and the board decided a town-wide approach was needed but, while waiting for action, residents and holiday homeowners such as Adrian Ferguson have put rocks weighing up to 3.5 tonnes between their properties and the Southern Ocean.
"The last shack to our right was done just before the [recent] storms," Mr Ferguson said.
A draft version of the council's coastal adaptation strategy says there is a 50 per cent chance that almost all the land the town is on will be eroded away by 2100.
The same area is also expected to be inundated by more than 1.25 metres of water during 1-in-100-year floods by the end of the century.
Mr Ferguson has also helped other property owners with houses facing west towards the ocean to install new or improved sea walls.
Now the only land without a protective barrier is council-owned.
"It's stopping erosion in front of our shacks; otherwise it would just be gone, the way the sea has been."
He believed the increased urgency for building seawalls came down to increased house prices, which reach up to $700,000, rather than the predicted sea-level rise.
"I think the costing of the shacks has got out of control like everything, but I don't think the sea is rising … you talk to the old guys here, they've seen this before."
The council's draft plan says Pelican Point is very exposed to both inundation and erosion hazards.
It is forming a Pelican Point Working Group to advise on implementing solutions to the expected flooding and erosion.
"The town's low elevation makes it highly vulnerable to inundation during storm events, which is likely to cause substantial damage to both public and private assets," the draft strategy states.
A council survey of mostly Pelican Point, Carpenter Rocks and Port MacDonnell residents found only about a third would support moving private property as part of the adaptation strategy.
Almost three-quarters said they were willing to make changes to their homes or assets as an adaptation strategy.
More than half said they would be willing to contribute financially to improving coastal management and hazard resilience of the community, despite previously rejecting a similar proposal.
"Several [residents] demand immediate action, fearing irreversible damage; others question the need for drastic measures, seeing changes as natural," a report on the survey said.
"Scepticism exists toward climate modelling and long-term projections."
Sally Stower lives in Carpenter Rocks, just a short distance from Pelican Point.
She said the coastal adaptation strategy put properties like hers in the medium-to-high risk category of erosion because it did not take into account the offshore reef that caused the wreck of the SS Admella, South Australia's largest maritime disaster, 166 years ago.
This could affect the ability to sell the property, its price, insurance and planning approvals.
"My major concern is that the report is missing a major piece of infrastructure that already exists and that's the reef structure," she said.
The consultant who is developing the strategy, Andrew Pomeroy, said the risk of inundation and erosion at Pelican Point had been known for a long time and that feedback through submissions and public meetings would be considered in the final plan to be released soon.
"It is important to note that the mapped hazard areas indicate zones at risk under a 'no action' scenario and they do not represent definitive predictions of where erosion or inundation will occur — simply that those areas are at risk of impact as a consequence of those processes," Dr Pomeroy said.
The council's chief executive, Darryl Whicker, said the strategy at least gave it some detail about what was under threat.
"What this plan does is give us a base in which to work from, how to prioritise those adaptation strategies, and to seek funding into the future," he said.
David Miller has lived for 55 years in the small area in Pelican Point where the coastline is predicted to stay the same or expand into what is now the ocean.
He said he could understand why others had put in seawalls despite their legal ambiguity.
"I think most of the people down there are aware of what's going on and they're making their own way of protecting their asset," he said.
Mr Miller would not like to have to pay for a sanctioned seawall in front of the at-risk properties, an attitude Mr Ferguson understands.
"I wouldn't either if I was up on the reef over the other side there safe and dry," Mr Ferguson said.
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