Abstract
Beach sand is constantly on the move, blown by wind, pushed and pulled by tides, and tossed by surf. In this chapter, I examine some of the debates around the processes that drive the movement of sand at Bondi and the forms and ‘patterns’ these movements produce. One process into which I delve involves highly fluctuating energy systems called storms: two storms, in 1912 and 1974, are of particular interest. As well as shifting large volumes of sand, these two events destroyed built structures and altered the physical environment. Yet, as the enduring debates over the origins of the Big Rock on the shore platform at Ben Buckler testify, there is little consensus about the power of storms or how they should be represented.
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Notes
- 1.
L. Doneleson Wright and Andrew Short, ‘Morphodynamic variability of surf zones and beaches: A synthesis’, Marine Geology, 56, 1/2 (1984), 93–118.
- 2.
A dissipative beach has a wide flat face with outer and inner sandbars that dissipate surf energy over a large area. A reflective beach usually has a narrow and steep profile that reflects wave energy offshore and is typically free of sandbars and rips. Longshore bar trough—a uniform sand bar running parallel to the shore separated from it by a wide trough. Rhythmic bar—a crescent shaped sand bar running parallel to the beach. Transverse bar—perpendicular bar attached to the shoreline and alternating with rips. Low tide terrace—a sand bar or flat terrace attached to the shoreline. Robert Brander, Dr Rip’s Essential Beach Book (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010), 162–163 and 170–172.
- 3.
Andrew Short, Beaches of the New South Wales Coast: A Guide to their Nature, Characteristics, Surf and Safety, Second Edition (Sydney: Australian Beach Safety and Management Program, University of Sydney and Surf Life Saving New South Wales, 2007), 223.
- 4.
Rob Inkpen and Graham Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, Second Edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 176.
- 5.
Short, Beaches of the New South Wales Coast, 16, and Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 175.
- 6.
Wright and Short, ‘Morphodynamic variability’, 102.
- 7.
Felicity Bain, Observations of morphologic beach state on a deeply embayed beach (Unpublished BSc Honours dissertation, University of New South Wales, 2014), 27 and 41. Bain based her analysis on rectified daily time-merged images of Bondi Beach over 731 days between January 2012 and December 2013 taken from a camera mounted on the top of the Astra Hotel, Campbell Parade.
- 8.
Bain, Observations of morphologic beach state, 44.
- 9.
E. C. Andrews, ‘Shoreline studies of Botany Bay’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 50 (1916), 170–171.
- 10.
David Chapman, M. Geary, Peter Roy and Bruce Thom, Coastal Evolution and Coastal Erosion in New South Wales (Sydney: Coastal Council of New South Wales, 1982), 125–126. See also table 5.1, 116–120.
- 11.
WorleyParsons, Waverley: Coastal risks and hazards vulnerability study, Report produced for Waverley Council (North Sydney: WorleyParsons, 2011), 26–28. Following the Public Works Department of New South Wales, WorleyParsons define a category X storm as one with a wave height of six or more meters and ‘characterised by damage to coastal installations, severe erosion, and serious disruption to shipping’ (25).
- 12.
Bain, Observations of morphologic beach state, 20.
- 13.
WorleyParsons, Coastal risks and hazards vulnerability study, 28.
- 14.
Peter Cowell and Bruce Thom, ‘Morphodynamics of coastal evolution’, in R. W. G. Carter and Colin Woodroffe (eds), Coastal Evolution: Late Quaternary Shoreline Morphodynamics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 40.
- 15.
WorleyParsons, Coastal risks and hazards vulnerability study, 56.
- 16.
Short, Beaches of the New South Wales Coast, 16. See pages 23–27 for details of the weather systems that produce storms and waves in Sydney.
- 17.
E. C. Andrews, ‘Beach formations at Botany Bay’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 46 (1912), 177 and 178.
- 18.
Andrews, ‘Beach formations’, 176–178.
- 19.
‘Terrific gale: Worst seas for 20 years’, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 July 1912, 18.
- 20.
‘Hurled up by the sea’, Daily Telegraph, 29 July 1912, 11.
- 21.
In its description of the storm, the Sydney Morning Herald also reported boulders, weighing up to half a ton, being deposited on the promenade along the ocean beach at Newcastle, 117 km north of Sydney. ‘Terrific gale’.
- 22.
Carl Süssmilch, ‘Note on some recent marine erosion at Bondi’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 46 (1912), 155–156.
- 23.
In the summer of 1959/1960 sculptor Lyall Randolph made two mermaids (modelled on Jan Carmody, Miss Australia Surf 1959, and Lynette Whillier, runner-up Miss Australia Surf 1959), from bronze-coloured fibreglass filled with cement. Randolph tried unsuccessfully to sell the statues to the Waverley Municipal Council (WMC). In April 1960 Randolph placed the statues on the Big Rock at his own expense and locals redubbed the boulder Mermaid Rock. A month later university students removed Jan from the rock as part of a Commemoration Day prank; she was later recovered from the Engineering School at the University of Sydney. Funds raised by public subscription paid to restore Jan. High seas during a storm in 1974 (see below) swept Lynette from the rock and she disappeared; Jan lost an arm and her tail in the same storm. WMC removed the remains of Jan’s statue and placed them in storage. In 1999 The Friends of Waverley Library arranged for these remains to be displayed at the library. Olaf Ruhen, ‘A tribute to the maker of the Bondi Mermaids’, Sydney Morning Herald (Weekend Magazine), 22 February 1975, 12; Bondi Mermaids, Information flyer, nd, Local Studies Library, Vertical File: Bondi Mermaids, Waverley Library.
- 24.
Keith Jenkins and Alun Munslow, The Nature of History Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), 14.
- 25.
Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 134.
- 26.
Edward Bryant, Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard, Second Edition (Chichester: Springer Praxis, 2008), 93.
- 27.
Bryant, Tsunami, 75–76.
- 28.
Bryant, Tsunami, 69. He retained this position in the most recent edition of the book. Edward Bryant, Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard, Third Edition (Chichester, UK: Springer Praxis, 2014), 46. Lee Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, Bondi View (June-July 2002), 19.
- 29.
E. Anne Felton and Keith Crook, ‘Evaluating the impacts of huge waves on rocky shorelines: Review of Tsunami: The Underrated Hazard’, Letter Section, Marine Geology, 197 (2003), 8–9.
- 30.
Jonathan Nott, ‘Waves, coastal boulder deposits and the importance of the pre-transport setting’, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 210, 1/2 (2003), 269–276.
- 31.
Adam Switzer and Joanna Burston, ‘Competing mechanisms for boulder deposition on the southeast Australian coast’, Geomorphology, 114 (2010), 47–48.
- 32.
N. A. K. Nandasena, Norio Tanaka, Yasushi Sasaki and Masahiko Osada, ‘Boulder transport by the 2011 great east Japan tsunami: Comprehensive field observations and whither model predictions?’ Marine Geology, 346 (2013), 292. Calculations provided by Wayne Stephenson, Department of Geography, University of Otago.
- 33.
Felton and Crook, ‘Evaluating the impacts of huge waves’, 8.
- 34.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).
- 35.
Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 155 and 157.
- 36.
Alex Rollings, Three quarters of a century in the eastern suburbs of Sydney past and present, undated, 13. Unpublished reminiscences, book three, Local Studies, Waverley Library.
- 37.
Felton and Crook, ‘Evaluating the impacts of huge waves’, 1–12.
- 38.
Cited in Bernard Dowd and William Foster, The History of Waverley Municipal District (Sydney: Waverley Municipal Council, 1959), 296.
- 39.
Cited in Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 296.
- 40.
Cited in Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 296–297.
- 41.
Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, 16–19, and Lee Cass, ‘For the disbelievers! The Big Rock—alive and well in 1888’, Bondi View (August-September 2002), 27.
- 42.
Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, 18. Emphasis added. See also Andrews, ‘Shoreline studies’, 175.
- 43.
Andrews, ‘Shoreline studies’, 175.
- 44.
Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, 19, and Cass, ‘For the disbelievers!’ 27.
- 45.
See, for example, Misia Landau, ‘Human evolution as narrative: Have hero myths and folktales influenced our interpretations of the evolutionary past?’ American Scientist, 72, 3 (1984), 262–268.
- 46.
Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, 19.
- 47.
Cass, ‘Exploding the myth’, 19.
- 48.
The problems of representing the Big Rock are well illustrated by looking at surf camera scans of Bondi Beach (e.g. Surfline) at different times of the day under different weather conditions. For further discussion see, for example, Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London: Reaktion Books, 2001).
- 49.
Rollings, Three quarters of a century in the eastern suburbs, 13.
- 50.
Kerwin Klein, From History to Theory (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011).
- 51.
Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 155–156.
- 52.
Rollings’ reminiscences also support Süssmilch’s claim that part of the rock broke off in 1912 and that waves ‘transported the broken section several hundreds of feet farther to the west’. Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 156.
- 53.
Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 156.
- 54.
Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 156.
- 55.
Rollings, Three quarters of a century in the eastern suburbs, 13.
- 56.
Süssmilch, ‘Marine erosion at Bondi’, 157.
- 57.
Rollings, Three quarters of a century in the eastern suburbs, 13.
- 58.
Land Systems EBC, Gordons Bay plan of management, Appendix 1 Marine ecology report. Report prepared for the Randwick City Council, 1994, 10–12.
- 59.
Short lists the spring (maximum) and neap (minimum) tidal ranges at Bondi of 1.7 m and 0.7 m respectively. Beaches of the New South Wales Coast, 221.
- 60.
My understanding of the complexities of these issues benefitted greatly from discussions with Kath Dickinson, Department of Botany, and Chris Hepburn, Department of Marine Science, University of Otago.
- 61.
Felton and Crook, ‘Evaluating the impacts of huge waves’, 11.
- 62.
Switzer and Burston, ‘Competing mechanisms for boulder deposition’, 42.
- 63.
Caroline Ford, Sydney Beaches: A History (Sydney: NewSouth, 2014), 267.
- 64.
Chapman, Geary, Roy and Thom, Coastal Evolution and Coastal Erosion, 132.
- 65.
See Note 23 above.
- 66.
‘Surf hazard may go’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 November 1974, 3. The groynes were destroyed by the Australian army, on the orders of American military authorities, in September 1942, following Japanese submarine attacks in June. Dowd and Foster, Waverley Municipal District, 84 and Ford, Sydney Beaches, 182–183.
- 67.
Edward Bryant and Roderick Kidd, ‘Beach erosion, May–June, 1974, central and south coast, NSW’, Search, 6, 11–12 (1975), 511. Syzygy and perigee, more correctly the perigee-syzygy of the Earth-Moon-Sun system, describes the Earth, Moon and Sun in a line with the Moon at its nearest approach to the Earth. See, Short, Beaches of the New South Wales Coast, 17.
- 68.
Chapman, Geary, Roy and Thom, Coastal Evolution and Coastal Erosion, 126.
- 69.
Cowell and Thom, ‘Morphodynamics of coastal evolution’, 54.
- 70.
Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 151. See also 143.
- 71.
Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 152.
- 72.
Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 153.
- 73.
Diana Coole and Samantha Frost define chaos as a concept of process instead of a state in which the focus is on becoming, rather than being, and of seemingly random effects; complexity emphases the catapulting of ‘unpredictable events … into novel configurations’. ‘Introducing the new materialisms’, in Diana Coole and Samantha Frost (eds), New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 13.
- 74.
Cowell and Thom, ‘Morphodynamics of coastal evolution’, 34.
- 75.
Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 159 and 174.
- 76.
Coole and Frost, ‘New materialisms’, 13.
- 77.
Coole and Frost, ‘New materialisms’, 13.
- 78.
Coole and Frost, ‘New materialisms’, 14.
- 79.
Coole and Frost, ‘New materialisms’, 14. See also, Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 159.
- 80.
Inkpen and Wilson, Science, Philosophy and Physical Geography, 159 and 161–163.
- 81.
Frank Ankersmit, Sublime Historical Experience (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 256, and Jenkins and Munslow, History Reader, 3.
- 82.
Monica Greco, ‘On the vitality of vitalism’, Theory, Culture and Society, 22, 1 (2005), 24.
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Booth, D. (2021). Storms. In: Bondi Beach. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3899-2_3
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