Life 'was' a beach Down Under

A new federal government report out this week reveals drastic measures are being considered to protect hundreds of thousands of properties now "at risk'' because of rising sea levels, allegedly caused by global warming.

With doomsday scenarios seriously pondered, such as homes around Sydney Harbour being flooded as water is pushed up through the drainage system, everything is on the negotiating table.

Radical changes to local planning laws, insurance reform, even a new approach to the booming coastal tourism trade will be considered.

The most chilling paragraph in the report, which follows an intensive 18-month inquiry, suggests governments may have to soon flex legal muscle to prevent Australians setting up house near "at risk'' addresses.

It says we may soon need a "government instrument that prohibits continued occupation of the land or future building development on the property due to sea hazard."

The report has been taken deeply seriously by a nation which recently watched, with furrowed brow, as luxury homes started falling into the sea.

The front line of the battle against the rising oceans is at beautiful Byron Bay -- an upmarket enclave in northern New South Wales on the eastern most extremes of the nation populated by artistic types with a Green tinge.

Byron Bay, which was once home to the Aussie icon Paul Hogan of Crocodile Dundee fame (he quite sensibly lived in the hinterland) has some of the nation's most expensive real estate where homes gaze out with 180-degree views at the rolling waves of the Pacific.

But several owners have been recently either threatened by those waves or watched in horror as their front lawns began crumbing in the face of their onslaught.

Attempts to build stone shields against the sea have sparked a legal wrangle with the environmentally conscious local council, which displays a solid grasp of that Shakespearean edict about discretion being the better part of valour.

The Byron council believe a strategic retreat from the coast is a far more viable option than engaging in a bare knuckle brawl with the waves.

The council, led by Mayor Jan Barham, has a point.

Rock walls have been built with reckless abandon off Australian beachside communities for the past two centuries without thought to how they shift sand patterns and clog river systems.

Barham says the rock walls would do little to save the homes and ultimately destroy Byron's greatest attraction -- it's pristine beach.

Queensland to the north of Byron Bay was signalled out for special mention in the report:

"Queensland's highly developed and populated coastal communities such as the Gold Coast and the Sunshine Coast will be particularly affected by the predicted increase of sea levels and floods," the report said.

"With almost 250,000 vulnerable coastal buildings, Queensland is at the highest risk of all Australian states from projected sea level rise, coastal flooding and erosion.''

The report even suggests some inquiries should be made into a possible withdrawal of insurance for certain at-risk regions.

The Insurance Council of Australia reportedly estimates the value of property exposed to the risks from rising sea levels and increased storm damage ranges from $50 billion to $150 billion Aus.

The problem can't be overstated. European Australia has a long running love affair with its bush heritage but the reality is the nation's interior has been largely ignored.

Australians are like icing on a giant doughnut, populating the extremes of the nation with a light dusting and leaving a giant, vacant hole in the middle.

Aborigines have survived for 40,000 years in "The Red Centre'' but the notion of leaving the coast for the sun blistered interior is not an option for a nation with a collective memory of gentle, green, European climes.

There remains the hopeful possibility climate change and subsequent rising sea levels are just the product of mass hysteria.

One of the nation's climate change sceptics, Ian Plimer, a professor of mining geology, says sea levels have gone up and down like a yo yo long before humans first crawled from the cave.

"They've risen and fallen up to 600 metres,'' he told the national broadcaster ABC recently.

"The sea level changes we've had in the last 12,000 years have been about a centimetre a year.''

On the Sunshine Coast just north of the Queensland capital of Brisbane -- particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels -- Mayor Bob Abbott acknowledges the jury is still out on the science of rising sea levels.

"But we can't wait around 30 years to see if the skeptics are right.''

Michael Madigan, the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia, is the Sunshine Coast bureau chief for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 30, 2009 A14