Paul Gamblin has advocated for the WA coast, including Leighton-Port and Ningaloo, since the late 1990s and has campaigned on ocean and coastal issues nationally and internationally. 

A community meeting on this issue will be held at 6pm on Wednesday, 6 March at the Fremantle Surf Lifesaving Club. More information can be found at saveleighton.org

TWENTY FIVE years ago this month, a group of people – mostly strangers to each other then – gathered on the edge of Stirling Highway near the footbridge to Leighton Beach to challenge a proposal that would have seen private beachside properties occupy swathes of precious public foreshore. 

It was the first action that sparked a community campaign – simply called ‘Save Leighton’ – that became bigger and lasted longer than anyone there could’ve imagined. 

Much of the core of that volunteer group is still active to this day, and that’s because while we’ve made good progress, the job’s not finished. 

We managed to stop the overdevelopment of the Leighton coast by campaigning intensively across the Court and Gallop governments, and succeeded in substantially increasing the extent of the foreshore reserve, helping consolidate Leighton’s place as one of the best and most accessible beaches along the metro coast, with more space for natural vegetation and dunes, and with enhanced recreation areas, like the ever popular one around the Orange Box café.

It was a tough fight at times, culminating in a massive ‘Leighton Wave’ rally which saw 8000 people gather at the beach more than two decades ago to show government just how much we love our beaches and want our kids to enjoy them too. 

Storm clouds

Unfortunately, the storm clouds are gathering again, and the future of Port Beach and south Leighton is at stake. 

The WA Government is considering a concerted push by developers to rezone the land behind Port Beach from industrial to urban. 

Rather than simply listening to these self-interested voices, we need our government to act instead on our collective behalf now, and even more so for future generations. 

If it doesn’t, the community will have increasing difficulty accessing the coast, and the beach itself will likely need much greater engineering, because in time, the foreshore won’t be wide enough for dunes to rebuild and resist erosion. 

Climate change-driven erosion, alone, means we should not be shackled to these old development boundaries.

If you think this is far-fetched, have a look at all three scenarios for Port and south Leighton recently published by the Future of Fremantle process. 

While much of that process has merit and good intent, in my view, it feels particularly under baked and rushed for the Port Beach section. 

Each scenario shows a version of heavily engineered responses to erosion, such as groynes, which should be avoided wherever possible. 

The better alternative is to give the beach and foreshore a much wider foreshore reserve. 

It’s cheaper, retains the natural qualities and aesthetics of the coast, and is consistent with WA’s coastal planning policy. 

In a nutshell, we need a much wider foreshore reserve for two reasons:

1: So that people can access the beach and foreshore now and in the future. Already, the area around Leighton and Port is acutely overcrowded, with families from the wider catchment – around 100 suburbs – unable to find parking (noting that public transport to the beach isn’t readily accessible in many areas, particularly for young families and the elderly). We clearly will need much more (flexible) public open space in the years ahead for access and recreation, and to restore coastal vegetation with shade trees.

Restore

2: To restore the damaged and narrow dunes at Port Beach so that we maximise the role that natural processes play in responding to erosion. This approach has enormous benefits, including significantly reducing the need for heavy engineering responses like groynes and seawalls, and retaining the amenity of the beach and foreshore for decades without the most intrusive engineered ‘solutions’.

To be clear, we have never been opposed to appropriate development along the coast, and have supported, in principle, the apartment and commercial development at Leighton now, as a pragmatic compromise, with a reasonable setback for the time. 

Likewise, we believe the current alignment of Bracks Street, which splits the industrial land behind Port Beach roughly in half would be the appropriate eastern boundary for the public foreshore reserve (developers have a much narrower reserve in mind). 

Our approach would provide a generous area for well-designed residential and commercial development to the east of Bracks Street.

We’ve learned a lot from a quarter century of advocating and campaigning for this special area. 

We have learned that the public good, and even adherence to policy, doesn’t always come automatically and that we have to be vigilant, engaged and ready to act. 

At our community stalls, people tell us again and again that one of the many reasons they cherish Leighton and Port beaches is because they’re beautiful and unblemished by groynes and seawalls.

We have been reminded that our enviable coastal lifestyle is worth fighting for, and that for so many of us, the physical and mental wellbeing benefits of this coast are of inestimable and growing value. 

Furthermore, that the spirit of egalitarianism that means anyone, irrespective of wealth or privilege, should be equally able to enjoy the beach – which is not a value held universally of course – is something we need to actively defend. 

People from across the community care deeply about their coast and will rally to the cause. 

They know that the health and public access to our beaches and foreshore areas cannot be taken for granted. 

It seems that every few years we have to stand up for our beaches, and that moment has arrived again for the Port-Leighton coast.

The government is poised to decide the future of Port Beach, with major implications for Leighton too, and we need to demonstrate again what governing for the public good, rather than narrow private interest, really means.

At stake are our beaches and some of our most sacrosanct values.