The wild west coast is slowly swallowing this town. Its people aren’t giving up without a fight

Residents on South Australia’s wild west coast are grappling with Mother Nature to save their cherished town from being swallowed up by the dunes.

Encroaching mountains of sand peer over backyard fences in Fowlers Bay.

Like an impending tidal wave, its appearance serves as a reminder to the isolated and exposed village that an impressive natural force is right next door.

Dunes have migrated in the region considerably in recent memory.

Original parts of the town – High Street and a cluster of homes known as Kent Town — are already buried.

A dozen historic dwellings have been swallowed by sand, with Kent Town’s remaining chimney tops last seen in the 1970s.

The re-routed road that replaced High Street now faces a similar fate.

Locals say that in the past 10 years the dunes have marched about 75 metres towards the road, which connects the town to the Nullarbor.

Now five metres from the road’s edge, the sand is also creeping closer to private dwellings.

Fend for yourselves

Leonard Hardy is taking matters into his own hands.

Shaded periodically from the harsh sun by a tall pine tree that stands proudly outside his seaside home, Leonard digs into the dry earth.

“Starling birds have been sitting up in the tree and they’ve propagated some boobialla trees for us, so I’m just digging them up and taking them to the sand dunes.”

The farm worker knows a thing or two about propagating plants. 

It’s the best he can do to start stabilising the dunes given the lack of resources in the isolated town.

He says Fowlers Bay residents often have to fend for themselves.

“We’ve got to run our own affairs. We’re outside a district council.

“We have no power or water; we get our water from the sand dunes and simply with our rainwater tanks.”

Solar panels line the top of every dwelling in Fowlers Bay, soaking up the region’s generous dose of sunshine.

The town isn’t connected to the main grid, so each dwelling generates its own electricity using solar and generators.

“We manage our own rubbish dump; it’s a lot to do, particularly with all the tourists coming into town,” Leonard says.

Fowlers Bay’s population undulates throughout the year, with more than 8,000 visitors staying at the local caravan park annually.

A further 8,000 day-trippers also visit the area per year, particularly in the cooler months when keen whale watchers can take a tour to catch a glimpse of southern right whales breaching in the bay.

In summer, many weary travellers veer off the never-ending Nullarbor to relax and breathe in the town’s coastal beauty.

It’s where civilisation drops off into the wild elements of the Great Australian Bight.

A few doors down from Leonard, Robyn Wallace strides through her quaint seaside caravan park.

She bought the park and kiosk with her husband almost five years ago.

“Visitors are always fascinated by the fact Kent Town is completely buried under the sandhills — and it could happen to us if things don’t change significantly,” she says.

“Clearly when we bought the park [the dunes] were something that we investigated, they’re very close to the town.

“We don’t want to in 10 years’ time be unable to sell the business because the sand dunes have moved even closer.”

She says movement among the dunes is common.

“Our water is located several kilometres out in the dunes, and when we first took over the park we used to constantly get lost trying to find our well.

“You’d drive through the dunes and have to change your track every time.”

Shifting sands

Further along the foreshore, alternative accommodation owner Lorrayne Balharry sits in her perfectly decorated home, which is nestled among holiday cabins she owns and manages with her daughter.

Her seaside cabins have doors fitted with plastic scrapers that push sand out the doors, sealing its occupants off from the outside elements.

Lorrayne says there’s been some extreme weather events during her time in Fowlers Bay.

“I have seen conditions where the jetty has completely been obliterated by sand – a white out.

“Walking into the sandhills, the sand will be drifting at a metre and it just permeates the air.

“The sand will plume from the tops of the dunes and fill our gutters, cover our verandas, come in through our ventilators and come into our houses.”

Lorrayne has collated the town’s history, which has fed the intrigue of travellers passing through.

Records show that even in the 1800s, sand would permeate throughout hotel rooms and huts occupied by kangaroo hunters.

“The town is very precious to me,” she says.

“Since the ’60s and ’70s when it was a ghost town, it’s had a resurgence as a little tourist village — it’s a delightful little town.”

Along with the changing dune system, Fowlers Bay has vastly transformed to serve an array of purposes over time.

Native title belongs to the Mirning, Wirangu, Kokatha, Maralinga Tjarutja, Yalata people who have long spiritual connections to the area.

There are traditional stories of whale dreaming at Fowlers Bay, where Mirning people would call whales from the edges of the Great Australian Bight.

In the early to mid-1800s, pastoral leases were developed on land surrounding Fowlers Bay, while the whaling industry also flourished on the west coast.

Nearby farm agglomeration, the closure of the town’s telegraph station and eventually its postal service saw Fowlers Bay transform into a ghost town by the 1960s.

This was the beginning of decline for the settlement — many dwellings were left abandoned, some taken by the sand.

As Lorrayne says, the town returned to life after its ghost period in the ’60s and ’70s and now survives purely on tourism.

Major discoveries have shown how much the sand has travelled in the region.

A 1994 archaeological investigation by Cath Kemper led to an enormous amount of whale bones being excavated a few kilometres from Fowlers Bay.

While some whale bones were found exposed and extremely weathered, buried bone was recovered from sandhills in an excellent preserved state.

Academics write that this suggests a quick burial by sand soon after bones were deposited by whalers on the beach.

Old pathways erased

Senior ranger Robert Sleep rolls through town in his gritty LandCruiser on a regular inspection of the town.

“The dunes directly adjacent to the south side of town, they’ve gotten a lot taller in the last five to 10 years,” he says.

Robert’s history with the area goes way back before his working life, to a time when he’d travel there with his father.

“Cray fishermen and shark fishermen would bring their boats down here, and there used to be a car park 50 or 60 metres further that way,” he says, pointing beyond a mound of resettled sand and shrubs.

“That wasn’t long ago, I’m talking 1980. Thinking about it now, it really surprises me.”

He looks back at the vanished road and points to a swaying coastal plant.

“Vegetation is everything with stabilising any system, really.

“You’ve got the canopy of the plants, which allows other seeds to congregate and germinate and keep replenishing itself.

“But underneath, and what probably a lot of people don’t realise is, there’s a lot of fine roots that go out a lot further than the plant and they’re all holding that soil together.”

Climate change concern

Flinders University professor Patrick Hesp studies coastal geomorphology around the world.

He says dunefields on the west coast of South Australia are much more active compared to the state’s east coast.

It’s something he thinks is being exacerbated by climate change.

“The dunefields are much more active, the vegetation is much more stressed because of aridity, and some of the south coast winds can be stronger in some areas as well.”

The professor says a warming climate could lead to more dune migration at Fowlers Bay.

“The CSIRO has estimated that we will see a 30 per cent decline in rainfall across that region by 2100 or so — it’s really significant in terms of climate change for that area.

“We would expect to see a possible decline in vegetation cover, but certainly the greater aridity will likely mean greater rates of migration of dunefields.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently revealed in its sixth assessment report, with medium confidence, a projected reduction in mean rainfall for South Australia.

It also stated there has been significant rainfall decrease from 1910 to 2019 in the south-west of the state.

This reduction in rainfall is likely to continue under all projected scenarios.

But the professor says not all hope is lost for Fowlers Bay.

“It’s quite possible to stabilise the large slip face, what we call the precipitation ridge that’s around the edge of the dunefield — that’s the advancing edge of the dunefield coming into town.

“It’s quite possible to stabilise if it’s done well and done with native species.”

“There’s always this nexus between us wanting to live on the coast and being nearby some of these wonderful natural landforms — I think it’s reasonable to look at stabilising a small portion of that dune system to protect infrastructure.”

Saving Fowlers

Leonard Hardy and Robyn Wallace drive through a dedicated path in the dunes carefully, with native coastal plants wobbling on plates in the back of their four-wheel drive.

They arrive at a portion of the dunes that’s most critical to stabilise in order to preserve their main road and infrastructure.

Leonard has already started dragging up green waste and large tree branches — anything to hold down the moving sand.

“If we do nothing, they will move over the road and possibly encroach on some of the houses on that side of town,” Robyn says.

“It’s imperative we start now and keep it up and stabilise those dunes where they are.

“We would be concerned if rainfall decreases and contributes to the sand moving even more than it is already — hopefully the work we’re doing today will help keep sand dunes where they are.”

She says she is confident there will be a future in Fowlers Bay.

A state government grant was recently approved that will help pay for revegetating the precipitation ridge that’s of concern.

“We have photographs of this place from 150 years ago, and although the sand dunes have increased in height and moved in one direction, I would feel confident that the town would still be here in 200 years’ time,” she says.

“Particularly if the efforts that we’re putting in today are effective.”

Leonard presses moist sand around a new sapling.

They’ve had some fortunate rain recently which has kept the dunes steady and provided hope for their native plants to flourish.

He dusts off his sandy hands and places them on his hips.

“You’ve got to do everything for yourself out here, so it’s everybody on board.

“It’s how you achieve something.”

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Credits

• Reporting: Evelyn Leckie
• Photography: Lincoln Rothall and Evelyn Leckie
• Video: Lincoln Rothall
• Graphics: Ruslan Kulski
• Producer: Daniel Franklin