300 Coastal Reflections and Stories

Ten years ago the opportunity arose to blog on the ACS website. Naomi Edwards was most persuasive and kindly agreed to post my blogs. Thus began a journey that just keeps rolling along.

I must specifically thank Naomi and later John Hudson and Mitch Harley for all their help in putting 300 blogs together. Without them these stories would never have appeared. The ACS executive team over the years have also provided support, in particular, the current Chair, Nick Harvey.

The blogs represent a way to share my thoughts on a range of coastal topics now listed as categories on the new ACS website. The blogs express some of my coastal interests in science, engineering, public policy, environmental law, and university and community education. They represent many engagements with others who have provided me with ideas and information. I learn so much from those encounters both individual and collective. In some ways, they represent the broad church of a  “coastal family”.

Coastal management has many challenges across a range of scales. On the one hand the aspirational “Integrated CZM” discussed in the academic literature reflects a conceptual understanding of what some see as “best practice”. Through my blogs I have spoken more of instances and structures that more realistically portrays “Disintegrated CZM”. It is a world full of “wicked problems” where social conflicts permeate planning and legal processes. Yet here, despite many frustrations, lies the fascination, the challenges and the joys of being engaged.

ACS blogs, along with the podcast with Angus Gordon, offer forms of communication that did not exist for most of my career. It is satisfying to see how ACS continues to offer coastal information, including the Newsletter to members so efficiently edited by Marie Ferland.  ACS stood up post 2008 and took over the running of National Coastal Conferences from the Commonwealth Government, and more recently was in a position to place on its website the fantastic information contained in OzCoasts that used to be supported by CSIRO. It maintains an advocacy role on certain national and state coastal matters recognising that there are limits to which it can perform this role as a voluntary organisation. Of course we welcome new members knowing that we exist in a field which contains diverse interests and passions.

I want to continue to contribute to ACS and share coastal knowledge more broadly. At this stage of life I am fortunate to run field trips, give lectures and seminars, indulge in “pure” academic research with inspiring colleagues, and engage with politicians, staff in federal, state and local governments. One way I have found that is very satisfying and share stories is through community coastal walks for local councils in eastern Sydney: Randwick, Waverley and Woollahra. On a recent walk I met a woman who had been on two of my previous walks. I asked why this one: she replied because you make me curious. If this is one thing I can do then it is all worthwhile and I will battle on.

Bruce Thom

Words by Prof Bruce Thom. Please respect the author’s thoughts and reference appropriately: (c) ACS, 2026. For correspondence about this blog post please email admin@australiancoastalsociety.org.au

#300