Joint National C2C and Queensland Coastal Conference, Gold Coast, 2025
This year the opportunity arose for the Queensland Chapter of the Australian Coastal Society to take on the task of organising a joint National and Queensland Coastal Conference. It was held at Mantra on View, Surfers Paradise, 4-6 June. This was an ideal venue for the number of participants that just topped 200. The co-chairs of the organising committee, Paul Prenzler and Zoe Elliot-Perkins, did a great job in working with a small team in putting together a diverse program of speakers, field trips to beaches and waterways and a memorable dinner. As with all our recent coastal conferences, Amy and her team from East Coast Conferences did a highly professional job in delivering a successful conference.
ACS is continuing to take on the role of underwriting these biennial national conferences. It is one of the key tasks of ACS. Through its efforts it is able to offer leverage to state and local governments to sponsor the meetings and get the valued support from other sponsors including trade exhibitors. Nick Harvey as Chair of ACS provided the conference welcome and explained ACS objectives and its role in advocacy. Clearly ACS would like to boost its membership in order to continue to bring together coastal practitioners from various fields of interest and provide a source of information on coastal matters, for instance through its newsletter and submissions.
The theme of this conference was “enhancing our coastal lifestyle—connecting our experience with the future”. Being on the Gold Coast this theme resonated with a range of issues confronting impacts of natural disasters, population and tourism growth and the likely consequences of climate change all within a highly urbanised spatial context. The City of Gold Coast is well aware of the challenges in maintaining a lifestyle compatible with these pressures. This was articulated by the Mayor Tom Tate in his opening welcome and made clear in other presentations and the field trips. The City of Gold Coast took the opportunity of launching its “Our Coastal Lifestyle 2050” at the evening reception held in the Surfers Paradise Surf Life Saving Club.
That people are interacting here with the forces of nature was expressed in many ways at this conference. Cyclone Alfred has had a significant albeit temporary impact on the lifestyle as seen with the narrow beaches and wire fences along the Esplanade. Matt Moore from the City of Gold Coast graphically demonstrated the before, during and after effects of this event. Clearly it was quite traumatic for a period not just with the loss of beach sand to the surf zone, but in the loss of electricity. To think what it would be like living on the 60th floor of one of those high-rise buildings for three days without electricity! But what Matt stressed was the benefits of preparing for impacts and managing the consequences. The beach at Surfers continues to cut back into remaining dune scarps. A sand nourishment program is in full swing. Matt blamed the BoM (!) for the persistent energetic swell combined with high tides that is limiting onshore sand transport and natural beach recovery. This is not unlike what was experienced here in 1967 and in NSW post 1974 storm events.
In her opening address, Johanna Nalau from Griffith University examined “Futures Thinking for Coastal Adaptation”. We all know that at a federal level adaptation policy is the poor cousin to emissions mitigation. But being here on the Gold Coast we were in the right position to think hard about our coastal futures. Many presentations picked up this theme looking at various challenges facing different communities, the risks they face under climate changes and what tools exist for effective adaptive management. Raewyn Peart from New Zealand outlined frustrations she is experiencing in New Zealand. Difficulties of implementing “managed retreat” became a major topic of discussion at the conference and the interactive session arranged by Liz Patterson proved to be an excellent way for participants to express their ideas and experiences. Presentations were also on how different states are developing coastal adaptation programs; Queensland, where the Local Government Association is directly involved and Victoria were very informative.
Two keynote speakers representing Commonwealth agencies offered national perspectives that were most welcome. David Wachenfeld from Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) shared with us his long experience in coral reef science focused to a large extent on the GBR, but also informing us of the broad sweep of research undertaken by AIMS on Australian reef systems. He explained the way reef ecosystems can rebound after periods of bleaching while introducing us to the potential for such systems to cross resilience thresholds.
Looking more at federal policy, Murray Townsend from the Climate Change Policy, Adaptation and Risk Division in DCCEEW provided an account where the policy framework is currently at in this important space. The National Adaptation Plan is soon to be released to deliver the National Climate Change Adaptation and Risk Program. Of specific reference to coasts was his mention of support for a Coastal Hazards Working Group in partnership with the states; he said NSW is to provide a lead role in this work. However, there are other activities underway which I hope we will learn more about during this term of federal government.
At the dinner, I had the pleasure of presenting a national coastal recognition award to Anne Leitch of Griffith University. Anne was an instrumental player in the development of CoastAdapt and continues single-handedly to update and refresh the website that originally emerged under NCCARF. A key aspect of Anne’s work is in communication. She places emphasis in developing trust within coastal communities in coastal science and management. Well done, Anne.
On the personal front, I spoke of my “dream” of a National Estuaries Program not unlike that in the USA since 1987. The reality of actual and emerging threats to waterway and ecological health of many Australian estuaries is quite clear to many at state and local levels. There once was a federal OZ Estuaries information website but that has gone. Here we face what I term the “long-term imperative” in planning for known threats such as sea level rise on important infrastructure, and those we know less about but fear. Alice Harrison from UNSW presented a very clear account of the risk of rising low tides in estuaries. It is time in my view to develop a better understanding of such issues and formally establish pathways to addressing the risks. Check out US partnership model on the internet and let me know what you think about its applicably here.
The next national conference will be held in Adelaide in conjunction with the South Australian Chapter of ACS. We are going back to holding them on even years (Covid took us to odd years) so our next meeting will be in 2028.
Bruce Thom
Words by Prof Bruce Thom. Please respect the author’s thoughts and reference appropriately: (c) ACS, 2025. For correspondence about this blog post please email admin@australiancoastalsociety.org.au
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