A tunnel to the Northern Beaches?

I was delighted to read that the NRMA has bought the Palm Beach Ferry Service.

Perhaps they have enough influence with the State Government to plan and fund a tunnel from Woy Woy Peninsula to the southern end of the Northern Beaches peninsula.

I attended a community meeting on September 18, at Ettalong Diggers Club where deputy mayor Chris Holstein read a cutting from the Sydney Morning Herald, dated somewhere in the 1880s.

The article reported that there was a problem where Brisbane Water's estuary flowed into Broken Bay, where shoaling sands built up making difficult the passage of all but the smallest craft entering the Bay.

This was back when our transportation infrastructure was seaborne and there was regular trade between Woy Woy and Sydney.

Further research into this history will reveal a community making-do by dredging a channel with Canute-like persistence which is now an established practice.

The meeting's mood grew sombre as reports flowed about empty budgets and politicians in Gosford and Macquarie St without ideas about how to solve the problem.

The villages of Wagstaffe and Hardy's Bay are in an economic depression and a former dress shop owner in Ettalong tearfully described how she had lost her life savings because the tourist trade had stopped.

It was hard hearing about the first steps in our declining prosperity with no rescue in sight until the news of the NRMA's purchase of the ferry service was announced.

Long term, a bridge or a tunnel would cost a fraction of the expense of maintaining the channel for over 120 years, plus income lost as businesses failed because access to markets be they tourism, timber or product was, and still is, blocked.

A tunnel beneath Broken Bay would not spoil the landscape in the way a bridge might, and would not temporarily cease operations due to extreme weather events as happens with the current ferry service.

In the meantime, consider alternatives to the ferries that transport people now.

We need craft with a shallow draft.

I used to travel to work on the hydrofoil between Manly Wharf and Circular Quay.

Larger hydrofoils would be necessary for the traffic between Ettalong and Palm Beach, and two or three would be needed, an outlay of millions of dollars too.

But what a marvellous tourist attraction.

Email, 12 Nov 2018

Joan Patrick, Ettalong