Beach will disappear to pave paradise

I am grateful to Peninsula News for providing a medium for local people to express their views on local issues.

As a home owner at Pretty Beach since 1991, I have watched the development of this area with some delight but also some major trepidation.

One of the main issues of late has obviously been the Ettalong development led by the Outrigger Resort and now the possibility of Fast Ships.

With the Outrigger Resort, I believe the development is out of character to the area and from Hardy's Bay it presents a huge blot on the landscape.

Whereas previously, there was a smaller darker building, now this huge white monster dominates the landscape and completely ruins the former wonderful natural views of the foreshore and the majestic mountain backdrop to the Ettalong skyline.

They claim the building is like Noosa.

Six palm trees in concrete do not look like Noosa to me.

Also, having stayed in an Outrigger Resort in Waikiki, I was shocked at the state of that world-famous beach where most of the sand has disappeared because of the effects of over-development and the consequent wind and wave erosion.

In some places, it is a board walk where there was once sand.

They've even had to import sand from Australia!.

It's weird: The sand is different colours depending on where it came from.

More development will no doubt result in the same fate for Ettalong beach.

Now we have Fast Ships Ltd coming in and obtaining a lease to build a huge wharf on the beach for a proposal that correspondents have said is unviable because of the huge seas that can arise off our coast.

I suspect this proposal will only add to the speed with which the beach will disappear and inevitably mean that the Council, ie you and I, the ratepayers, will have to spend huge dollars building breakwaters to save these buildings from erosion.

What a disaster when a magnificent family-friendly beach which has probably existed for millions of years can be destroyed in a generation.

As the Jodi Mitchell song says, "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone, they've paved paradise, put up a parking lot".

Lance R Dover, Pretty Beach