Geraldton Marine Rescue volunteers lay 1400 sandbags to defend base as communications await relocation

Big swells last week causing the hard work of marine rescue volunteers to be washed away has sparked urgency to move the rescue’s command tower to a new location. Sandbagging efforts protecting the Geraldton Marine Rescue headquarters in Point Moore over the past year collapsed on Tuesday night last week, when raging ocean swells caused the stop-gap measure to be sucked out to sea. Geraldton Marine Rescue commander Damien Healy said a high tide and big swell caused by the supermoon on Tuesday night crashed over the sandbag wall and geo fabric mesh, washing it away, and the rescue group still needed the base to conduct communications. “We’re in the process of relocating all of our communication towers up to Moresby, but we’re stuck at the moment as it’s only got 4G network, which doesn’t work for us out there,” he said. “So until we can get an NBN link established, then we can’t move our communications,” he said. Mr Healy said the antennas would be relocated to a shipping container in Moresby, provide good coverage over the ocean for radio operations that would allow them to be based remotely. “We can’t remove anything from the base or start relocating until we can get that sorted out, and that’s not so far away, hopefully, it’s just a matter of a few weeks, but until then we need to defend the base so we can keep our operations running,” he said. Volunteers gathered at the headquarters on Sunday to rebuild the man-made wall, with about 1400 sandbags filled and laid over two sections of mesh over the weekend. The tide now rests just 9m away from the Point Moore base.