Point Moore headquarters under erosion threat as another bad season looms

More reinforcement works will begin at Geraldton Volunteer Marine Rescue’s Point Moore headquarters in the coming months amid concerns it will be in “a fair bit of trouble” come winter. Despite the beach recently returning somewhat back to normal, GVMR commander Damien Healy said there was more work to do to protect the West End building this year. “We’ve come up with a plan to do some more reinforcement of the wall, probably to the north side of what we’ve done. And we’ve got a plan to have it done by April, because really April and May is when all the thunderstorms start to come through,” he said. In August last year, it was revealed 15m of coastline was lost in front of the building, placing it at extreme risk of erosion and forcing volunteers to create a man-made sand wall as a stopgap measure. “We feel that if we do a bit more work and protection on the north side of where we built the wall, that will buy us a fair bit more time,” Mr Healy said. “We’re hoping that the beach builds its way back up and naturally leaves us alone.” Mr Healy said plans were in place to protect the building again after similar weather patterns were forecast this year. “One more year they’re forecasting another bad season with the negative Indian Ocean Dipole; that’s three years in a row and then something should change,” he said. “We’re expecting that we might get in a fair bit of trouble in winter and have to move, so we’ve planned for it. We don’t want it to happen because it’s such a nice building and it’s such a good spot. “We’ll have to actively keep a close eye on it and in between storms put more mesh down and some sandbagging.”