Is Byron Shire facing its King Canute moment?

IS BYRON Shire facing its King Canute moment?
by Christian Morrow, editor, Byron Shire News.

King Canute, or to give him his correct name according to Wikipedia, Cnut the Great, was the tenth century king of Denmark, England and Norway made famous in an apocryphal story of him attempting to hold back the tide simply by the power of his own majesty.

Are we in Byron Shire simply a pack of Canutes attempting to halt the inevitable simply by using our own wishful thinking and bloody mindedness?

Canutes on both sides of the local debate are sure to take comfort from the scenes at Belongil Beach and Clarkes Beach over the last weekend.

The carefully engineered rock wall at Manfred St has been stripped of sand, with rocks and other debris scattered across the beach.

Those against the wall are incensed that we will soon have another length of ugly rock wall where the ocean will churn away the beach.

Rock fans, inevitably, will point to the fact that the wall survived and therefore extrapolate that rock walls are the only way to go. So whose fault is this?

Is it the fault of the Canutes at Belongil, who some believe should have known better than to build there?

Is it the fault of Enviro-Canutes who hate all talk of rock walls except the one protecting town and believe what nature takes away it will give back one day?

Or is it the Canutes in council pushing through an unworkable plan that favours Belongil at the cost of every other beach in the shire?

Sea levels are rising and weather and waves are becoming more intense and the ocean may never ever give back the rocks, sand or our stunning water views.

Nature will solve it for us and we will all look like Canutes.