Cudgen Creek to be dredged - again!

The local MP for the NSW Tweed state electorate is reported as supporting further dredging of Cudgen Creek. By 'supporting', I mean he has convinced his LNP colleagues to spend taxpayers money in response to the urging of a few of his National Party supporters. Below is my response to the report of his daft proposal.

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Of some pertinence to Einstein’s aphorism is the news that Council, with the support of local MP Geoff Provest, intends to dredge the Cudgen Creek estuary again [Tweed Daily News, Dredging to go ahead at Cudgen Creek, 25 Aug 2016].

The report states taxpayer’s funds of $345,000 will be expended to remove 25,000m3 of sand from the lower estuary of the creek and place most of it as renourishment sand on the eroded section of Kingscliff Beach immediately north of the northern training wall. That’s a unit rate of $13.80/m3 which will hardly cover the cost of mobilising the dredge to the area, let alone actually dredging the sand. Not to put too fine a point on it, that cost estimate will escalate significantly.

Geoff Provest is quoting ‘navigation safety and access for recreational vessels at low tide’ as justification for the expenditure on the project. I note that Mr Provest didn’t seem to care too much about ‘navigation safety and access for recreational vessels at low tide’ when he cravenly acquiesced in the NSW Government’s successful efforts to close down the Australian Volunteer Coast Guard station at the entrance to the creek, which actually did do a lot to promote navigation safety for recreational vessels transiting the creek entrance, at all stages of the tide. Since the closure of the AVCG station a few years ago, I suspect that that there are now significantly fewer recreational vessels transiting the entrance, and it would be interesting to know just how much is being spent per vessel to improve ‘access at low tide’, which is, after all, for only a few hours per day.

However, referring back to my opening remark attributed to the great physicist, my main concern is that the estuary has been dredged many times before, the last about three years ago, with the sand placed as nourishment on the southern end of Kingscliff Beach. The improvement in access at low tide lasted for all of twelve months, and notwithstanding the local beach nourishment, the result of the dredging was a serious erosion pulse moving north along Kingscliff beach from the entrance, a pulse which is still evident in the centre of the embayment at Dreamtime Beach. This, as any competent coastal zone manager, coastal engineer or student of coastal zone dynamics knows, is because estuaries such as Cudgen Creek are not net exporters of sediment to the coastal system, but net importers.

Presently, sand moving north along the coast as a result of longshore drift bypasses Cudgen Creek over the shallow arcuate sand bar offshore from the entrance. As before, dredging the lower estuary will result in this longshore sand transport being intercepted and transported into the estuary by the flood tide to fill the dredge holes, a process which will continue until the estuary mouth is again shoaled and in dynamic equilibrium with tide and longshore transport rates. The interruption to the longshore sand transport as sand moves back into the estuary will again also result in an erosion pulse moving north along the beach from the estuary mouth.

I suspect that this proposed project comes under the heading of ‘something must be done, here’s something, so let’s do it’, since politicians like to point to their expenditure of public money as sole evidence of their value to society, rather than a more reasonable metric of value measurement, such as successful and useful outcomes based on value for money. But, whatever the motivations, this project is, without doubt, pandering to a few noisy souls, and a waste of my and your money.

And this is his response:

Thanks for your observations - I’m certainly no expert and acknowledge there are opposing views on the efficacy of dredging creek entrances. The same is also true of stabilising river and creek mouths with rock walls.

However, it has been some years since any dredging work was undertaken in Cudgen Creek and this announcement has been welcomed by boaties and other creek users.

And this is my response to his fatuous and, these days, all to prevalent prevarications from politicians:

Opposing views – please? Have a look at what has happened since the last dredging, and then tell me again about ‘opposing views’. At what point in this post-truth era did you decide to ignore the evidence of your eyes?

Please advise how many and which ‘boaties and other creek users’ have welcomed this proposal. The fishing club now back in the old AVCG training rooms?

Cruising concerns

Having traveled on Princess Cruise ships for over 50 days in total, and having signed up for a 90 day cruise in early 2017, it should be clear to Princess Cruise line and to general readers that I have some serious appreciation for the line, its staff and ships. Nevertheless, nothing is ever and always perfect and, given my experience, it seems reasonable that I am allowed to make some comments on the less than perfect elements which, for me, diminish the pleasure of a Princess Cruise line shipboard experience.

Some of these less than perfect elements are:

·    The low chairs in the dining rooms which mean that those vertically challenged diners [like my wife] end up with their chin on the table [I exaggerate, but only a little, and only for effect]. Cushions are available to alleviate the condition but the dining room staff never offer them and seem reluctant to provide them even when specifically requested.

·    The food available at second sitting, which generally seems have been sitting and stewing in a bain marie since it was cooked before the 1st sitting. Promotions such as ‘Aussie BBQ’, where overcooked, stewed ribs represented the only apparent element of ‘BBQ’,was a risible effort. Princess make much in their advertising of the high 'top notch dining' quality of their food, but the reality differs significantly, and not to their credit. Curtis Stone, the monetised Australian chef-for-sale, is now supposedly the creative artist behind Princess food – I hope his input will result in a significant improvement, but I won’t hang by the thumbs waiting.

Now, more substantially, my last cruise was a 15 day round trip on the Dawn Princess from Sydney to Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, taken largely to see the World War II battle sites of Milne Bay where allied forces [Australian] first defeated Japanese forces, and Guadalcanal where largely US forces ultimately ended Japanese expansion. A poignant moment in the cruise was the laying of a wreath in Iron Bottom Sound off Guadalcanal, in 760m of water over the wreck of HMAS Canberra. The cruiser was severely damaged on 8 August 1942 at the Battle of Savo Island, and subsequently sunk by a torpedo fired by the destroyer USS Ellet after 263 5-inch shells and four other torpedoes fired by USS Selfridge failed to do the job.

Given that both the embarkation and disembarkation ports were Australian, and given the Australian connection, then and since, with the area through which the cruise travelled, it will not be a surprise to learn that the overwhelming majority of passengers were Australian. It would therefore be a reasonable expectation that the ship’s in-cabin TV would carry a channel of Australian news, particularly since Dawn Princess is currently dedicated to cruising from and to Australia. Such was definitely not the case, a reasonable expectation or not. There was virtually no Australian news available, but there was plenty of US so-called news on a dedicated Fox news channel, a dedicated MSNBC news channel [which carried never ending shows about US prisons and prisoners, of which there are many], a dedicated US CNBC news channel and a dedicated BBC news channel carrying only US news. I’m now a Trump intimate.

With current satellite communication technology, and the global and on-board resources available to Princess, it would have required very little effort to provide an Australian news channel, or at least a daily news summary delivered to cabins. It is hard not to escape the conclusion that Princess management suffer from a serious inflexibility or indifference, leaving them incapable of summoning the imagination to understand what the needs of specific passenger groups may be, and unable to summon the little effort required to satisfy those needs.

While on the subject of the in-cabin TV, and specifically the Ch43 ScanDisplay which shows the moving map track chart, weather conditions and navigation data, is it too hard to ensure that it works? During all my time on board Princess ships, the ScanDisplay system has been down, partially or completely, for the majority of the time. I like to see where I’m going and where I’ve been and the serial lack of interest by Princess management in ensuring that ScanDisplay is properly and continuously up and running is infuriating.

My final comments are related to the destination information provided on board by the so-called ‘Destination Lecturer’. The information is almost without fail unreliable, incomplete and out of date. For example, at the beginning of June 2016 the port of Sydney information still refers to the elevated Sydney Monorail as a preferred transport alternative. The monorail ceased operations in June 2013. Maps of destinations are mostly unavailable and in my view the quality of the destination lecturers leaves a lot to be desired.

On my last cruise our 'destination lecturer' treated the audience as an unfortunate cross between children and inmates of a home for bewildered geriatrics. Destination ports are a major element of the cruise experience and it is totally insufficient for Princess to allow the important task of informing passengers about the history, geography, layout and attractions of the destination to be casually and blithely confined to a few photos of local children and suggested shopping ‘opportunities’.