It’s noisy, pretty dusty, and at times it’s not comfortable.

The Long-Term Coastal Protection Scheme was never going to tiptoe into town with silk slippers. It arrived with trucks, rock, dredge pipes, and the usual din that follows trucks and machinery.

Restoring Balance

And we should be glad that it has finally arrived. Because for the first time in decades, we are not watching the ocean creep closer to our bay. Instead, we are restoring balance to the coastline. This is what it looks like: inconvenient, imperfect, and absolutely essential.

Already, the village is adapting to this new chapter in its own way. Each morning, a small congregation of our top surfers gathers at Anne Avenue, St Francis Bakery coffees in hand, studying the daily progress of the Laura Road groyne.

With the practised patience of people who measure time in tides and swells, they speculate, with smiles facing the rising sun, on the new wave patterns that may soon emerge there.

It is a peculiarly St Francis blend of coastal engineering and car park anthropology, where construction reports meet surf forecasts, and the future of the shoreline is discussed with the same seriousness as the next set on the horizon.

(L-R) Wayne Furphy, Dr Dion George (Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment) and Mayor Hatting Bornman onsite at the Laura Road Groyne.

Thanks To Those

Thanks to those who have stood behind this project by paying the levy, donating, lending, writing letters, attending meetings and keeping the pressure on until the work began.

Furthermore, many have tolerated delays and detours, trusted the process, and kept faith when it looked like red tape and the predictable hum of a few people confusing obstruction with intelligence might strangle it.

All this alongside Kouga Municipality, whose partnership has been vital in turning paper plans into rock and sand on the shoreline. That collective effort is the reason the trucks are rolling today.

Securing A Coastline

Rebuilding a beach is not the same as mowing a lawn. Every lump of sand, every placed rock, is an investment in this village’s survival. The work will pass; the benefits will endure. It is something to celebrate.

Dust and noise are inevitable. What matters is that groynes are being constructed to keep this place standing long after the grumbling has faded.

Read more: Extension of spit revetment / breakwater almost complete – Gallery