<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/07/sunshine-coast-residents-fear-storm-surges-bribie-island-buffer>
"Jen Kettleton-Butler is on “a postage stamp of island” trying to rescue an
echidna she calls Eddie.
Wind roars in her microphone and the camera she holds pans from a public toilet
that is disappearing beneath waves to a thin strip of coastal forest that, too,
is being reclaimed by the ocean.
“This is weeks, if months, you know, at the most, before this is gone,” she
tells her social media followers.
It is the first Saturday in May and Kettleton-Butler is standing on an
uninhabited strip of Bribie Island a few dozen metres wide that has been
dissected to the north and south by two successive breakthroughs – one by the
wind and waves associated with ex-Tropical Cyclone Seth in 2022 and the other
by Alfred in March.
With the tide fast coming in, Kettleton-Butler calls off the search for Eddie,
hoping he can be found at a later date. She hopes too that the “weather settles
down a little bit” over winter and “stops pounding” the island while “we
actually get our ducks in a row and get some sort of coastal engineering
solution in place to put back our barrier island”.
Behind the disappearing forest is a narrow passage of calm water upon whose far
shore sits the houses of Caloundra, framed by the distinctive volcanic peaks of
the Glass House Mountains. Kettleton-Butler points to the settlement on the
mainland.
“We need to put back our barrier island,” she says. “We need to re-establish
our bar back at its traditional position. Because those are the conditions and
the assumptions around which we built our home on the edge of the water
there”."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
