PETER Clarke, the newly appointed president of the Mornington Peninsula Beach Box Association, has wasted no time in outlining an ambitious agenda to ensure the region’s beloved beach environment is improved.
The McCrae resident, who officially began his new role this month, expressed an unwavering commitment to ensuring the peninsula’s beaches remained clean, safe, and sustainable – noting a particular concern with an increase in beach erosion, as well as high tides impacting retaining walls.
“Obviously the owners of the beach boxes have got a particular unique interest in making sure that that environment is looked after,” he told The News, adding the iconic beach boxes, some of which were 100 years old, were a “piece of history of the local community”. “The population has grown very dramatically and as a consequence the beaches just get washed away by storm water, which is just untreated water going into the bay,” he said. “So, it’s not good for the bay and it’s not good for beach erosion generally.”
Clarke said his main goals would be to work with both government agencies such as the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Melbourne Water, Parks Victoria and council to really improve issues surrounding the environmental impacts, and “trying to get that coordinated response”. Clarke said getting authorities to fund projects or undertake maintenance was among beach box owner frustrations. “It can be very tricky, and those authorities tend to do either nothing at all, or if anything, not much. You look at it down at Portsea, for instance, where you’ve got those massive sandbags and governments know what they’ve got to do to be able to repair that, but they don’t spend the money on fixing it,” he said.
At Shire Hall Beach at Mornington, Clarke said there were programs that council and governments “know that they should be undertaking to look after that beach and restore those environments and again they don’t fund it”. “As a consequence of that, the beach boxes can find themselves under siege with water and whatever else. Indeed, the sand builds up behind them and creates infestations of termites or there were retaining walls which were holding the sand back and those collapse and the council and authorities did nothing. “Yet on the other hand, they’re quite happy to take all of the rates and the costs and fees and licenses and transfer duties (associated with beach boxes) along the journey.”
However, he said members were excited by Mornington MP Chris Crewther having launched a forum to “talk through those issues” and “find ways which not only have low impact on the environment but also improve the sustainability and the environmental outcomes that occur right around the bay”.
Clarke, who is also chairman of the Port Phillip Beach Box Association, said there were about 1200 beach boxes along the peninsula, many of which had been ruined during damaging storms last September. Fortunately, all were repaired except for a handful in Dromana and Rosebud, which he believed would be fixed after the availability of contractors was challenging close to the Christmas period.
Another aspect of Clarke’s agenda is enhancing safety as beach boxes had been targeted by vandals where decks and roof structures had been “badly damaged”. One beach box in Rosebud had burnt to the ground last October after squatters moved in. “They’d set up a whole bunch of batteries to provide light for themselves and one the batteries caught on fire,” he said.
“More of the damage tends to occur during the winter months. We had probably about ten in a row where all the doors got smashed in just for pure vandalism; just kids kicking them in.” Graffiti was also a concern, he said, but police have been conducting some patrols, “so they’re certainly recognised that there’s an issue in certain pockets”.
First published in the Mornington News – 14 January 2025
