The sea water that had been lapping at the foundations of Meredith Street houses on the north end of the Stockton peninsula Saturday morning, after a storm swell and high tide sent waves crashing over the dunes and Mitchell Street rock wall, had largely drained away by the afternoon and residents had begun taking stock of the mess in "deepening levels of concern" for the eroding protections keeping them safe from the roiling ocean.
John Hunter, who has lived on Meredith Street for five years, said the waves that carried sand and foam over the unprotected north end of Stockton Beach in the morning had reached as far as Fullerton Street - the only road onto the peninsula and almost back the entire breadth of the suburb to the Hunter River - and had inundated the nature strip outside his home.
"I looked out the window and it was like there was a river running down our street," he said.
"It flowed in our front gate and down our drive toward the garage. A lot of driftwood has floated into the backyard and up onto the footpath along the street."
A storm surge, generated by a low pressure system over the Tasman Sea, had sent massive waves barrelling along the NSW coastline, battering the already devastated beach and causing chaos for residents. Driftwood and debris was left littered along the waterfront on Saturday afternoon, as gutters rose and overflowed at the tide's peak, and the massive swell overtopped into the suburb.
"We have been here five years," Mr Hunter said, "And since that time we have seen the shoreline coming towards us about 20 metres. Some of the residents who have been here longer, since 1995, say they have never seen it go all the way to Fullerton Street before."
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Larger pieces of timber, which had been littered along the beach by previous erosion, had been pushed back onto the headland, and access pathways to the sand were clogged with debris as waves continued to reach the uppermost extremities of the beach on Saturday afternoon.
But despite the dramatic vision of massive waves breaking against the rock wall, and crashing out to sea, Stockton Surf Lifesaving Club chief training officer Willow Forsyth said the weekend's chaos was far from an atypical storm event, and an ill omen of worse to come.
"It wasn't that big of an event," Ms Forsyth said on Saturday evening, "So, what does that mean for a much bigger event given how much water came over? It just shows how fragile we are and without a dune system to protect us against waves, it shows this increasing risk of storm surge inundation.
"The bottom line is, the dune system is gone, which means that even a storm of the size we had today ... we've had much bigger - was coming in and inundating that dune system."
Ms Forsyth said the prospect of seeing water come so close to residents' houses had stirred up a deeper concern for the longterm safety of the suburb, and for the urgency of addressing the ongoing erosion crisis.
"It's really reaching this point where we don't have much time left," she said. "We need to know that this funding (to address the issue) is going to happen sooner rather than later."
While rock walls provided a last line of defence, Ms Forsyth believed the most effective longterm solution - and potentially the least expensive option for government - was to lift a moratorium on offshore sand extract for beach nourishment to allow for the dredging of millions of cubic tonnes of sand to replenish the peninsula's natural dune system.
"Ultimately, the only way to solve this intractable problem is to remove the impediments for beach nourishment," she said. "Get that sand. It is the cheapest option and you can get it back into the beach system to protect Stockton, protect the coastline, and the 200-metre strip that we now have between the beach and the Port system."
Meanwhile, the city's beaches elsewhere were similarly inundated as the south-south-easterly swell slammed against exposed corners at Newcastle Beach and Redhead.
Forecasters said the storm had brought waves between five and seven metres crashing along the NSW coast, with instances of larger breaks to the south around Sydney. Residents of Stockton estimated on Saturday morning, however, that the swell could easily have peaked between 12 and 15 ft.
