00:00 Australia's longest dune field stretches 190 kilometres from the mouth of the Murray River
00:07 to Kingston in South Australia's south east. More than a kilometre wide in places, it's
00:16 a barrier between the pounding waves of the Southern Ocean and the internationally significant
00:22 and protective wetlands of the Coorong.
00:24 So all of our creation stories are formed out of these very sand dunes that we're standing
00:30 within right now.
00:34 But this unique environment is facing an existential threat, and that's a serious worry for anyone
00:39 living close to the coast.
00:42 We're seeing a beach and dune erosion of about three metres per year plus. So every few months
00:48 we come, two or three months and it's gone more and the dunes are massively rapidly changing,
00:55 incredible rates of change.
00:58 Professor Patrick Hesp first came here in the 1970s. He returned 40 years later and
01:04 was shocked by the speed of change.
01:06 We were driving this beach and there'd been a huge amount of erosion and cliffing and
01:10 so we stopped and went up onto the dunes and it was just utterly changed and I was amazed
01:15 by it.
01:18 Ecologist Faith Coleman has been studying the Coorong for 30 years after falling in
01:23 love with the area through Colin Teely's Storm Boy story.
01:28 She says research done by Professor Hesp shows climate change is having a dramatic effect.
01:33 The funny thing about climate change is things are exponential. What's going to happen is
01:37 it's going to get faster and faster and the question is how fast?
01:42 The research indicates the rate of change is being supercharged by rising sea levels,
01:47 stronger wave energy and the erosion of an offshore reef.
01:52 As the shoreline is cut away, the sand is moving inland faster than previously thought.
01:58 We've seen in the last 10 years or less a new dune field develop that's gone up to 200
02:04 metres wide across the older dune system and continuing to expand landwards.
02:11 The dunes are marching towards the Coorong South Lagoon at about 10 metres per year.
02:16 This rapid change is seen as a warning sign for everyone living close to the coast.
02:21 I don't see that government is doing enough anywhere in the world to really mitigate climate
02:28 change and to make coastal communities think more about retreat options for example.
02:36 Nature will have its way. It doesn't matter what we believe in, who we believe in, but
02:44 nature will have its way.
02:47 That's the warning from this remote part of South Australia to those of us living in urban
02:51 coastal communities.
02:52 [BIRDS CHIRPING]
02:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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