Lorne Foreshore

Lorne Foreshore has always been very important to Lorne. From the earliest days of Europe settlement boats were landed on the foreshore and fish were caught with nets. It was the site of the original Sea Baths as well as being used for the first aeroplanes to land. Recreational activities including cricket, football, tennis, bowls and trampolines have had a place on Lorne’s foreshore.

The Sand

In 1958 the public works department decided to extend the rock wall beyond its present location to where Grove Road meets the beach, near HAH today. Heavy concrete foundations were first constructed as its base. The beautiful wall was built, and it looked wonderful. Heavy sea soon undermined the wall and smashed it to pieces.

Heavy seas saw three metres in depth of sand washed away from the surface of the beach and 1.5 metre sand dunes disappeared overnight. Bert Driscoll’s Dodgem Car buildings, at the end of Grove Road, were also undermined when all the sand was washed away and were left half dangling.

Hector Stribling, who owned Erskine House at this time was very concerned that the popular guesthouse could be in serious trouble. He contacted those he knew in Ports and Harbours and they arranged for quarryman Bill Roach to create a sandstone groin on the southern side of the beach to build up sand. This proved to be most effective and remains to this present day.

<photo of rock groin>

On the main beach wooden groins were built all along the sand at regular intervals. These had similar results as the rock groin in trapping the movement of sand. Over time they were completely covered over, but later removed for safety reasons, as a surf competition was due to be held on the Lorne beach.

<photo of barriers on Lorne’s main beach>

Where the beach sand meets the grassy soil, they employed a different method of restoring the beach. A long sloping sand ramp was formed from the beach to the grassy bank. This slope was covered with a heavy-duty plastic blanket. On top of this large flat stone slabs were placed. When the waves slid up this sloping ramp, they deposited sand amongst the flat stones, eventually covering the whole surface.

The Flat

The flat area on the foreshore was used for cricket and football, before it was moved up the hill to Stribling Reserve.

Lorne foreshore had a large car park,  tennis courts, trampolines and bowl club.

The Rocks

Lorne foreshore, and also visible at Teddy’s Lookout, the Otway sandstone rocks (arkose) show many interesting features including concretions and folds. At Shelley Beach (Vera Lynn), particularly at low tide, the folds in the sandstone are prominent and have be named on Google Maps as Edwards Folds, a geographic feature.

Edwards Fold Geological Feature, Shelley Beach (Vera Lynn)

As well as the folds, erosion of the sandstone over millions of years has produced holes and spherical rock protuberances. The rocks formed about 100 million years ago, while Australia was still joined to Antarctica. It was a warm period with no polar ice caps.

The rocks were buried and became saturated with water containing various chemicals including calcium carbonate. These solutions precipitated around fractures and sometimes reactive mineral grains that developed over time depositing layer upon layer to give ball shapes, called concretions. Some concretions are harder or softer than surrounding rock, so when exposed to erosion a hollow may develop or harder concretions may result in protruding ball shapes, or ridges along the cracks.

Carbonate minerals are particularly susceptible to being dissolved in rainwater. This means concretions gradually become hollowed out as the calcite cement is dissolved away. Some concretions include iron carbonate called siderite, which breaks down to iron oxides when exposed at the surface, leaving a rusty appearance on the rocks.

Potholes in rocks maybe visible at the Rapids on the Erskine River. True potholes are formed by the tumbling of hard core-stones in strong currents that gradually carve out rounded holes in the rock.

Sources:

• Greetings From Lorne by Leigh Hammerton
• The Potholes at Teddy’s Lookout, by Andrew Gleadow
• Doug Stirling article on Sand from Lorne Independent November 2024