Open letter from the non-human residents of Oxley Beach

DEAR News Of The Area,

This letter is to the humans protecting our home at what you call Oxley Beach.

We don’t have pens, we don’t have podiums, we can’t raise our hands at council meetings. We can’t write petitions and we don’t have a voice in the ocean pool planning proposal. But we see what you do and we’re asking you to keep fighting for us because Oxley Beach is our home. We live here, we always have and we are scared.

We are not against your pool. We are against being forgotten in the plans. We know the meetings drag on, the reports are long and people say “What’s the big deal? Why bother?”

But you know why you bother and we need you to continue to tell people about us.

I am the Little Tern and I’m listed as endangered in NSW.

I weigh 60grams (less than a golf ball) and I fly 6,000km from Asia to nest on your sand.

I come back every September because this beach still feels safe. When the season goes well, my chicks fledge. When it doesn’t, I don’t try again. Your voice in the community is the reason I may or may not survive.

We are the Pied Oystercatchers and the Sooty Oystercatchers. You may spot us working the low tide.

We’ve been cracking shells on these rocks for generations, raising our families here since before Port Macquarie had street lights.The rocks and reefs don’t need concrete to work….they just need to be left alone.

I’m the Black Rock Cod and I know every rock. I’m vulnerable in NSW. I’ve lived in the same cave at the Point for 25 years. I know every ledge, every shadow, every surge that moves through it. Take my cave, and I don’t relocate. I just … end.

We are the Loggerhead, The Hawksbill and Green Turtles. We may not nest here but this coast is our highway, our nursery, our kitchen. We glide through your reefs, grazing and resting in the same gutters we’ve used for centuries. We’re critically endangered & endangered.

I am the Great White Shark and I’m listed as vulnerable in NSW. I know I’m not popular with humans but the gutters and reefs at Oxley Beach are part of our path. We pass through unseen, keeping the ocean in balance the way we have for millions of years.

I am the Grey Nurse Shark. I’m critically endangered in NSW. I look fierce but I’m slow and gentle. Kinda cute even! Reefs and gutters are my resting grounds, my safe places. There aren’t many of us left!

Yet, we are still here … barely!

And if you let us, we will stay.

We will keep making this place wild.

We will keep making this place home for you and for future generations of our offspring and yours.

They call the concrete structure that they plan to put on our beach progress. But should progress come at the cost of destroying a beautiful, wild and pristine place? A place many seek out to enjoy, recharge, reflect and ground with mother nature away from the crowds.

Concrete doesn’t let us breathe. Concrete changes the water. It changes the currents, the fish and the food chain. When you pour concrete over a reef, you don’t just cover rock, you break something wild that holds this whole place together.

So, here you stand at a hinge point in Oxley Beach’s history. The choices you make today will echo for every child who walks this shore after you.

Once concrete is poured, reefs become walls, nurseries become foundations and ancient paths traveled by turtles, terns and rockcod disappear forever.

Your kids deserve more than a view of sand and a concrete box filled with stagnant water. They deserve the wonder of finding a Little Tern chick in a scrape, watching an octopus change colour at your approach or peering into a rockpool that’s been alive for centuries.

You are the generation that can choose to hand the next generation a living beach instead of a quiet monument to what used to be here.

Protecting Oxley Beach now is not nostalgia. It is your responsibility to the future.

Remember, every submission and email you write, every meeting you attend, every post, every comment, every time you remind people that this beach is more than a view. It is alive, it’s our home … it matters. If you stop, silence wins as there’s nothing else speaking for us but you.

So from all of us who scuttle, swim, nest and burrow here:

Don’t stop! Keep going!

Oxley Beach is worth it. You know it is! Keep on fighting for us because when concrete sets, we don’t come back. K.

And Oxley Beach without us is just sand and water – beautifu,l but quiet in a way that hurts.

Please don’t let our story end here.

With deep gratitude from,

The Residents of Oxley Beach, Rocks and Reef, Port Macquarie.

 

Regards,

Robyn Rawson.