At that time the lake was recording its strongest tidal flows since records began. A lot of beach dune restoration was taking place all over NSW following the eradication of bitou bush. It was replaced by a combination of acacia longifolia and coastal tea tree, which stabilised the sand and stopped the windblown sand from replenishing the southern dune we all used to slide down.

At the same time council started building up both the height and the length of the dune towards the northern entrance. It constructed fences of shade cloth to trap the windblown sand. This caused the lake to close in 1993 and stay closed until 1998.

In August 1998, with heavy rainfall predicted, council decided to open the lake. I watched as a council employee drew a line in the sand with his foot, not in the best location but the shortest distance between two points and the cheapest option.

That opening was an environmental disaster. It collapsed part of the boardwalk, dozens of 100-year-old trees fell into the lake, 20 metres of the southern shoreline disappeared and two Aboriginal skeletons were uncovered. 

During the time the lake was closed council decided to extend the Holiday Haven caravan park shoreline by dumping tonnes of rock into the lake then backfilling, The boat ramp, which was then gravel, was concreted.

Severe erosion continued along the southern lake shoreline due to turbulence created by the rock wall and the new concrete boat ramp. In 1998 the NSW Department of Public Works engaged consultants Patterson & Britton to help solve the problem. It was decided increasing the height and the length of the dune would prevent storm wash over. The other recommendation was that when the lake looked like closing that maintenance dredging should start. This was against all of the principles that gave the lake its ICOLL (intermittent opening and closing lake or lagoon) status.

In late 1998 a dredge appeared on the scene. By this time the lake was well on the way to closing. The dredge began pumping the spoil onto the dune and by mid-1999 it reached the entrance and the lake was open with good strong flows in and out.

The dune by then had been extended was not far from the Cunjurong Point side. We ended up with essentially a dam wall built of sand stabilised with grass to hold back the sea during a storm.

We did not get that big storm. We did, however, get regular rainfall and the lake stayed open for the next six years but by late 2005 was closing. The recommended dredging never took place, but the storm did on April 9, 2006. Three quarters of the man-made dune washed into the lake, buried the weed beds and filled the entrance with thousands of cubic metres of sand. The lake has never recovered.

Since 2006 the lake has closed several times and has had to be manually opened ever since. The opening process performed by council has been a comedy of errors. Council dug channels in the wrong location or direction. Nothing has changed as witnessed just a few days ago, locals and the CCB have tried desperately to convince the council that what they were doing would not work.

The cause of the lake's demise is the man-made changes that have taken place, so the simple answer to fix the problem would be to undo and remove as many of those changes as possible starting with the dune. The newly revised entrance management plan suggests that we repeat the same mistakes made 28 years ago.The lake will continue to suffer from the man-made changes that prevent it from ever returning to its natural state. Council will continue to do nothing using the lake’s ICOLL status as an excuse, when clearly the lake is no longer an ICOLL due to human interference.