Wall reaches open sea

JUST 4 weeks after Minister for the Illawarra David Campbell and Member for Illawarra Marianne Saliba symbolically placed the first rock of the Northern breakwater at the entrance to Lake Illawarra, close to 160 metres of the breakwater wall has been built and construction is about to move into the open water of the ocean.

CEO of CoastWide Civil, Mr Gary Rogers said he was pleased with progress so far.

We are actually running a little ahead of schedule at the moment and have only lost three days due to heavy seas encroaching on the construction area, Mr. Rogers said.

But things will slow down a bit from here on out.

We now face the challenges of building out into the open sea where weather and sea conditions will have a far greater impact on our progress.

Once we leave the relative protection of the beach, our machinery and our men will be much more exposed and at the mercy of the weather.

It will be much more dangerous than this last phase of construction.

According to Construction Manager Tony McCabe, the wall is constructed by first building a centre core out of smaller rock and then covering the core with interlocking larger rocks called armour rocks. These armour rocks can weigh up to 30 tonnes he says.

An excavator travels out on top of the wall and places each armour rock individually in place in front of it. Each rock is nudged into place until it locks in with the surrounding rocks.

The excavator is being operated by Craig Rusty Rogers, widely acknowledged as Australias top rock wall builder.

Coastwide is using the latest GPS satellite positioning technology rather than traditional survey pegging methods in the construction process.

According to CoastWides Gary Rogers it is one of the first times this technology has been used for such a construction project.

Members of the Lake Illwarra Community Liaison Group attended the construction site last Thursday to view progress on the breakwater.

Community representative Leon Cicolini said he was pleasantly surprised at the amount of progress that had been made.

Its a lot further along than I had expected, said Mr Cicolini.

It is just so good to see it finally underway.

Mr Gary Rogers said that construction should be entering open water by the middle of the month. He said that the wall would extend 200 metres out to sea when complete.