Access is the major issue.  Click on the images below and see just how close to the waters edge the DPIWE is selling your foreshore.  The recreational sailor in the first image is doing what he has always been free to do at Ansons Bay; that is launch and retrieve his dinghy from the end of Ti-tree drive.  His freehold shack is approximately 100 metres away. On most occasions he and or his children carry their sailing dinghy from their freehold block  to the water at the end of Ti Tree Drive.  The grassed area has traditionally been used as a meeting point, assembly point for itinerant sailors, fishermen, and water-skiers  It has also been used an  emergency retrieval point for boats, after sudden weather changes when seaward journey to the boat ramp becomes hazardous. 

The area pictured is at the end of Ti Tree drive and is arguably the most frequently used access at Ansons Bay yet has been given the least access by the DPIWE.  The DPIWE has proposed to restrict public access to the beach (which is sometimes completely under water at high tide) to a narrow laneway of varying width some as narrow as 900mm wide (to disallow vehicular access) whilst giving the existing crown leaseholders unimpeded access to the foreshore and water.  Suggestions to the DPIWE from  foreshore lessee have encouraged enhancement of their own accesses whilst at the same time narrowing public access. We have included some of the proposals submitted to the DPIWE by foreshore lessees reprinted from the Ansons Bay Shack Sites Information Package. The small amount of foreshore left for recreation will be a maximum of 4 or so metres and at times Non Existent!  

One myth being circulated by the foreshore community (Examiner newspaper page 9 23 August 2003) is that at the moment there are "Only six accesses to the foreshore"   Freehold and Public users can access the foreshore anywhere along the 2 or so kilometres of shoreline (crown reserve) proposed for subdivision.

Secretary Kim Evans criteria for conversion of the foreshore area clearly started that:

2) The Secretary must not make a determination under section 4(1)(a) or (c) in respect of a shack site unless the Secretary is satisfied that –

(a) waste water from the site can be effectively treated or disposed of; and

(b) the granting of a long-term lease for the shack site, or its sale, will not eliminate or restrict reasonable public access to, and use of, coastal foreshore or lake or river frontage.