Nothing beats a whole pile of rocks as a means of protecting the beach.

That seems to be the lesson Maroochy Shire Council has taken from decades of coastal mismanagement around the world.

Nothing else could possibly explain its grandiose scheme to preserve the Mooloolaba-Maroochydore beach strip with rock walls and rock groynes.

A price tag of $20 million has been estimated for this exercise in folly, and apparently the council is convinced that both state and federal governments will sign on as benefactors.

Memo: if any candidate pushes this idea at the elections for the amalgamated council, DON’T VOTE FOR THEM.

Rocks and sand go together in natural form and work a treat when combined with cement as a feature in your garden, but dumping it on a beach like Canute can only lead to problems down the track and further down, or up, the beach.

Pincushion Caravan Park, at the mouth of the Maroochy River, was supposed to be sacrificial. If the movement of wind and sand and tide was to demand it, it was meant to go.

But man is far more predictable than nature.

When nature threatened, in went the geotextile berms, in went the rock and up went the decibel level of the local government pollies.

The local surf club produced some of the loudest howls. Tourism would be affected, tourist safety would be affected, and of course its now redeveloped, multi-storeyed edifice on the sand would be affected if one more grain of sand was lost.

Just how much rock can be justified to protect that structure from the inevitable only time will tell but, as Noosa has discovered, once you start playing with nature you can’t stop.

The warning from last week’s inaugural Queensland coastal conference, Shifting Sands, could not be clearer.

“Queenslanders could soon witness an environmental catastrophe along their much-loved coastline if plans are not put in place to ensure the protection of the delicate coastal ecosystem,’’ coastal ecology experts at the conference warned.

The conference in Bundaberg, hosted by the Burnett Mary Regional Group for Natural Resource Management, was warned the coastline was being over-developed.

It may have been beyond the scope of reason for surf clubs to have retreated from their unstable toeholds, but it is wholly lacking in conscience to continue that folly with new development approvals a mere frontal dune away from rising sea waters.

And surely only the completely ignorant or misinformed would persist with the placement of a coastal bike path, of all things, on that frontal dune.

It requires only the most porous of memories to recall the construction in 1991 of an expensive timber coastal walkway from Cotton Tree to the top of Pincushion Island – an area now known as the mouth of the Maroochy River – to appreciate how stupid some people can be with other people’s money.

Speaking at the Bundaberg conference, Professor Bruce Thom, the inaugural chair of the Australian Coastal Society, warned that the lessons of the past were not being learned.

“At the current rate of development and human activity, we risk the health of not only the coastline, but of our whole environment,” Professor Thom said.

“We are cutting into the coast as though there will be no impact, whereas, in fact, the coastline will suffer death by a 1000 cuts if the environmental impacts of developmental boom and issues such as global warming are not considered.”

Man has shown he has the capacity to build whatever he likes wherever he likes.

That ability is without question.

But what is questionable in the extreme is whether that is a worthwhile use of our talents or a worthwhile use of the resources that will inevitably be needed to protect those structures from the folly of ignoring nature.

We are already well on the way to total decimation of the natural fauna and flora for which this region was once justifiably proud.

If we were eventually forced to kerb and channel the beach with rock and concrete to insulate us from our own stupidity, that would be the last of it.

This is neither an over statement nor flight of fancy. If one of the last acts of the Maroochy Shire Council is to find credence it is inevitable.

That death by 1000 cuts is now happening by the day.