I visited the beach this morning for the first time in what might have been weeks. And I was surprised to find a one-metre-high cliff wall along the water line. It stretched along the southern part of the beachy bay, then broke gradually up into bay-ridge type mounds in the middle of the bay, before gradually, generally, flattening out into the far distance. The wind this morning is a gentle south easterly; the water comes in generally from a south western angle. I think back over the past days and weeks—no high swells or seas—a storm on the weekend, but the wind came in from the east, offshore, rather than driving the waves higher up the beach. And so the water, on lower seas and swell and (mostly) wind and tides has made for itself, with the sand it pushes up, a kind of barrier to stop its own advancing higher. It has made a kind of new dune line closer to the ocean—about 50 metres closer than the current one. 

And I can only assume it will stay this way, until a storm comes in from the south west bringing wind and seas and swell (or a sufficiently high afternoon tide with south west wind behind) to throw the water in waves up over whatever walls it has placed so far in its own path, and so advance further up the beach. And with a general rising of the world’s waters, and an increase in more extreme weather, the general shoreline will keep invading further inland, as much as the water itself seeks to stop its own advance—seeks to keep itself in place, seeks to maintain a healthy interaction with land—a central part of the ecosystem which it itself with many others has made.