An aerial of the river mouth from October 2017. Graham said it was bad then, but the channel beside the northern breakwall was still deep enough to navigate.

Marine Rescue Nambucca Unit Commander Graham Horne has lived here for 35 years...and has saved lives on the water for 21 of those.

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And while he acknowledges the sand build-up in the river mouth is cyclical and has led to problems with boat access in the past, he says that right now it's the worst it's been during his tenure.

Navigation through the Nambucca River mouth is a historical issue.

The earliest written settler records of the area document the danger for the tall ships because of the bar.

But Graham believes (as do others we've talked to) that the three artificial sand islands in the estuarine waters of the Nambucca have exacerbated the issue by reducing the river's flow rate.

Early hydrographic charts (1891) mapping the navigability of the Nambucca River for vessels of the day indicate that what is now frequently called 'Sand Island' was, in fact, natural sand banks and shoals in estuary waters. By the turn of the century, however, Parliamentary Standing Committees (1898, 1903 and 1913) deemed that training walls and dredging were required in the river, and so the dredge spoil deposited in the area created an 'artificial island'.
- State government information pamphlet on Sand Island biodiversity

There have been attempts to rectify the issue during Graham's time.

Decades ago when the unit used to store their rescue boat in Gus Monro's excavation business shed in the Nambucca Industrial Estate, Graham was told by Gus that he'd made an offer to Council to dredge the channel pro bono, provided he could sell the sand.

Graham said Gus took his offer back off the table when the then council wanted to tack a royalties condition on the excavated sand.

John Ainsworth was a fresh-faced councillor at the time this happened and said he can remember Mr Monro making an offer to do some minor dredging.

But according to his recollections, Deputy Premier at the time Wal Murray had given verbal consent to dredge the river mouth on the one proviso that there was a ready market for the excavated sand.

Cr Ainsworth said noone would take the sand because of the salt water content.

"Brickies and others refused, saying it was no good. And so Gus Monro had to give up the idea," he said.

"Plus after the verbal agreement we were sent a letter which said dredging would require an EIS [Enviromental Impact Study], and a few other provisos - the costs of which would have been monumental. So the gains for a commercial operator would have been next to zilch, after you considered the costs of the infrastructure required."

With time marching on, and naught being done, Graham said he's all but given up hope that anything will be done to fix the problem...unless someone dies.

During low tide the Marine Rescue crew have a clearance of about three metres from the boat ramp to the sand bank opposite with which to launch their vessel.

The rails the vessel is launched from. This is at high tide, but you could still clearly see the sand bank the boat has to avoid about three metres out from the end of the track.

And that's before they pass through the break in the western flank of the V-Wall.

"Some people say you can get out over the bar if you know what you're doing," Graham said.

"Well we do know what we're doing, and yeah, you can get out at high tide, but we here at Marine Rescue don't have the luxury of choosing when to go out.

"And with the channel as narrow as it is, there's nowhere to run if a wave comes up. There's no room anymore to swing around, you've just got to take the wave head on."

Graham knows only too well how dangerous that can be; in 2014 he almost lost his life when a rescue boat he was on rolled at the bar, knocking him unconscious and trapping him underneath.

The $400,000 rescue boat was totalled when it rolled on the bar, with Graham underneath.

He said it's now gotten to the point that when boats get in trouble out on the open water, they choose to wait for other fishermen launching from Shelly Beach to come to their rescue, because they know how fraught the access issue is for Marine Rescue.

But the problem of sand build-up isn't just limited to the V-Wall.

Graham said the team has virtually no access to the river system - where they're deployed for around half of all emergency situation call-outs.

At low-tide the channel beside the golf course is impassable, which means there's almost no way for them to reach parts of the Warrell Creek system, or further upstream along the Nambucca.

The ramifications of this have already proved catastrophic.

Graham said that on that fateful day in February 2017, when a man dived off a houseboat headfirst into a sand bank, the team wasted hours unsuccessfully trying to get to him at the entrance to Warrell Creek.

"We tried to go through the hole in the wall but were blocked by sand. We ended up going all the way around via the golf course but we still couldn't get to him," Graham said.

"They had to send a helicopter from Lismore to get him out."

At low-tide the sandbar has become impenetrable, and even when they can get through, the sand build-up has added many minutes to their response time.

Graham is nervous about the upcoming influx of Christmas season tourists if the system doesn't get a good flushing before then.

Last Christmas they rescued about a dozen people, some foolishly trying to swim across to Gaagal Wanggaan (South Beach). And in January they assisted in the shark attack at the breakwall.

Plus last month they were tasked to rescue a regular holiday maker in the area who came to grief on a jetski when the channel she remembered being there last time had turned into a sand bar.

"She hit it, got thrown off, and had to be taken to hospital. So it's really going to hurt someone one day," Graham said.

He is realistic enough to know that not much can be done about the entrance to Warrell Creek: "it'll just keep sanding over," he said.

And you can say to fix the wall, but it's not going to happen.

Plus, repairs to the gap in the wall - which is said to have opened during the 1974 floods - are likely to stagnate the water along Wellington Drive, according to Graham.

"It might turn into a cesspool," he said. "I just hope that nature will take its course soon.

"The thing is, if you want to do anything major around here you've got to deal with Council, fisheries, Crown Lands, EPA...unless you know someone on the inside who can help, nothing gets done."

Graham said he'd like to see just a token three areas relieved.

"If they cleaned up beside the golf course, around the boat ramp to Gordon Park, and in front of our base I'd be fairly happy," he said.

Council General Manager Michael Coulter said they did look into the logistics of micro-dredging some select areas along the river.

But the ideas were put in the too-hard basket after considering how to position a long-arm excavator anywhere along the shoreline, or on a barge in the river.

And there aren't any funds allocated to the project in the current budget.

Meanwhile, other areas along our northern coastline are destined for dredging maintenance within the next couple of years.

"Dredging of Priority Waterways on the North Coast was announced in the 2014-15 NSW Budget with delivery of $10 million worth of dredging on the north coast over four years. Projects completed and/or underway include Tweed, Brunswick, Richmond, Evans and Clarence Rivers with planning commenced for dredging of the Richmond, Clarence and Macleay river entrances," the DPI NSW Coastal Dredging Strategy reads.

Before he steps down as Unit Commander and hangs up his Marine Rescue hat, Graham intends to try one last time for a solution, and plans to sit down with our State member when she returns from overseas.