Together with council, the villagers have built a 94 metre pathway from Hyams Beach shop to Seamans Beach.

“It’s a project which has been made essential by the number of day trippers we get at Hyams Beach,” Hyams Beach resident Vicki Fortescue said.

“We discussed it with council and they decided it was a very good community project. 

“They have paid for the works to be done for us, we are supplying the labour and we have a lot of community helpers here today.”

The council funded and community run project took less than four months of negotiation with council and was completed over a four day period by members of the community. 

Pedestrian safety was at the heart of the decision to construct the concrete walkway. 

“Between October and April we can have days with more than 3000 visitors, and it’s caused a really serious safety issue with people walking from the cafe to the beach,” Mrs Fortescue said.

“Because they haven’t been able to walk along a footpath, they’ve had to walk along the road. 

“People with prams could not walk along the grass, there were tree roots and that sort of thing and on busy days it was such a conflict between cars, buses and pedestrians.”

Project supervisor and Hyams Beach resident Ken Corbett said the villagers would tidy the area surrounding the path once concreters had removed the formwork.

“It’s an important safety issue for Hyams Beach and the important thing was to get it up and running for Christmas, as we have thousands of people in the village at Christmas time,” he said.

“There has been a lot of man hours from the community and behind the scenes work with Council in the lead up to this.” 

Continuing with the community work, residents have joined forces to design a masterplan for the village.

“We are starting work on a five to 10-year long-term draft strategic plan to look at some of the environmental issues, the infrastructure, sustainable tourism and risk management as far as fire is concerned,” Mrs Fortescue said.