When the council upgraded the boat ramp and carpark at Torquay, the beach access ramp beside it was part of the job, and that is the piece we built: a timber walkway down through the dune to the sand, on a coast that does its best to pull a structure apart.
Sand is close to the worst thing you can found a structure on. It shifts, it will not hold a clean hole, and at the beach it is always on the move. Setting the footings meant augering down through loose sand and getting the pylons deep and true enough to carry a public walkway that sees thousands of feet a season.
An Australian hardwood frame on 250 x 250 Australian hardwood posts, sized and spaced to take the load and the weather. The walking surface is an open mesh that lets wind-blown sand and water drop straight through instead of piling up on top, so the ramp stays safe underfoot.
Here is the honest bit: walk it today and you would never know what is under there. The sand blows in and fills around the frame and posts, so all that hardwood and all that setting-out disappears from view. That is the nature of the site, and it is fine by us. Done properly, the structure does its job quietly for years, whether anyone can see it or not.
