Nature Notes: Spinifex Grass - The Wind-Builder of the Geraldton Dunes

Some plants survive the coast.

Spinifex builds it.

Along the dunes at Drummonds Cove, Glenfield, and Sunset Beach, the long, tough runners of Spinifex longifolius stitch the sand together in a way that looks effortless - until you look closely. DBCA’s coastal dune profiles describe this species as one of the primary “sand binders” of Western Australia’s mid-west. A quiet architect of the shoreline.

Today at Sunset Beach, the wind had been working hard - scouring the top layer of sand, lifting grains into ribbons, reshaping the foredune face grain by grain. And right there, in the middle of all that movement, Spinifex held the line. Its leaves whipped eastward, stiff and bright, while its runners crept under the sand like green rope.

Spinifex doesn’t resist the wind; it partners with it.

It traps the flying sand, slowing it just enough for gravity to do the rest.

The dune grows.

The coastline thickens.

The roots grip deeper.

A dune is not a static landform - it is a living negotiation between wind, sand, and the plants that refuse to let it blow away. Spinifex is the negotiator-in-chief.

DBCA notes that where Spinifex thrives, dune recovery is possible even after storms. Where it is trampled, cleared, or eroded away, the coastline becomes brittle - more vulnerable to storm surge, king tides, and the kind of erosion Geraldton knows all too well.

As I walked the edge of Glenfield today, the evidence was everywhere. Fresh sand had piled around the base of the grass, forming small crescent ridges on the lee side of each clump. These tiny scallops are the first building blocks of the larger dune - the architecture of resilience, repeated thousands of times.

Spinifex longifolius is far more than a coastal backdrop.

It is a protector, a builder, a stabiliser.

A plant that quietly shapes the place we live.

Sometimes, when you stand on a dune and feel the wind streaming past, it’s easy to think everything here is shifting, temporary, on its way somewhere else. But then you notice the Spinifex, low to the ground, holding on, making more land one handful of sand at a time.

The coast may move -

but Spinifex moves with it,

rooted in the knowledge that survival is not stillness,

but balance.