"The New South Wales coast has a recorded history dating back more than one hundred years of damage to beaches and shoreline development caused by storms and other coastal processes. Severe storms and their impacts on the coast have been studied to assist investigations into future shoreline behaviour and the development of appropriate coastal management strategies.

This report presents a summary of coastal storm damage, flooding and associated sea and weather conditions over the period 1876 to 1981. The information was predominantly compiled from searches of selected issues of certain newspapers. As described in the report, the issues selected for examination largely correspond to the dates of severe storms identified by another study."