A sunny day in 1981 when Geoff Smith, his mother Joan and daughters Emilie and Alysha, walked to the end of their street to look at the driftwood strewn along Stockton beach.

A moment captured in time 37 years ago, impossible to recreate because up to 70 metres of beach has disappeared.

When Geoff's parents moved to Stockton in 1950 there was a wide, expanse of beach and vegetation that people used to trek more than 100 metres over to reach the water.

Read more: Fears this childcare centre could fall into the sea

Now the waves smash against the 750m-rock wall stretching along Mitchell St built in 1989 designed to save the suburb's homes.

The extensive sand dunes along the coast have long gone. Year after year the Smiths have watched the beach slowly disappear.

It just gets worse and worse every year, Mr Smith said. The amount of sand lost is enormous, it's a terrible thing to watch.

Heavy storms which lash the coast have washed tonnes of sand out to sea and further up the coast.

Associate Professor Ron Boyd, of Newcastle Universitys School of Environmental and Life Sciences, said it was estimated up to 70 metres had been lost from the beach since 1981.

A long-term Stockton resident, Associate Professor Boyd said while coastal erosion was caused by climate cycles, too much sand had been lost from Stockton for the beach to recover.

The reservoir of sand that is available to replenish the beach has been taken away, its not there anymore, he said. Each time we have a cycle it never gets back to the level it was before. The volume of sand lost is just too great.

Successive studies dating back to the 1970s have outlined the need for a long-term solution to the continuing erosion of sand, but still no decision has been made on how to save the beach.

Over the past century Stockton beach has lost more than 10 million cubic metres of sand and the seabed has dropped up to seven metres.

A Newcastle City Council report issued in 2001 found coastal degradation was increasing dramatically, from an annual average of 50,000 cubic metres of lost sand to 170,000 cubic metres, or enough to fill more than 113 Olympic pools.

Read more: Stockton erosion hits crisis point

With no funding for a long-term solution to halt the erosion, the problem is getting worse.

Each year east coast low storm surges push huge waves into the Mitchell St rock wall stripping the coastline of sand.

With Newcastle and Stockton breakwalls trapping shore drift sand at Nobbys, there is not enough sand to replenish Stockton beach.

Experts have estimated there is a 4.4km-wide sand deposit off Nobbys containing 32 million cubic metres of sand, meant for Stockton beach.

Residents are campaigning for the Port of Newcastle to fund a long-term solution to the erosion problem that is largely caused by the Harbour-entrance breakwaters.

But a spokeswoman for the Port of Newcastle said the beach was outside the port boundary and not part of the port lease landholdings.

The breakwaters and Macquarie Pier are NSW government assets, she said.

The Port of Newcastle was privatised in 2014 for $1.75 billion to a 50/50 joint venture between Chinese and Australian interests. Soon afterwards, the new owners revalued the business to be worth $2.4 billion.

Residents also argue that the NSW government, that receives millions each year in coal royalties from the port, should help foot the bill.

Breakwalls, groynes, artificial reefs, other off-shore structures and sand replenishing are among the long-term solutions so far discussed, some estimated to cost more than $30 million.

Newcastle City Council and Stockton community members are developing a plan by September to identify short and medium-term solutions. Council then has two years to lodge a coastal management program that would include long-term solutions.

Both plans will be used in an effort to attract funding.