'Hard to imagine': Climate Council report paints bleak picture of Barrack Point's future

"It's hard to imagine," Mr Italia said, surveying the serene inlet that forms Barrack Point's Little Lake.

The location is undeniably beautiful, but a new report warns the street may soon face coastal inundation.

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Homes in the Illawarra suburb are at risk of becoming "uninsurable" in the near future, according to a new Climate Council report.

By 2030, insurance will be unavailable or too expensive for more than one-third of Barrack Point properties, the report claims.

"At the end of the day, if you can't afford it, what do you do?" Mr Italia, an upholsterer by trade, said.

Mr Italia moved to the suburb three years ago with his wife after having a holiday home in the area for years.

He said insurance premiums are already rising: "It's already happening now, isn't it, in certain areas?"

Phil Cook, 61, lives across the street on Headland Parade and his garden rolls down to the waterfront.

Mr Cook has lived in Barrack Point with his family for 30 years and has seen the landscape change.

"There was one event where we had water coming into the backyard," he said, remembering the flooding that devastated the city in 1998.

Mr Cook's family recalls their neighbours playing backyard cricket in the garden, but now the space they used as a pitch is well and truly eroded.

Despite plans to move in the near future to a place more suitable for his MS, Mr Cook said rising sea levels are everyone's problem.

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And that's a view Climate Change research director, Dr Simon Bradshaw shares.

"Unlike large parts of Australia, the Illawarra has no acute risk of riverine flooding," Dr Bradshaw explained.

"Instead there is a risk of bushfires in some parts and low-level inundation in others and this is what people need to be aware of ... they really need to get an understanding of what's at stake in their neighbourhood."

On the other side of Lake Illawarra at Marshall Mount, there is an uninsurability rate of 52 per cent while at Shellharbour's Yellow Rock that drops to 'just" 21 per cent.

Wollongong's northern suburbs of Stanwell Park, Wombarra and Scarborough are rated danger areas and properties are more than 80 per cent likely to be uninsurable in the next eight years, under the report's parameters.

That is largely due to the risk of bushfires, Dr Bradshaw said.

But all hope is not lost, Dr Bradshaw said.

"There is much we can do to protect properties, particularly from fire dangers.

"There is greater effort going into resilience building actions and that is one factor we control.

"We know climate change is very real. How we deal with it over the next decade depends very much on the actions we take now."

Thanks to a partnership with Climate Valuation, the Climate Council's new interactive Climate Risk Map allows you to discover the risk their homes face based on three emissions scenarios and across decades (by 2030, 2050 and 2100).

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