In just five hours, those living in the coastal town of Stockton Beach watched in horror as the heart and soul of their community was washed away.

The blitz of heavy surf this week ripped 2.5 metres of sand height from the suburb near Newcastle — where going to the beach is a way of life.

It came after five weeks of unprecedented coastal erosion wreaked havoc on the community that lives alongside the formally picturesque white sand beach.

Now, some residents are returning home their holidays to find the beach has vanished and replaced with waves hitting up against bare rock.

Last week, the town’s only childcare centre closed over fears the building would wash away.

Locals are worried their homes, along with the suburb’s cafes, surf club, oval and car parks will be next in the firing line.

The caravan park has been evacuated, and the council has been forced to sandbag houses and roads.

“It’s a crisis, a complete crisis,” Lucas Gresham, a local of five generations, told news.com.au.

“We’ve lost our suburb, because that beach is part of who we are. Going for a walk along the beach before you go to work or after you’ve finished work is a thing that makes you feel grounded and closer to nature.

“Now, we’re losing our identity and all we know.”

Erosion has been a threat bearing down on the town for decades, but the damage in the past five weeks is the most severe in 20 years. The seabed has dropped more than seven metres over the past century — causing significant damage to the area’s marine life habitat.

Now, Mr Gresham says the beach has finally been destroyed and the community has had enough.

Hundreds have gathered for rallies and meetings to pile pressure on the State Government to commit to sand replenishment.

Thousands are backing calls to protect the beach on social media, and more than $16,000 has been donated via GoFundMe in a bid to secure its future.

It’s estimated about 500,000 cubic metres of sand — equivalent to 50,000 truck loads — would be needed to replace what has been lost from the beach.

And it’s argued this would also provide a vital buffer in front of the seawall.

Expert on coastal erosion and local resident Ron Boyd say this level of damage is man-made.

He says infrastructure at the Port of Newcastle — sold off to a Chinese consortium for $1.75 billion in 2014 — has caused Stockton to lose too much sand for it to recover.

He says breakwaters and a deep water channel, allowing ships to access the port, have disrupted wave patterns and stopped any new sand being brought onto the beach.

Now, he says the missing sand is being dumped at Newcastle Beach and Nobbys Beach.

“The severe sand erosion problem at Stockton can only be remediated by sand replenishment,” he said in a City of Newcastle council meeting in June.

A tense row erupted in the NSW parliament yesterday over the erosion in Stockton, which

Labor leader Jodi McKay called “an unfolding crisis”.

She accused Premier Gladys Berejiklian of not taking the issue seriously while a “community is washing away”.

“It’s a catastrophe for a community and she is doing nothing,” Ms McKay said.

Ms Berejiklian hit back, saying her government had given $142,000 to City of Newcastle to support those living alongside the coastline.

“The Government is onto it, we’ve been onto it for a while,” she told the parliament.

However, she was loudly heckled by several Labor MPs who questioned what the Government’s response would if the same level of erosion was affecting a beach in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

However, Ms Berejiklian blasted the implication as “disgusting”.

“This notion … that we would ignore one part of NSW ahead of another is simply disgusting,” she said.

Far from the parliamentary bickering, Mr Gresham says locals living by the beach just want something to be done.

“We’re all united as a community because this is not going to go away,” Mr Gresham said.

“It just seems strange to me that we spend billions of dollars on building these communities and all the infrastructure that goes with it for it all to be exposed like this.

“We’re a nation that hugs the coastline, but at the same time we’re not protecting it.

“Everything the Government does seems to be after the fact. It’s like getting yourself a dog, not putting a fence around your house and then wondering how it’s run off.”

Mr Gresham has started a GoFundMe page in a bid to fund a possible class action and lodge a claim with the NSW Environmental Defenders Office.

So far, it has raised almost $16,000.

Port of Newcastle, the private company that has a long-term lease of the port from the NSW Government, said in a statement it shared the community’s interest in “finding an appropriate solution” to the Stockton erosion issue, and that it had been working with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage since its lease commenced in 2014.

“Our assistance has included providing approximately 25,000 cubic metres of suitable sand annually. This sand is dredged from the shipping channel entrance and placed at Stockton in an area designated by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH) to assist with beach renourishment,” the statement read.

“Port of Newcastle’s responsibility is to ensure safe navigation, including maintaining the channel and the breakwalls. We take this responsibility seriously.”