THOUSANDS have gathered at Stockton beach to send an emphatic message that the community has had enough of the perceived inaction to the peninsula's ongoing erosion crisis.
Local residents and community members from as far as the Upper Hunter descended on the foreshore wearing red clothes and carrying campaign placards.
They stood almost hand-in-hand from the recently closed Lexie's on the Beach cafe all the way to the site of the child care centre, which was forced to close last year and then later demolished.
While the rally was a quiet one with the crowd stretched more a kilometre long, the line stood out among the eroded sections of the beach and lands which could come under threat in very near future.
When the community first began calling for action to the erosion issues early last year, the message displayed around town was a simple one: Save Stockton Beach.
But for many, this is no longer just about saving a beach. It's about saving a suburb.
Community campaigner Lucas Gresham said the event had attracted "at least a couple of thousand", which showed the community was "seeing red".
"We're sick of the inaction," he said.
"We're trying to show the little Stockton community that they believe really doesn't matter, we actually do, and not only do we matter we're here to stand together and unite as one.
"We put out the call to arms to broader Newcastle and we've got people here from Cessnock, Singleton, Muswellbrook."
Mr Gresham said the recent loss of the popular beachside cafe had left the community angry, but ready to unite.
"We're not just after saving the beach, we're after saving the community," he said.
"The difference for us now is we are uniting, Newcastle is uniting."
The campaign figurehead declared to the crowd gathered outside Lexie's that there would be "more rallies" and later told the Newcastle Herald that a protest outside Parliament House in Sydney was certainly "on the cards".
"We are quite cranky now," Mr Gresham said.
"We ask the government and the council, as friends, to work out the situation and see what we can do going forward and work together."
