TANGALOOMA

We didn’t do fancy.
We did dry heat and scratched legs.
Beach towels that smelled like the car.
Boogie board with one soft corner.
Or the dam, opaque, brown, irrigation pump coughing its lungs out while we pretended that was fun.

Then one year we got Moreton Island.

On a hired yacht.
I was young and already suspicious of good luck.

The Tangalooma wrecks rose out of the water like ribs. Fifteen dead ships laid down to break the swell. A graveyard arranged into a harbour. Men solving problems with other men’s ruins. Rust. Holes. The sea moving through them, slowly, like it had inherited everything.

The heat was belligerent. Salt, fuel, hot rope, sunscreen cooking in the sun.

I looked over the side. Water clear as glass. Fish everywhere. Then a shape. Long. Smooth. Certain. Reef shark, someone said. Harmless.

My body disagreed. Chest tight. The old animal instinct switch flipped on. Another shadow passed, and that was enough for me. I was out of the water fast, laughing like I meant to leave.

But the deal had changed.

The ocean stopped being scenery that day. It had residents. Teeth included.

Ever since, even in calm water, a quiet voice heckles, ‘you are not built for this place
and something down there is’.

Check out the close-up!

Oil on stretched canvas / 50 x 70cm / framed in Tasmanian oak and ready to hang.

*This painting is still drying and will not ship until late March 2026.