He sat in his car, high above the Portsea back beach, near the very tip of the Mornington Peninsula, watching the waves rolling in off Bass Strait, a single bead of sweat on his temple. His was the only car at this end of the car park.

Behind him were scrubby dunes, and before him was an endless stretch of ocean. The summer sun, now high in the sky, blanched the scene like a faded polaroid. He held the large knife loosely, bouncing it gently in his right hand, happy with its weight. He turned it to and fro, glinting the sun’s rays off its silver edge. Twelve inches long, the knife had a series of black dots on its handle, making it easy to grip.

When he’d been a young boy, his mother would take him to the bayside beaches a few kilometres north, across the peninsula, where the water was calm enough for him to paddle about. He could only remember his father taking him to the beach a couple of times, and it was always here, on the wilder ocean side, amid the saltbush and wallaby grass that clung tightly to the dunes…

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