This was Iluka. It began at the wooden gate, always closed, often padlocked. To get to Iluka, you needed to leave the sealed road leading to the golden sands of Fuller’s Bay, take a left onto an unmarked gravel road and then veer off down a rutted dirt track that was only wide enough for one vehicle.
You only found Iluka if you were meant to. People didn’t stumble on it. That was always his plan. Iluka’s land was screened by giant pines which huddled in aromatic masses. The pines ran the length of the land to the left and right of that gate – one road in, one road out.
The family lived off the land and sea. It was the way they had been since his accident. He said he owed it to the sea for saving him. He said he bought this place for them – for all of them – to exist as one with nature, earth and ocean.
Past the pines, the ramshackle house that sat in the middle of the clearing, atop the cliff overlooking the Pacific, appeared to sway in the sudden gust of wind and then right itself. Hurley’s Bay below could be reached by a ladder, a descent not for the faint-hearted. On the beach this evening, as the sun sank and the darkness slowly began to creep in, changing the ocean from azure blue to inky black, there were two figures. One sat on the rocks, the cliff looming above her, and the other stood on the beach, shovel in hand, ready to dig. The shovel, at first, was like a spoon through a pile of sugar, but then he reached wetter sand and the pile to his left began to grow. She sat, the jagged rock digging into the back of her thighs. He had done this before: to scare her, to show her who was boss. A warning. The first couple of times she had tried to escape by climbing up the ladder, but he’d hit her so hard she had blacked out for a second and spent the rest of the time lying on the beach watching him dig. It was easier now to watch, play the timid wife, because the alternative was so much worse…
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