Leaving Sydney I was aware the weather was forecast to close in and wanted to try and get a couple of lighthouse under my belt before it hit. I made it to Wollongong not knowing what sort of storm was coming my way.

Arriving on sunset I managed to get the drone up and take a few shots and feeling good about the day decided to go to the North ‘Gong pub for dinner before hunkering down for my first night on the road.

While waiting for the ubiquitous chicken schnitty I remembered the last time I’d been in this pub was in 1974 with my first ever serious girlfriend Margaret, the Mangerton Maiden (for those of you unfamiliar with Mangerton it’s a suburb of Wollongong). We’d met earlier that year as freshers in Wesley College at Sydney Uni, and preppy north shore boy meets Wollongong surfer girl made for some interesting dynamics. Suffice to say my memories of the North ‘Gong hotel weren’t necessarily fond, I was very much the outsider, but it did get me to wondering where Margaret was now, fifty odd years down the track. As my only companion was Dr. Google I got to work and disappointingly couldn’t find any trace of her but did manage to find her brother Andrew who was a couple of years ahead of us at Wesley.

After a surprisingly good nights sleep in the car park at Wollongong harbour and a dawn patrol with the drone I considered the idea of contacting Andrew to get a line on Margaret and then thought better of it, what right has my curiosity got to intrude on other people’s lives. So I let it go.

For a while. Later in the morning I thought what the heck, this is one of the reasons I’m doing what I’m doing, take a chance and make the call. So I called Andrew and got his voice mail, not quite knowing what to say I left a garbled message and realistically didn’t expect to hear back from him, but he called me straight back. I was surprised that he remembered me, but it’s what he said next hit me like a hammer blow – Margaret had died about fifteen years ago! I was speechless – my only recollections of her was as a vibrant young woman with the World at her feet and her whole life in front of her. I couldn’t comprehend that it all ended for her fifteen years ago. Sure, it didn’t work out for us but I’d assumed, just like me, she would have spent the last fifty years getting on with life. Andrew filled in some of the details, she’d got married, had three kids and moved with her family to a farm in Cygnett Bay in Tasmania. Then it got worse…evidently one of her children had been killed in a car accident about ten years ago. I felt absolutely gutted for the family, the only good things was that this tragedy happened after she had died so she didn’t have to live through the greatest pain imaginable.

The rest of the day was a blur culminating in me arriving in Kiama that afternoon. I went through the motions of filming the lighthouse and aimlessly driving around town deciding where to pull up for the night, finally deciding on a place down by the harbour. Going to bed early sleep couldn’t come quickly enough, it had been a shocking day!

The next morning as I was preparing my drone to catch the sunrise when the guy camped across the parking lot yelled out “Don’t fly that fuckin’ thing near me”, which was probably fair enough but my nerves were still on edge and I surprised myself with the aggressiveness of my reply which was along the lines of “Get F–ked, I wouldn’t waste my time filming a loser like you, no wonder you’re living like an areshole in a van and you’ve got no one else in your life”… (I guess he could have thought the same about me)! This was the first time I’d encountered any agro on my trip and the timing wasn’t great.

Despite the unfortunate start to the day it was a beautiful morning and I decided a quick dip in the rock pool might help my mood, which it did. Feeling the need to get moving I remembered visiting the crazy surreal landscape at Bombo about ten years ago when were down this way on a family holiday. I was disappointed to discover that the quarry is now a sewage treatment plant and closed to the public – Aunty Jack wouldn’t be happy about that (anyone under 65 won’t get that connection), but in my efforts to find an alternate way to the headland I accidently discovered the famously secretive surfing spot called The Boneyards, which I’d head about but never known where it was. In keeping with the prevailing theme there was a fitting tribute a to a local surfer called Cameron Boyd who was also taken too soon, but he was obviously someone who loved this place and had many friends.

Assuming I’d head straight to the next lighthouse I surprised myself when I impulsively turned off the highway at Gerringong to revisit the darkest place in my World, a place I’d always avoided, the place where my father drowned on 29th December, 1968. Shoalhaven Heads.

Without realising it at the time, or for many year after, this was where a major inflection point in my life happened. The story is that I was at a scout camp, my parents came to visit, we had a nice time and as they were about to leave Dad went for a swim to wash the sand off and never came back. There’s a bit more to it than that but that’s probably all you need to know. It’s what followed that left the scars.

The lasting impressions I have of that day are seeing my mother sitting by herself on the sand dune, the long drive home with another scouts father and arriving home to find grieving family and friends.

I also remembered on that long drive home that the night before, as punishment for something or other the Scout Master had made me stay up all night tending two fires. This was no small thing for a thirteen year old, alone in the middle of the bush in the dead of night. For some reason, maybe as reassurance, I decided that one of the fires was my mother and the other my father. Inexplicably my fathers fire started to go out, no matter how much I tried I couldn’t keep it burning and it flamed out. I hadn’t given it any more thought since then until now, why had it gone out, was it my fault?

Another recollection I have is a couple of days later, sitting in our backyard watching my younger cousins playing and laughing and me thinking “how dare they, don’t they realise my father’s dead!”, and then suddenly realising, wait a minute, he’s the one who’s dead, not me!

But by far the most lasting and painful memory is of his cremation, the chapel was full to overflowing with what seemed like hundreds of men in dark suits, and as my mother and I walked down the isle to the front row there was Dad’s coffin to one side, there were glowing eulogies from friends and Reverend Wylie who was Master of Wesley College when my father was there. And then he was gone – a sliding door opened and he disappeared.

What happened next is ironic in hindsight, after the service we walked out of the chapel to be engulfed by dozens of well wishers, offering their condolences with many and telling me what a great man my father was and how proud I should be of him and to be his son! I know all these comments were well intended but I also realised years later that they set my father on such a high pedestal that I always felt I was competing with a ghost and no matter what I did he would always better and I could never live up to his expectations. This epiphany came to me late one night sitting on the main staircase at Wesley and in a strange sort of way this was like a second death, the death of his ghost. By all accounts he was brilliant and funny and popular but he was human after all and had his faults, just like me. Whilst this realisation was liberating it didn’t completely exorcise his ghost and even now I still feel that I tend to mark myself harder than I should.

The other residual from this event is that I don’t think Mum or I ever really allowed ourselves to grieve, Mum was only 36 and she was by herself with the responsibility of bringing me up. Luckily for both of us our great family friends, the Thompsons, took us under their wing and in many ways absorbed us into their family, so in a strange way I inherited a de facto father (Fred), a second Mum (Jean), a brother (Philip) and two sisters (Patsy & Mary). It wasn’t quite the same but I will be eternally grateful for their love and support for Mum and me. But, as much as this was a Godsend for us it also shielded us from the pain of loss and need to grieve. We just got on with life.

Many years later, in 2001 Mum was unexpectedly diagnosed with lung cancer and sadly died in 2004, she was never a smoker and appeared fit an healthy so this diagnosis seemed to come out of the blue. Unfortunately the same thing happened to me in late 2023 and whilst my prognosis is much better I was shocked and put it down to a genetic link. However, more recently I’m coming to believe that at least in part it goes back to the fact that Mum and I didn’t allow ourselves to express our grief and have held it tight, deep in our souls ever since that day back in 1968. Evidently, according to a number of eastern beliefs that place emphasis on spiritual wellbeing we hold grief and anger in our lungs. Maybe so.

So there you have it, a rather long and deeply personal rationale for detouring via Shoalhaven Heads. I’d been here once before but it was literally touch and go and I didn’t feel into it. This time I sat with it, the beach hadn’t seem to have changed much and the memories came flooding back to me, the sand dune where my mother was sitting, the location of our camp, where we were playing footy on the beach and where my father had entered the surf. I went to that spot, stood in the water and tasted it, and on the way back up the beach picked up a shell that seemed to be calling to me. A beautiful shell that will travel with me for the rest of my days.

I didn’t feel any cathartic sense of release, there was no obvious feelings of emotion flowing out of me but I do think, and hope, that by reliving that day, forgiving myself and knowing that this is my life to live it will help, and hopefully allow any residual grief to gradually seep out of me.

More recently, about ten years ago I got involved in a seaweed farming start-up at Bomaderry on the banks of the Shoalhaven River. This should have been a wonderful opportunity that ticked all the boxes, financially, environmentally, technically and ethically, a business we could all be proud of. Unfortunately, despite all these attributes I hadn’t factored in the fact that the founder, chief scientist and CEO is a narcissist. For eight years I tried to work with her and despite all my best endeavours I got nowhere. Sadly what should have been an investment the whole family would have been proud of it became the subject of angst and frustration. Finally, after my cancer diagnosis my wife said to me that the “real” cancer was my involvement with this person, it was eating me up, and I should end it. I had to agree and subsequently resigned from the Board and stepped back from management, which has been a good thing.

Thinking back on it now when I was driving down to make our initial investment as I passed by Shoalhaven Heads and “asked” Dad if I should do it? I can’t remember if he answered, but would have done it anyway, but in hindsight should have recognised that this area has not been good for me.

Crossing the river at Nowra didn’t offer any respite, just more darkness. Evidently Nowra means “Black Cockatoo” in the local dialect, and that seems fitting for this soulless place. I love the red tailed Black Cockatoo but this is a bird of a different feather. Passing through town I called my good friend Greg who has a holiday house at Culburra to see if he was around. He wasn’t and said he never wanted to go there again as it has too many happy / sad memories for him, he’s going through a particularly hard time at the moment and is trying to put the past behind him. That seems to be the theme of this blog!

Next stop was Crookhaven Heads lighthouse, which seemed to be a metaphor for this part of the World. Sad and broken – the light’s gone out and it’s not coming back.

I’m not sure if doing what I did will make any difference, but it does feel right to face your demons, and hopefully by expressing these feeling it in black and white, as I’m doing here, can at least give them a fright!

So as beautiful as the Illawarra coast is it’s cast a dark shadow over me for many years and as most indigenous cultures know, sometimes there are places that you just shouldn’t go to.

I’m glad to be leaving now and don’t plan on coming back!

p.s. Coincidently someone sent me this graphic while I was immersed in these thoughts, somehow it seemed to match my mood, dark but with radiant points of light.