After days of rain and moaning winds the sun slowly reappears, the winds abate and all is right with the world again. We stop to gaze at the ocean and at the locals whale gazing. To me this is amusing as there are always a dozen people staring unblinking towards the horizon. Our mate is convinced that it is chemically induced and insists that he can smell a waft of weed on the breeze. Below us the beach is smothered in a cloak of brown foam a legacy of the storm.

Next morning the foam has been shed leaving a beach strewn with tree trunks, branches, twigs, fronds, seeds of all types; mangrove, pandanus and small round things the size of macadamia nuts. Along with bones, cuttlefish, shells, pumice and rocks.