A day trip to remind me of Wye River, one of the locales for my novel The Secrets of Bridgewater Bay, became fraught with danger when the locals attacked.
Wye River is a small bay on the southwest coast of Victoria. What it lacks in size it makes up for with its panoramic views, its great surf and its popular pub. (I was lucky enough to see a breaching whale from the pub’s veranda one lazy Sunday afternoon.)
Last year, in a brief hiatus from lockdown, my partner and I took a drive down to Wye River to take some photographs of the beach where one of my characters experiences a life altering event. The river flows gently into the sea here, or at least it does most of the time. Sometimes the water pools behind the sand. The beach is cradled at both points of the bay by tidal rock pools. And while the sea looks gentle in these photographs there are rips that can drag the unwary swimmer far out to sea.
But back to the animals. We made a lunch stop at Lorne on the way down, where the local cockatoos got up close and personal with my lunch. My crime? Eating a sausage roll uninvited. Before I knew it, my lunch was gone. And so were the cockatoos.
JULIE BROOKS 
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