THE TAXMAN

I kick steadily on my back, my body beneath my board. Arms working to try steady the small fibreglass craft beneath our two passengers. We traverse the chop in a manner defying every intended design function of the 6’2” thruster. The deep blue fades into black beneath us. In my mind I picture our lost bags sinking into the abyss and with them, my greatest fear… the taxman. My recently completed yet unsubmitted tax files are drowning with my laptop somewhere in this expanse of Pacific blue. Damn you, ATO.

It started in the west of the country, an area strung together by island-flecked lagoons and white sandy beaches, the ocean dense with fish and well-toothed creatures of both finned