‘TILL DEATH DO US PART
Tahlija: We’d surfed that swell in the Mentawais in 2017, at Kanduis, and we’d come back pumped. We heard there were good banks at Iluka so we went there to camp. We paddled out the first morning, it was a solid six foot with bigger ones, really heavy, no one out, overcast, and real stormy. You would never really surf it like that but there were a couple of sick barrels.
We surfed for a few hours, got a couple, then Mick took off on the first wave of a set. He got flipped in the barrel and the board whacked him on each side of his temple and jaw, knocking him out instantly. You surf any wall and you get spat out the back pretty quickly with the rip, so I was like, “Something’s not right here”. I looked in at the bend in the wall where the whitewash pools and there was Mick’s board floating on the surface. I just knew. I paddled as fast as I could.
When I got there, he was floating on the surface. I think he’d filled up with water then floated back up to the top. I grabbed him and held him up. He was blue and lifeless and foaming at the mouth, eyes open, dead, you know. It was over five minutes before I made it to him. I was trying to keep him up cos he was
