Mel Anderson drifts in a little red boat, watching the gum trees and jetties bleed off Dangar Island into the tidal river that surrounds it. To a child, Mel’s red boat might resemble a festive slipper abandoned by a giant elf. Indeed, on summer nights, there can be a kind of magic to these waters. When Mel takes her nightly rows across the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, bioluminescence envelops the boat in an astral shade of blue. However, in the present moment, it’s daytime, and she’s lying down in her boat, in clear sight of those who live along the riverbanks. Locals glide by in tinnies filled with groceries and the ferry shuttles across to collect schoolchildren. Lying flat on her boat’s wooden surface, eyes closed, Mel appears almost lifeless.
If you were flying over Sydney’s north, you might spot Dangar Island and think, Is that a pocket pistol down there? At just 30ha, it can be difficult to navigate what Mel calls the “intense intimacy” of this gun-shaped island. And so we find her mentally drifting away in the distinctive red boat – of a design called the Dangar Island dory. “I would row out and have a break from everybody,” says Mel, an artist and mother of three. “I’d lie down and just float. Three times, people came out to save me. They thought something terrible had happened. From the beach, they would shout, ‘Are you okay?’, and I just wanted to be alone. But later, I figured out the right spot where I could lie down, and people wouldn’t notice.”
With one ferry, one cafe/general store and one bowling club, there’s no hiding from your fellow islanders. Mel expresses a sense of kinship with her neighbours, the kind of bond only forged through years of residing in close quarters. Yet there are times when she yearns for solitude.
“Once, I was coming home on the ferry. It’s a 15-minute ride. I was talking to someone in Brooklyn, and when I got off at the island, someone over there had already heard what I said in Brooklyn. How? I don’t know,” she says, laughing. The intertwining of lives in such a secluded locale may come as a surprise. During her 12 years on the island, Mel has witnessed the arrival of people seeking solitude, one after another. “A lot of people come to the island thinking they’re running away, they’re hiding,” Mel says. “But, like it or not, here, you will never be closer to people.”
Often woven into myth and literature, the isolation of islands has long provoked our imagination. With the physical separation from the mainland and its cities – pollution, crime, and chaos – islands have taken on a mystical, utopian quality.
“Physically, Dangar Island has a moat. Well, it’s an additional moat. Australia already has one moat,” Mel says. “Perhaps it makes people feel safe, like they’re contained and protected.” The moat – the Hawkesbury River – might separate residents from the mainland and the mainstream, but island paradise, like every iteration of Nirvana, is a myth.
Living in a community that can only be accessed by boat, means there’s a separation from the services of the mainland and a greater exposure to the elements. “Because it’s water-access-only, if there’s a storm, neighbours come to each other’s aid. You will see people helping to bail boats out,” Mel says.
While Dangar might not be the place for true solitude, it offers the chance to be part of a supportive, connected community. In an era of heightened social isolation, where many of us lead lonely lives, this community is paradise in itself. Aspirations to hide from the world can also be the very quality that unites locals.
“Perhaps it’s this intention to hide that brings us closer because we know what it’s like to have pain and suffering in life, and to find somewhere safe,” Mel says. She moved to the island during a challenging period, after she was divorced and struggling to afford housing in the outer suburbs of northern Sydney. “It wasn’t until my boys were eight and 10 that I thought What do I want to do? I needed to get some of myself back. As a single parent all my energy was going into raising them,” Mel explains. With its affordability and proximity to her children’s school and their dad, Dangar emerged as an attractive choice. Plus, it offered a sense of community that isn’t as emphasised in suburban areas, where convenience and modernity lead most people to focus on their immediate family.
“When I first arrived, I was really supported,” Mel recalls. “I felt like I belonged, like I had found my people, particularly at that time in my life when I was craving this community as a single mum. I was on my own.”
Island connection
I have a similar connection to the island. In the 1980s, when my mum was 18, she moved to the island with my older brother. As a new immigrant, a single parent, and a woman navigating the thorny stretch between adolescence and adulthood, she craved a sense of belonging. Dangar Island became her home, a safe place to raise her boy. He rode the ferry to school, picked through the sand for crabs and hunted for treasure – tin boxes Mum filled to satiate his curiosity for life beyond the island.
To my brother’s delight, they eventually moved off the island. But Mum couldn’t stay away forever. I remember the trips we took to Dangar when I was a young girl. I recall a painter with icy-white hair that skimmed her waist, couples carting their groceries in hand-painted wheelbarrows, and the bowlo between the gum trees, where suspiciously rat-like “possums” seemingly flew from tree to tree.
More than 30 years since she moved away, Mum has moved back. Now it’s her grandson she takes on treasure hunts. But this time, they’re not magical trails of her making, but of Mel’s.
In her artist shed, Mel has sculpted 47 figurines known as “the tiny folk”. While the plan was to exhibit them in a gallery, she realised they were destined for bigger things. “The tiny folk told me their stories. That night, I wrote 17 of them. And then they flowed,” Mel says. “Every one of their stories was inspired by my island community.”
The characters have brilliantly specific backstories: There’s Mavis, a herb girl in pursuit of a stinkbug to milk; Freya, a moody soundscape artist; and Horace the head, an individual completely oblivious to his lack of a torso. Mel unearthed hiding spots for the tiny folk across the island, establishing homes within bush caves and nestled beneath the weathered wharf. Once the trail was announced, kids from the island and the nearby Central Coast excitedly discovered these characters, giggling with their parents as they read out their biographies. “Kids found the tiny folk really easily, but adults completely missed them,” Mel says. “That’s what I found interesting.”
Mel sculpted the tiny folk from natural materials, including white clay from a friend in Little Wobby – a water-access town south of the island – and mud and shells from the oyster banks. (Oyster farming was once a major commercial activity along the Hawkesbury River. During the past two decades, farms have been decimated by heavy rain, flooding, the QX parasite and the Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome virus.)
Mel’s use of local materials was her way to honour the unique river environment – the beaches where shorebirds such as eastern curlews, whimbrels and sandpipers patrol, and the natural bushland covering the rest of the island. “You can’t separate place from people. I am beholden to the tides,” Mel says. “I have a running line, not a jetty, so I need to know when it’s low or high tide. A full moon creates large tides, a half-moon creates smaller tides. I feel connected to the land here.” Perhaps this ever-shifting environment, and the need to follow its rhythms – day in, day out – offers a way for people to feel less alone, to feel tethered to a greater, unstoppable force.
River life
The elements are one reason why the island might not be everyone’s home sweet home. From the Norsemen to the Minoans, history’s water-faring communities have maintained a set of initiation rites, and Dangar Island is no different. But it’s less a cultural matter, and more of an environmental one. Locals face strong tides and currents, boat-sinking storms and flash flooding. “People wonder how we get our shopping, or what happens when it rains,” Mel says. “Well, you get wet. So a lot of people won’t come because they can’t navigate that. You need to be tough to live here. You need to know how to work a boat, for one.”
While a handful of locals still use the dories and rely on the ferry, most get about in speedboats. Despite the practical challenges of river life, Dangar Island’s appeal is growing. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia’s capital cities saw a net loss of 11,200 people between July and September 2020 – the largest quarterly net loss in almost 20 years.
“Now that people can work from home, Dangar has become prime real estate. People want to live somewhere nice, so prices have gone up. A lot of houses have turned over, even houses that weren’t on the market,” Mel says.
In January 2020, the median house price on Dangar Island was $677,500. Eighteen months later, it was $1.1 million.
With the island’s natural charms – every morning, Mel is greeted by a chorus of king-parrots, cockatoos and kookaburras – coupled with the convenience of having Sydney’s CBD just an hour’s train ride away, it’s a tempting alternative for buyers who are considering a new life on the Goldie [Gold Coast] or in the Gong [Wollongong]. “Some residents have a lot more money now. When I moved here, it was cheaper than the mainland,” Mel says. “And that’s a big reason why I moved: I could afford it.”
Money, a boat licence, and bright-eyed optimism about river life doesn’t ensure that newcomers will reach their final Dangarian form. Island life demands surrender. “I knew of someone who lived here and couldn’t wait to leave. They couldn’t cope with the inconvenience. Not all people who come here fit. I don’t know why, but I have a feeling it’s about people wanting to be in control,” Mel says. “With the elements, and with people and boundaries, you’re not in control on the island. You have to give up that control.”
After 12 years, Mel and her tiny folk are now based in Deniliquin, NSW, but she regularly travels back to Dangar to the embrace of the river and the island residents.
ISLAND LIFE
Less than 1 per cent of Australia’s population lives on the small islands dotted around our continent. This number is growing as more people head across the water after the onset of COVID, rejecting costly city living and office-based work. But is “island paradise” a myth, fuelled by a desperate search for escapism? Or have these far-flung residents truly found the key to happiness? This is the
second instalment in a series exploring the realities of island life.
Also in this series:
