Eddystone Rock juts out of the Great Southern Ocean, like a decayed molar, 30 kilometres south of Tasmania. An island off an island at the end of the world. On a big day like today, seven metre high waves rise quickly, carrying thousands of tons of ice-cold water. A massive swell passes under the jet ski. Then the roar as the wave comes crashing down on the tessellated granite bed only a couple of metres below the water line. Around the jet ski the water roils as schools of baitfish are killed by kingfish and tuna. Seals attack from the side and cormorants and gulls are doing kamikaze dives. The ancient mariners thought at the end of the world, the ocean fell like a waterfall off the sides of the earth. There lived nightmarish sea beasts. They hadn’t seen Eddystone Rock in the dead of winter.

I’m the first woman to try surf Eddystone and I’m shitting myself. I’ve studied all of the pictures and YouTube clips. The middle of the wave breaks first, you have to get up quickly and go fast and low across the face or else be flicked off by the wave’s fat green lips. It’s a brown stain four-second ride. Now, sitting on the back of the jet ski, I’ve got the yips. Those sea beasts are squirming in my guts.

The fears started last night. My Dad died in a caravan fire years ago and I tried to get him out. The flames beat me back. I blamed myself for that. You think you’re going to be the hero. Everything happened so fast. Me and Mum were sleeping in the lean-to as it was a hot night. Dad used to smoke in bed and the nylon sheets went up and then the gas bottle went and the caravan was an inferno in 30 seconds.

Then there’s the Tasmanian Coroner’s report about the death of Hamish Saunders back in 2003. Witnesses said he was washed off Pedra Branca, an outcrop of small islands near Eddystone Rock, by a wave 20 metres high. You’re fucking joking. I’m 1.8 metres and weigh 65 kilos. As I lie in bed, I see the swell rising before me. It keeps on rising until it blocks out the sun. Men tell me they’ve surfed 40 metre waves. I tell them “bullshit!” and they get all huffy and offended. Only the crazy brave and those with a death wish surf the monster waves. I’m neither.

Then there’s the failed marriage at 23. I’d only been married six months when I fell in love with Karl. He’s driving the jet ski. Mum berated me for a couple of years over that one. Said I was a slut and couldn’t be trusted. That’s when surfing kicked in. Karl and me spent our summers looking for big waves around Indonesia and the Pacific. The bigger the better. That was before I saw Eddystone.

I’ve always been the life of the party. I can hog tie a gram of speed in 30 seconds and a bottle of Jack Daniels is premed. Doctors say I have an over active thyroid. Karl says I have attachment issues. Mum says I’m an unfaithful little whore. She told me Karl looked like the perfect product of the master race: tall, blonde and well built. I said he was also hung like a horse. Me and Mum don’t talk much these days.

Dave is on the other jet ski charging around the front of the swells with a Go-Pro to get the action shots. There’s big money if it goes viral. There’s also a camera sitting on top of the wheelhouse of the cruiser 100 metres away to get the entry and exit shots.

They’re all waiting for me to go. None of those skeg heads on the cruiser have jumped in. It’s nice and warm in the cabin. They’re drinking hot chocolate and laughing at me. I put the wind up them last year when I surfed Shipstern Bluff. They couldn’t believe it. A girl carving up Shipstern like a pro. Eat shit. I could hear the whoop, whoop, whoop from the men on the boat as I got up quickly, flew down the wave and then went arse over tit. I was held down for over a minute. I’d broken my arm so couldn’t inflate my buoyancy vest. Then I felt Karl’s hands haul me over the back of the jet ski like a sack of potatoes. I didn’t surf again for nine months.

The only thing stopping you is fear. That’s what Karl says. ‘Fear is an island, baby. You’ve got to conquer it.’ But fear knows the maths. You pick and choose waves according to your ability. Out here, it’s not about conquering shyness or asking for a raise. It’s about not dying. I’ve got my omens too. The colour of the water. The sea life. The scream of the gulls. The sombre light falling on Eddystone. You don’t have to be a luck freak to have omens. Nothing about this is good.

A young guy tried to ride Eddystone in 2013. He was way out of his depth. He had a family back in Hobart. A wife and two young kids. There’s a Youtube clip of him taking on a massive wave which, like Shipstern, had a step in the middle. You had to jump the step and then pick up speed. He stumbled over the step and was flattened by ten tons of water. His body was never found.

There’s something large moving below the jet ski. A manta ray. About four metres from wing-to-wing. There’s my sea monster. I tap Karl on the shoulder.

“I don’t want to do it. The omens aren’t right”

“It’s OK baby, you can do it,” Karl said. “Get up quick and go hard right”

We both see a big swell coming. It’s the third of a series of seven. It’s going to peak at about seven metres. Karl guns the boat in to position as I swim astern and hold on to the tow rope. I’m looking at Eddystone Rock in the distance like a woman commissioning her own grave in a stone mason’s shop. Karl guns the motor and I’m up as the cormorants smash in to the water around me. Above the roar of the jet ski I hear the whoop, whoop, whoop from the men on the boat. Over my right shoulder the wave pitches up like a four-story building and I’m shot along its curved face with the front of the surf board beating on the water like a mad bongo player, my right arm up like I’m holding an umbrella and I’m screaming Jesus, Jesus and a metre below me I see the green weed in the crevices of the granite and above me the curved black hand of tons of black water. I jump the step in the wave and it gets dark. That’s not good. I’m too far back. I have a child’s nightmare feeling of something monstrous looming over my bed. I see Eddystone through a pin hole of water up ahead. The wave is closing out. I crouch down, pick up speed and blast in to the sunlight and ride over the crest of the wave.

The surfer code says you don’t celebrate too much after riding the wave of a life time. Maybe a small fist pump. I don’t give a shit. I’m crying and pumping my fist at the sky. Karl pulls up beside me babbling like an idiot.

“Oh b-babe, babe, babe, stupendous… I mean fucking humbling. It’s going to go viral babe, wait and see.”

The sun broke through the clouds and Eddystone Rock was blasted in white light. The bird shit sat like grey sugar icing on a 70-metre-high stone wedding cake.

I climbed over the side of the main boat and was hit in the head by a champagne cork then covered in Moet. Two video cameras were stuck in my face and someone asked, “You’re the first woman to crack Eddystone. How do you feel?”

The icy water shivers sent my teeth chattering.

“It-t was fuk-fuk-in aw-s-s-s-ome.”

Karl was in the wheelhouse talking to Dave. His mouth was opening and closing like a guppy. He pulled his blond dreads back and put a rubberband around them as Dave kept pointing at the camera and then at the camera’s power pack. Karl walked out of the wheelhouse, grabbed the bottle of Moet and threw it over the side.

“I’m glad you think that sweetheart because the battery on the Dave’s camera went cactus just as you went for your magic carpet ride,” Karl said. “We’re gunna do it again.”

The boat fell silent. A light breeze sprang up. Black storm clouds gathered in the south west. Bigger swells were on the march. The seagulls and gannets had returned to Eddystone Rock. My stomach flipped. I could feel that sea beast’s tentacle crawling up the back of my throat. I raced to the stern and spewed over the transom.

I walked to the bow, pulled up the anchor, and gunned the cruiser back to Hobart. The men kept looking at the deck. Not one of them had a wet suit on.

“Hey baby, what are you doing? We talked about this,” Karl said. The little vein above his left eye is twitching. “Think about the money. All of the planning. We’ve still got to pay off the boat hire.”

But I’m not thinking about the money or the video. I’m the first woman to surf Eddystone Rock. I know it but I don’t want it on etched on my gravestone. I got away with that one.

Karl is going spak. He’s trying to pull my hands off the wheel but I give him my daggers stare. He’s throwing the whole guilt bible at me. That the caravan fire wasn’t my fault but one way to exorcise the demons is to carve Eddystone a new arsehole, he says. I put the throttle down and the skeg heads in the back of the boat brace against the gunnels.

Karl is getting desperate now. He’s yelling that fear must be fought and conquered and what are we on earth for if not to conquer our fears? It’s as if Karl was the one who just surfed Eddystone. But he hasn’t surfed a big wave for six months now. He gets his wetsuit on but then stays in the boat or drives the jet ski.

Dave rushed in to the cabin and points 300 metres off the starboard bow. The wave is more than 12 metres high and climbing. A Southern Ocean killer. The men at the back of the boat don life jackets. The outboard motor screams as the boat climbs the wave and flies over the top.

That wave had my name on it. A soul-stealer. I’ve planted the flag for womankind on Eddystone Rock. An island off an island, where the monsters live.