Dan chuckled fondly. ‘I know it all sounds bizarre when I say it now, but it’s just how it was. He was that kinda guy and he never hurt anyone, so people just let him be.’

‘What about the island though? Squatting is one thing, but what he did here … didn’t he need some kind of permission?’

‘You’d think, but for most of his time here, he somehow managed to stay under the radar of authorities. By the time he started building, he was known and accepted by other locals. No way you’d get away with it these days, but I guess he wasn’t doing any harm, so no one questioned him. There was talk of some kind of gentlemen’s agreement a few years ago when a new cop started asking questions, but Bill died before anything came of it. Maybe it was the stress that killed him.’

Although Bill’s story fascinated me, I remembered I was actually here to document the destruction and ask Dan about the Island Progress Association’s plans for the future.

‘Be careful,’ he warned as we stepped up to the ‘official entrance’—an archway of rock that led into the interior of the building. ‘Parts of the walls have come down, other bits are wobblier than they were, so I’m not sure of any invisible structural damage.’

‘Did the storm take off the roof?’ I asked, glancing up into the now clear blue sky.

‘No. There was never a roof. Bill’s castle was more a work of art and a place where he sat out when the weather was good. Underneath all this rubble, there’s a fire pit. He’d often get it going in the evenings on the weekends and have friends over—those who’d helped with building or supplies. They’d camp on the island and then head back to the Point the next day.’

‘Bill sounds like quite a character.’ And obviously he had most of the town on side, which went some way to explaining how he’d got away with all he did.

Dan gestured to the walls surrounding us. ‘He stored all his collectibles here. Sadly, a lot of them have been blown away, but I plan to scour the place and find as many as I can.’

‘What did he collect?’

‘Mostly stuff other people no longer wanted—sculptures, forgotten artworks, old glass bottles, shells he found, gifts his visitors brought out to him, vintage signs. Anything really. He was interested in lots of things.’

I snapped some photos inside the castle and then we moved on to Bill’s actual living quarters—or rather what was left of them. A tree had fallen on top of his outside dunny, so there was no longer any door. And the rest of the building, made from what looked like old wooden pallets, looked as if it could crumble at any moment.