Alexa Moses won't be rushing to Sydney's crowded shores this summer. She has never liked the beach. She imagines she is part of a tiny group of Australians to whom the beach has never appealed.
Having survived the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 10 years ago while on a holiday in Khao Lak, north of Phuket in Thailand, Ms Moses' dislike of the beach is now coupled with a huge and unique anxiety. "Especially with my children, I'm watching them all the time," she said. "I'm like a terrier just staring out to sea, watching the horizon the whole time."
On Boxing Day in 2004, the Indian Ocean tsunami hit 14 countries, claiming at least 230,000 lives. Terrifying images of destruction were captured at the hands of Western holiday-makers who carried with them the first generation of camera and video phones. It was the last natural disaster of its scale to pre-date the mainstream-sharing phenomenon of social media.
"I remember that I wasn't compassionate," Ms Moses said. "I was not compassionate at all, and that actually makes me very sad. I just wanted to get out. At that point I wasn't going to help anyone."
Her foot twitches and she shuffles in her seat, with visible discomfort, as she watches her video testimony from a decade earlier. She recounts fleeing to the resort's rooftop, with her former partner Robert and wading through a swamp of debris made up of timber, cars and human bodies before climbing a mountain to escape harm's way.
"I don't remember it very often now. I remember it occasionally in a dream, maybe once a year I'll have a flashback."
Ms Moses takes little solace in talking about it; it's something she tries not to think about. In the tsunami's immediate aftermath she headed straight for the international airport, desperate to leave Thailand, the backdrop of their traumatic experience.
"Catharsis, it's like a narrative isn't it? That has a nice neat end," Ms Moses said. "There's no neat end to that [the tsunami] … there's no meaning, there's no catharsis, there's only getting on with it. For me it was a lucky escape, it's a lucky escape story. For other people it's a story of losing their family."
