Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Stay close to shore unless you want to be eaten by the media sharks

There was another attack on a swimmer by a white pointer shark on the weekend. The event was at Albany's Middleton Beach on the south coast. A teacher named Jason Cull was doing his swimming thing about 80 metres off shore when the several-metres-long hungry fish decided to have a taste of him.

Mr Cull was lucky. The damage was sufficiently 'minor' enough for him to find one of the shark's eyeballs. With his thumb he pressed the release button and got spat out. He had a badly bleeding leg. An artery had been severed. He started doing the backstroke towards shore, generating a cloud of blood as he went.

Meantime a diminutive 50 year old woman who had seen the attack swam to rescue him. Joanne Lucas will undoubtedly receive bravery awards for her selfless action. She'll become a legend for sure. There's probably been a media feeding frenzy already. My tip is 60 Minutes next Sunday night.

There was some amateur-taken TV news pictures of the two with the fin of the shark close by shown on the weekend. A highlighted frame appeared in The West Australian today.

Joan and Jason can be seen swimming in. Their heads are high out of the water as they watch the shark behind them. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

Jason was taken to hospital. Repairs to his messed up right leg turned out to require five hours of surgery. Meanwhile the big shark is still lurking about. Maneaters are protected species in this state.

During the preparation of my 2001 PhD dissertation Maritime resource exploitation in southwest Australia prior to 1901, I became aware of several unhappy encounters between sharks and humans along the south coast. Aborigines and European sailors alike were very wary of white pointers with good reason. The following paragraph is purloined from a chapter in my dissertation.

Sharks were viewed as the common enemy of all sailors, and investigating the stomach contents of large specimens always evoked much interest and amusement. Those on the south coast could be very large, and required a considerable amount of expertise and effort to bring them aboard. Upon hooking and bringing alongside, a noose was slipped over the head, worked along the body to be secured round the tail, thus allowing the fish to be safely hauled aboard. The crew of the Investigator, under Matthew Flinders, caught a large shark in this manner while exploring the Recherche Archipelago in 1801. The fish which was probably a white pointer (Carcharodon carcharias), contained a dead seal, with Aboriginal spears embedded.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!