SHARK?
Posted: May 25th, 2009It’s been a busy year for shark attacks in Sydney. First, a navy diver is mauled by a large bull shark in Sydney Harbour while—get this—doing an “anti-terrorism training exercise.” The following day, the husband of a pregnant wife gets a good chunk of his arm bit off by a Great White while surfing the ever-popular South Bondi. On the way to the hospital, thinking he’s a goner, he instructs the surfer who rescued him to, “Tell Lisa that I love her.” He survives. Two weeks later, a fifteen-year-old kid is hit while surfing North Avalon with his father, losing a chunk of his leg and a whole lot of blood.
I got to experience the aftermath of this one morning at South Bondi. I’m straddling my borrowed 6’3” Warner thruster, marveling at the transparency of the turquoise water, when an overhead wave appears. Our cluster strokes out to meet it when suddenly a large, dark, unidentified corpus streaks across the looming swell then quickly disappears.
A wonderful moment follows. The two-dozen of us break into groups. There’s the terrified beginners who immediately spin around and stroke for shore, mewling hysterically about giant fins. There’s the calm and graceful bikini-clad girl, who politely asks her neighbors if it was indeed a shark. There’s the three or four stone-faced locals, who show not the slightest hint of fear, in fact huddle together as if preparing to take on whatever beast. And then there’s the rest of us, confused, quietly shit-scared, in a kind of limbo.
Throwing a shark into one’s immediate vicinity is a great litmus test. Primal fears surface. True colors come out. Some years back, a renowned surf photographer was shooting Teahupoo from a dinghy, his longtime girlfriend at his side, when suddenly a massive set came. In that terrifying moment when the heaving wave was about to swallow the boat he did not gallantly protect his girl, but rather dove for the bottom. Last I heard they were no longer together.
In the late ‘80s, my tourmates and I played a game called “Faces of Death,” in which we’d zap around beach towns in France, Spain, Portugal, and Australia pulling massive, screaming handbrake slides as close as possible to unsuspecting pedestrians, which drew some magnificent facial expressions as well as a few dives into nearby bushes. Once we pulled one on Top 16-ranked Dave Parmenter, who was notorious for his Clint Eastwood-like demeanor. Dave barely flinched. From this simulated near-death experience we concluded that he was the Real Deal.
I did not ponder these things as I bobbed in the waters of Bondi Beach, but rather sat with my feet on my board so as to eliminate dangling limbs. I scanned the depths and listened to my heartbeat, which sounded vaguely like the theme song from Jaws. And then finally the beast emerged, this time breaking the surface and doing a dolphin-like dart across a looming swell, revealing flaps and flippers and a shiny brown torso, a seal not a shark, thank god, and all went back to normal at Bondi.