Wow: Great White Breaches Near Surfer!

It's official: Great White season opens in Australia!

Australians of a certain age will remember when attacks by Great White were an abstract and paranoid thought. Yeah, they happened, maybe once every dozen years, twenty even, but always in South Australia.

And so you weighed up your options on whether or not you wanted to take the chance.

You want those uncrowded, cold-water reefs in South Oz? Go get ’em. But know there’s Whites. I once interviewed a man nicknamed Sharkbait who’d been attacked twice by Whites. He eventually died in a car crash.

Me? I tended to stick to the more comely trails of  the Gold Coast, Western Australia, Sydney and its surrounds. I can live with bronze whalers, bull sharks and tigers, at a pinch. But Whites? Oowee, they’re such midnight creepers. The first time y’see ’em close up, you’re gone.

Times do change. The weather has gone to hell and, clearly, seventeen years of protecting Great White sharks in Australia has led to a buoyant population.

Ballina and Byron Bay, home to the occasional bull shark sighting, now host families of Whites. This time last year, a Japanese surfer had both legs bitten off and was killed by a Great White at a beach I used to favour.

And Western Australia? Last week, one surfer and one diver were killed within days, and a hundred kilometres of each other, in WA.

Today Australian surfers’ lips popped agape in flabbergast at the front cover of the tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph. This photo was taken a couple of hours north of Sydney, at Caves Beach.

It’s a wonderful photo, of course. Proof of a healthy ecosystem, proof of the ability of surfers to exist in harmony with Great White sharks, and proof, perhaps, that surfing is as cruel to its participants as a lying, brutal, cheating husband is to his wife. The torment. You can never be safe.

The surfer, pictured, and his pal, who shot the photo, glowed in their television performance, however.

From NineMSN.

Co-host Karl Stefanovic asked Mr McClaren if he’d seen sharks fly.

“I have now mate – I’ve had the pleasant experience. I’ve seen other animals fly,” he responded.

“Like the unicorn?” Stefanovic said.

“Yeah, normally see a couple of those on the weekend,” Mr McClaren replied, as the TODAY panel erupted into laughter.

“Hang in there big fella,” he added, as Stefanovic laughed.

A unicorn, for those who don’t swing, is a single, bisexual female who is willing to have sex with an established couple. No strings attached etc.

Watch the exchange here.