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.
Derek , I wonder as a Journalist , if you would ask the Shire of Ballina , when the dead whale washed into Ballina Beach with Whites, tigers , bulls , feeding on the carcass , all the way to the beach , where the Shire decided to bury the whale on the beach because a Museum asked them to , as it was a rare whale . I week later Tadashi , dies as the whale was buried on the beach as were another 13 whales in NSW in the last 3 years . $20 K to bury one , $200 K to remove the whale. What is the policy of burying whales on beaches?
I’m always amazed at how daily news media in AUS and USA treat common surfers like total derelict retards YET, we’re somehow supposed to be a sophisticated lot with two roses on the pillow come the WSL broadcast.
Charlie don’t surf! Paul Speaker don’t surf!
That’s a Blacktip Reef Shark, not a Great White. The shark probably saved the guy’s life before he got bit by a poisonous reef snake.
“Surfer’s great white fright!” only apply’s to white surfers
Species is listed as vulnerable doesn’t appear to be an increasing population though nobody really knows. Possibly just biting all the hoomans cos we ate their lunch. Not excusing attacks. I too believe the sharks have been very naughty of late.
Is a unicorn that gets a bit clingy and wants to cuddle just a horse with a party hat on?
Karl Stefanovic what a fucking tool.
He always tries that fucking hard to be funny – needs someone to completely burn him live on TV