Shark attack on teen surfer shatters Queensland town’s twenty-seven-year calm!

Local grommets who witnessed the incident described it as a full Mick Fanning deal.

World War II history records Japanese attacks on the Australian mainland and a strategy of planned retreat from the Allies below the sub-tropics, the so-called Brisbane Line. The Brisbane Line was actually the Bribie Line. Part of its defences were fortifications built on the beach at 8th Avenue, Woorim, where we played as kids.

Fifteen-year-old Riley Orchard was surfing in front of Red Fort, 8th Ave, when knocked from his board by an unknown species of shark Thursday around four pm, surfing what eyewitness and long-time Bribie shredder and old pal Brad Highlands described as a “classic nor-east day”.

Highlands, who is currently en route with a chainsaw to help clear a bushfire affected property in Northern New South Wales, was about forty metres away when the attack occurred, right on the low tide.

“He was just sitting there,” said Highlands “and all of a sudden, bang!, he’s off his board. He felt nothing brush him, no swoosh, nothing. He jumped back on his board, yelled out to Cain (his brother) ‘I think I just got hit!’ Cain thought he was bullshitting, he started paddling into shore and it wasn’t until he got to the beach and saw the board that he realised it was a shark.”

Normally, to fight the sweep on a nor-east day, surfers are required to constantly paddle, which helps the Bribie surfer hold their own in line-ups around the World. Luckily for Riley, he was sitting up and drifting, otherwise he “would have been bitten on the arm or shoulder” according to Highlands.

“He was just sitting there,” said Highlands “and all of a sudden, bang!, he’s off his board. He felt nothing brush him, no swoosh, nothing. He jumped back on his board, yelled out to Cain (his brother) ‘I think I just got hit!’ Cain thought he was bullshitting, he started paddling into shore and it wasn’t until he got to the beach and saw the board that he realised it was a shark.

“He was just shaken” said Highlands, “white as a ghost, non-stop shaking like he had hypothermia”.

Highlands said it was “was pretty weird. We were all in the carpark later, debriefing, giving Riley shit and letting him know he was lucky he doesn’t ride a boogieboard otherwise he wouldn’t be with us. It wasn’t until about eight o’clock that night a bit of shock came across me. How close it was and how it could have been me, could have been worse for him, or worse for any one of us, you know”

In thirty-knot winds, local grommets who witnessed the incident described it as a full Mick Fanning deal.

Police paid Highlands a visit Friday night, taking a statement to ensure the attack was not a hoax.

At the time of writing no shark species had been implicated in the attack, the first at Woorim since March 8th, 1992, according to local surfer and historian Brian “Gicka” Box.

Currently available data from the Queensland Shark Control Program, administered by the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries lists 17 drumlines off the beach at Woorim. Two sharks were captured on the drumlines in 2018, none in 2019.

Presumably, Taronga Park zoo, which maintains the shark incident register in Australia will list the incident as “unprovoked attack”.