"I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough."

Three days ago, foilboarder and noted local surfer Christian Bungate was hit by a Great White at the site of last weekend’s Tweed Heads Pro, the animal, which was described as a “tank”, leaving behind a tooth in the foil’s carbon fibres. 

Bungate, was, initially at least, loathe to talk to the press, preferring, according to friends, a few days to process the event.

The hit came two weeks after Nick Slater was killed by a Great White at the Superbank, forty-five minutes drive north, four months after Rob Pedretti was killed by a  Great White at Kingscliff, ten minutes drive north, one month after longboarder Chantelle Doyle was pulled out of a Great White’s mouth by her husband at Port Macquarie, a few hours south, and two months after teenager Mani Hart-Deville was killed by a Great White at Wooli, a couple of hours south. 

So, yeah, Bungate knew it was a close call. 

Speaking yesterday to the ABC’s Gold Coast bureau, Bungate said he was fifty yards off Cabarita Beach on his foil when he saw a shadow alongside him. 

Harrowing?

Yeah.

“It was like there was an oil slick next to me, it was so big. It came up so slowly, and I literally shit myself and kicked it as hard as I could with my right leg.”

The White hit his board and knocked him into the water.

“I was off my board and on top of the bloody thing. It was like I was submerged on a rock, it was so hard and rough.”

Then,

As he managed to scramble off, the predator came at him with jaws gaping, but bit the board instead. Mr Bungate was convinced if he had been on a standard surfboard rather than a foil board, which has a 70cm keel and wings instead of a fin, he would be dead.

“I’m 100 per cent sure if I was on a normal surfboard it would’ve given the shark clear access to get straight back at me and it probably would’ve taken out my stomach,” he said. “Instead it caught the wing of my foil board, hence why there’s a bloody tooth in it. I left my board and I crawled up the beach and I lay on my stomach bawling my eyes out.”

Meet a wildcat who gives free surf and ocean safety lessons to any kid who swings by the beach…

Make a  wrong turn at any NYC corner and you can quickly go from sunny side of the street to sudden disembowelment in the flash of a homeless pan.

The City will flip you that way.

A stroll down Fifth Avenue can lead to secret bends where light-fingered larcenists will free you from the weight of your wallet. Within each borough, inside its own little section, down isolated blocks, there are enough lines of demarcation to make a Rubiks’s Cube dizzy.

And the Rockaway Beach (yeah, Ramones Rockaway Beach) section of Queens County is no different.

The Rockaway peninsula technically runs from 9th street in the east to 126th street in the west. (The surf really cuts off around 35th street, blocked by Long Beach Barrier Island.)

The west end (Belle Harbor, Neponsit) are what your local housewife fingering a 12:01 afternoon Chardonnay would call “affluent.” Multi million-dollar homes. No subway access. No public boardwalk. Parking permits for residents required. Lifeguard stands every 150 feet. They say this section is protected by the old guard, Irish fireman and cops who’s lineage in the force can be traced to the “Gangs of New York” time in the five boroughs.

As you roll further east (Far Rockaway) you approach the Mason/Dixon line of 74th street.

Within this area you will find the Edgemere and Hammell projects. And, as ODB of The Wu would say, they ain’t nothing to fuck with. A point proved during a surf check by two surfers around 62nd street. While walking back to the car the two surfers are greeted by two Dodge Chargers parked in a “V” blocking the street.

The president of the Welcoming Committee of Hammell sincerely asks “DA FUCK YOU DOIN HERE!”

Surfers walk to the car silent and drive towards the road-block. A curb hop and zig-zag navigation through street signs and local solders yields an escape, but not before a bottle is hurled and cracks the cars back window.

Welcome to the Old Rockaways, east end.

It is in this section of the Rockaways where the drownings occur.

Mostly teenage children of Latin and African American decent from the east side of the Rockaways. The side where there are four lifeguard stands for seventy blocks of beach. There were seven drownings this summer alone. A national study released by USA Swimming says six out of ten black and Latino kids can’t swim. Most of these kids have no knowledge of the ocean and its currents and have never heard of a riptide.

Ask anyone who’s read a book and they will tell you this dates back to the segregated pool days.

Enter Lou Harris.

He is the founding member of Black Surfing Association Rockaway, a division of the Black Surfing Association, that operates in Queens.

Lou gives free surfing and ocean safety lessons to any kid who stops by.

“I don’t care if you’re black, white, Asian or Muslim,” he says. “If there’s five of you, and you’re hanging out on the corner with no job, you’re going to get into trouble.”

Of course, it’s a non profit.

Check out their Instagram here.

And, if you wanna help cut a path to a kids enjoyment of the ocean, hit the GoFundMe here:

Busts off tracking device installed after Fanning episode… 

Earlier in the year, you’ll remember, a woman was charged with the unlawful stalking of three-time world champ Mick Fanning, breaking into his Hamptons-themed three-storey house with intent and two counts of stealing.

Sarah Foote, a thirty-nine-year-old from Ballina, same age as Mick as it happens, is accused of following Fanning between January 29 and February 4, the break-in of Mick’s pretty beachfront joint in Bilinga allegedly happening on Feb 2.

Foote is accused of sending “rambling hand-written letters with accusations of pedophilia, declarations of love for Fanning and thoughts of wanting to kill him.”

While that case has to be resolved the woman faced court earlier this month charged with breaching her bail and wilful damage of police property, busting off the tracking device she was ordered to wear after being charged with stalking Fanning. 

Ms Foote, who has been engaging in a cute chat exchange with a pal of a pal on Facebook, sub judice prevents me from revealing those details, was sentenced to three months behind bars but released immediately on parole and ordered to pay eight hundred bucks in compensation for the electronic tracking device. 

Four days ago, a sixty-six-year-old man, previously banned from coming within even half-a-click of seven-time world champ Stephanie Gilmore, was charged after allegedly approaching Gilmore at the Tweed Coast Pro on Sunday.

In 2012, a homeless schizophrenic junkie, Julius Fox, was sentenced to four years in jail after bashing Gilmore with an iron bar, breaking her wrist, outside her Tweed Heads apartment in 2010.

It ain’t all palm trees and water so warm you feel like you’re sloshing around in mammy’s womb up there in northern NSW and the Gold Coast.