Teenager films twelve-foot Great White stalking his kayak near popular Australian surf spot; pal watches helplessly via drone from above: “(The shark) was looking straight at me!”

Kid on plastic boat sees life flash before him etc.

It’s the year of the Great White in Australia, to put it mildly.

Over the course of four months,

Nick Slater, dead, killed at the Superbank, Mani Hart-Deville, dead, killed at Wooli, Rob Pedretti, dead, killed at Kingscliff, Chantelle Doyle, maimed, at Port Macquarie, Andrew Sharpe, dead, Esperance, Phil Mummert, disfigured, Bunker Bay.

All surfers. All attacks via Great White.

Two divers also killed by Whites this year. Gary Johnson, Esperance, Matthew Tratt, Fraser Island.

And, then there’s Matt Wilkinson, tailed by an eight-footer, while surfing a lonely stretch on the NSW North Coast. 

Therefore, it doesn’t come as a tremendous surprise that a kid in his kayak was able to film himself being stalked by a twelve-foot Great White while fishing for snapper a mile off Black Head Beach, just north of Forster in NSW.

Matthew Smith was on his little kayak, couple of fishing rods out, when he was visited by the White.

“I just looked next to me and the shark was just gliding past, looking straight at me,” the kid told 9News.

Meanwhile, Matt’s pal, Nick O’Brien, watched it all via his drone.

A demonstration of human vulnerability and a what-if scenario that will find its way, I think, into the kid’s night thoughts.