Hero teen awarded bravery medal after fatal Great White attack on fellow surfer, “It was massive…within a couple of seconds it was on him”

“I definitely get some sleepless nights. It comes and goes.”

A Gold Coast kid who was fourteen when a Great White attacked and killed the surfer next to him has been awarded a silver medal from the Royal Humane Society of Australasia for raising the alarm and getting other surfers out of the water.

Zane Hall, who’s now seventeen, was surfing a little off-season swell at Greenmount, next to Snapper there on the Gold Coast’s southernmost point, when the twelve-foot White hit and killed Nick Slater, a local real estate agent. 

“The most unlikely place to have that giant rooster tail of water erupt around you or a loved one and the whole familiar by now horror playing out, except this time caught in the web of the surveillance society,” wrote Longtom the day after.

“That’s where I would have sat with the kids, down the end past Little Marley, picking up some little wide runners into the afternoon glow. Probs having a little chat in between waves with Nick Slater, asking him what he thought of the Morning of the Earth twin he was riding.Forty-six, still feeling good. Washing off the stress after a good day selling real estate. Lots of buyers, people escaping the lockdown, looking for sunshine, warm water and a safer surf compared to across the border. It’s all changed now.That’s the end of that fantasy. No more thinking crowded Superbank is a refuge, even if from paranoia.” 

Zane was next to Slater. 

“It was coming towards me and I thought it was a dolphin at first because it just had its dorsal fin out of the water but then it sort of veered off towards Nick and I could see the back fin come out of the water as well and I knew it was a shark,” he told the Courier-Mail. “It was massive. I just yelled ‘shark’ to try and warn him but it was too late because within a couple of seconds it was on him. I kept yelling ‘shark’ to attract everyone else’s attention and try and get them out of the water and then I paddled in to go for help.”

Zane got himself to the beach, raised the alarm, got some people on the beach to call triple O and chased the lifeguards who were wrapping up their shifts. 

Then he sat in the carpark and waited for his parents to pick him up. 

“That was when it all sort of hit me and I started crying,” he said. “Even now, sometimes I definitely get some sleepless nights. It comes and goes.”

His Dad Matthew still remembers the “hysterical” phone call.

“Zane downplays it a bit, but what he did that day, it was remarkable that he had the foresight to get everyone’s attention and raise the alarm… There wasn’t much they could do, but Nick was really well looked after. In his last moments he wasn’t alone and he was cared for.”