Surfer killed by fifteen-foot Great White shark at South Australia’s infamous Streaky Bay

Two surfers dead by Great White attack in the area in less than six months.

A surfer has been hit, killed and disappeared by a fifteen-foot Great White at Granites, twenty clicks out of Streaky Bay, South Australia, seven hundred clicks north-west of Adelaide. 

Mainstream media is reporting a man has been “seriously injured” but they ain’t even close. 

The surfer, whose name we can’t release, was waiting for a set out the back at Granites, a long and friendly lefthander, when the Great White attacked, leaving only his board and the stub of his legrope. 

A police investigation is underway, a chopper is flying up and, ostensibly, they’re going to try and locate the Great White. Although, as any shark fisho will tell you, if you want to find the Great White, you gotta get it now, not when it’s a hundred k’s away. 

Earlier in the year, and just a hundred clicks south, local school teacher Simon Baccanello was killed by a Great White while surfing at Walkers Rocks in Elliston.

A brave soul, Baccanello warned others to split as the shark started swimming towards him telling terrified kids in the lineup, “Don’t worry, get yourself to shore”.

Jaiden Millar, a twenty two year old, saw the whole damn thing.

“It was such a confronting incident. It could have been anyone. The worst part was there was a 13-year-old out there and he witnessed everything,” Millar told Adelaide Now. “There was a bloke on the beach tooting his horn and as I turned around I saw everyone paddling in. I saw his board tombstoning, which means he’s underwater and his board’s getting dragged under … trying to fight his way back up to the surface… He was gone. (We) saw the shark just thrashing around out the back. The shark’s obviously let go and come back and got him for a third time”.

Five months ago, the big-wave surfer Justin “Jughead” Allport filmed his own extraordinary encounter with a fifteen-foot Great White in South Australia, although he says the experience will haunt him for the rest of his life.

Jug, who’s forty-nine and a firefighter a couple hours north of Sydney at Bateau Bay, said he’s never seen a shark in the wild before, only dead on the beach. That was a twenty-foot White that had been washed onto the sand of a Victorian west coast beach. His pal and said he thought he could get inside of it for a photo but Jug stopped him warning he’d never be able to wear that wetsuit again.

And, so, when a South Oz local said there were a fleets of Great Whites around and maybe he should take the jet skis out and have a squiz at a few hanging off the tuna pens, he thought, yeah, ‘I wanna go have a look.’

“I’m scared of sharks, yeah, I’m terrified,” says Jug. “But I’d never seen ‘em while surfing and now I’m even more scared of the power, how fast it was. Things hit you when you see one in real life. Everything about it. I know guys who’ve seen Great Whites swim past, how mellow they are, how they don’t get touched, and drone footage of sharks following people, but that thing was so quick, so fast and powerful I shit myself. Anyone who says they’ve been chased by a shark, no you haven’t. If a shark was chasing you, it would eat you. Maybe a shark stalks you, it never chases you.”

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New Zealand surfer (left) cursed. Photo: Facebook
New Zealand surfer (left) cursed. Photo: Facebook

New Zealand surfers suffer mightily due heavy blast of Celine Dion!

"Siren Crews" are stalking the Land of the Long White Cloud, making dawn patrol exceedingly difficult.

As any true surfer knows, the early morning is often the best time for waves. The embryonic bird catches the worm, as the saying goes, and so surfers are often up before the sun, waxing boards, loading them into Toyota Hilux SR5 Cruisers and heading to the beach for to make surfing. The winds are often nice, or at least right, in the early morning. The crowds light.

Now, it is difficult to rise and shine in the best of times. Warm beds are like bad partners. They cling and beg, promise and whine even after a full eight hours of sleep. Less than eight hours, they scream and curse. Demanding fulfillment. The true surfer must harness all of his power and fight to leave lest he becomes trapped and abused like Will Smith.

New Zealand surfers, these days, are in the midst of a brutal one.

For the Land of the Long White Cloud is currently experiencing a Celine Dion epidemic. Though are you aware of New Zealand’s “siren battles?” According to reports, rival factions are going to war by attaching the biggest, throatiest loudspeakers to cars and blasting music at full volume all through the night in order to wear the crown of “siren king.”

Siren car. Photo courtesy S.W.A.T. Team
Siren car. Photo courtesy S.W.A.T. Team

Celine Dion sinks surfers

The Canadian songstress’s tunes are particularly popular according to NZ site The Spinoff because “siren king” songs must feature treble rather than bass.

Anita Baker, the mayor of a Porirua, a small town near Wellington, said, “They love Dion because they like anyone with a high pitch and great tone in their voice.”

Surfers, staring at bedside clocks at 2:00 am, knowing they will soon strike 5:30 while Dion belts about her heart going on, sick to stomachs.

Except might the aforementioned surfers find grace in their ongoing hearts for the siren crews? “Basically everyone has a hobby and while our hobby can be quite disturbing and we understand how disturbing it can be,” Paul Lesoa of the S.W.A.T. Team said. “We just want our own proper, safe space away from people to do it.”

Maybe we aren’t so different after all.

If our World Surf League heroes decided to become professional sirens, who do you think would win?

Filipe Toledo still?

Smart money.

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Matthew Perry Los Angeles house
The single-level house at 18038 Blue Sail Dr, Pacific Palisades is a pretty, low-slung joint built in 1965 hence its sleek modernist lines. There are four beds, four-and-a-half bathrooms, is around three thousand square feet, and squats on a hunk of grass that slopes gently down to the now infamous hot tub. | Photo: All photos TheMLS.com

See inside $6 million Sunset Point Beach-adjacent house of redeemed Friend Matthew Perry

A sleek modernist joint from the sixties that squats on a hunk of grass sloping gently down to the now infamous hot tub.

A lot of chatter, here there and everywhere, about the actor Matthew Perry, who was found dead in his jacuzzi, aged fifty-four, yesterday. 

A surprise to no one who’d seen the funnyman’s descent into a haze of Oxies and booze. Five years ago, same thing, found unresponsive in his jacuzzi. 

Real lucky back then. Perry had surgery, heart stopped beating for five minutes during surgery, his colon burst after docs gave him propofol and he was in a coma for two weeks. But he survived, even if he had to waltz around with a colostomy bag for a year while the colon repaired itself. 

Ain’t no second or third chances, howevs., 

Matthew Perry, who was famous for his portrayal of the sarcastic but vaguely lovable Chandler Bing in the TV series Friends, lived a few clicks from Sunset Point Beach, where VAL-friendly waves refract onto a yellowish stretch of sand. The sorta wave your ol pal DR seeks out now that his hip cartilage has dissolved and the once-simple mechanic of bringing a back foot into position feels like climbing Everest. 

The single-level house at 18038 Blue Sail Dr, Pacific Palisades is a pretty, low-slung joint built in 1965 hence its sleek modernist lines. There are four beds, four-and-a-half bathrooms, is around three thousand square feet, and squats on a hunk of grass that slopes gently down to the now infamous hot tub.

Two of the four bedrooms stare straight into the Pacific, a front row to California’s iconic sunsets. 

Matthew Perry paid six mill for it three years ago and was hit with seventy-one grand in property taxes every year, peanuts for an actor who was still getting three mill a year in syndication residuals.

Front door to Matthew Perry's house
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Perry (right) likely horrified by our tribalism. Photo: Friends
Perry (right) likely horrified by our tribalism. Photo: Friends

Surf world bitterly divides over Matthew Perry death speculation

Truth in the time of dengue fever.

Yesterday, the surf world came together in order to mourn the untimely passing of Matthew Perry. The 54-year-old most famous for playing Chandler Bing on Friends had, earlier, roiled that same community. In his recently published memoir Friends, Lovers and the Big Terrible Thing, Perry had excoriated surf hero Keanu Reeves. Even wishing death upon him.

“Why is it that the original thinkers like River Phoenix and Heath Ledger die, but Keanu Reeves still walks among us?” Perry seethed.

Reeves, of course, originated the role of Johnny Utah in Point Break, the greatest surf film ever, and surf fans took the slur seriously.

United in rage against Matthew Perry.

Perry, feeling the heat, quickly pivoted in an apology and removed the reference from his best-seller. “I pulled his name because I live on the same street,” he said. “I’ve apologized publicly to him. Any future versions of the book will not have his name in it.”

United in forgiveness of Matthew Perry

And united in aching over Matthew Perry’s demise until details of his last moments began leaking. TMZ initially reported that no drugs had been found near the hot tub where he died after coming home from a pickleball session. Perry had, of course, a long history with addiction. He was in therapy fifteen times and allegedly spent over $7 million on sobriety.

So no drugs.

Except then his wonderful Friend’s co-star Lisa Kudrow speculated via a friend, “Although no one wants to believe it was medication – prescribed or not – of course that is a thought in their minds. They are thinking he must have taken something that did not mix with the warm water.”

So drugs?

The surf world immediately broke into two camps. One believing that personal matters should stay personal and not ruling out dengue fever. The other believing that honesty serves the greater good and an honest reflection of a life truly lived is art.

Deeply divided and reflecting past surf world traumas.

The last drop.

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The surfer mindset (pictured). Photo: Fast Times at Ridgemont High
The surfer mindset (pictured). Photo: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Reddit co-founder peddles debunked “surfer mindset” to rubes!

“You’ve got your GoPro out. You got a good selfie, and you feel good about yourself."

Masses starving for insight often look to the wildly rich. Last week, Reddit’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian attempted to provide. The 40-year-old delivered a keynote address at his alma mater Virginia University. The audience was likely packed with dreamers and rubes. Those hoping to get a leg up in this modern world by following in the path of the tech rich.

Ohanian, worth $70 million, gazed upon their upturned faces, their innocent eyes, and gifted a critically debunked way forward.

“The Surfer Mindset”

“There’s a really good analogy about life and business and surfing … Some waves come by, and you rip them perfect, and you are just killing it,” he said. “You’ve got your GoPro out. You got a good selfie, and you feel good about yourself. Afterward, you might paddle back out … and wait five hours for another good wave.”

The “waiting five hours” apparently the key.

“That mindset is the right mindset for a life well-lived,” he continued. “If you spent all your time on that board, just being anxious about the wave you just missed, you’re going to miss the next one. If you spend it just daydreaming and trying to relive that one amazing wave you just had, you might miss the next one.”

The Reddit maestro continued to share about “catching Ls” and bouncing back. Attendees, no doubt, taking furious notes.

Social scientists everywhere shaking their heads.

They proved, long ago, that the “surfer mindset” is actually a feral and stilted state. A small, selfish path reducing its practitioner to a life poorly lived.

An unbroken string of “Ls.”

A Reddit Ruse

Ohanian’s attempt to kneecap future competition should have been apparent with the “good selfie” and “GoPro” references. Alas, it is now a VAL world. We are just living in it.

It is a shame the rich man did not gift actual advice. He married the greatest ever athlete Serena Williams and imagine the game he played there. The baseline hammers, net charges, power serves. Etc.

I suppose he will keep the secrets of the “tennis mindset” all to himself.

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