"When I came back up, I saw a giant back and I realised it was a shark and then I started screaming for help."
Ten years ago in the quiet little south coast NSW town of Tathra, ocean swimmer Christine Armstrong was disappeared, literally, by a 12-foot Great White a few hundred feet from the beach.
Her swimming cap, a pair of goggs and a “quantity of organic matter” was all that was recovered.
“It consumed her basically,” her husband Rob said.
Fast forward to last Thursday, and a nine-year-old kid is real lucky to be alive after a shark, likely a Great White, maybe a bronzie but a big one, attacked him, latching onto the tail of his little board.
Bowie’s daddy and pals helped get the kid to the beach, the only damage the ruination of his Sharp Eye and a hole in his wetsuit.
“It made a giant bite mark … it fully took out my fin,” the nine-year-old said. “My board was fully into pieces … fully wrecked. It was not good.”
Former tour surfer Kai Otton has since offered to give the Bowie a new board.