“The nets work well. Sea life not only avoid the nets and stay out to sea, but they do so for about ten kilometres to the north and south, beyond where the netted beaches finish.”
(Editor’s note: This a nine-part fictional story about a little surf town that is forced to confront the real world effects of shark protection, the removal of shark nets and the obfuscation of public servants wildly out of their depth. It’s based on the experience of Ballina, if y’hadn’t worked that out yet. Read part one here. Part two here. Part three here. Part four here. Part five here.)
Channel Nine’s Matt Carr spent that Wednesday talking to a local surfer, a shark net servicer, and a fisherman, asking them if they thought that the changing political demographic of the town had changed the way the council focused on shark attack mitigation.
The first person he interviewed was Bevan Priestly, the ex-pro surfer who owned the oldest surf shop in Freeport, For the Love of Surfing.
“So Bevan, tell me, how long have you lived in Freeport, and what do you do for a living?”
“I’m born and bred, Matt. My oldies ran the first car dealership out of this very shop, and in the 60s, the old man started selling surfboards here, and we eventually turned it into Freeport’s first surf shop in 1974, when I was thirteen.”
“Has Freeport changed much since then?”
“Hahaha! You gotta be kiddin’, right?”
“How has it changed?”
“Can you please explain to my viewers what you mean by that?”
“Well, put it like this, after all the lefties in Sydney ruined the city, they decided they wanted to have a ‘Sea-change’ and came up and tried to ruin the north coast towns.”
“How did they do that?”
“How much time have you got? Do you want the long or short version?”
“Give me the long version, we’ve got plenty of time.”
“Well, first of all, they don’t know how anything works. This town was built on hard work. There were the cattle and cane farmers, the trawlermen, the dairy, the abattoir, and the piggery, and then all the Hippies moved here in the 60s and 70s to escape the Big Smoke, and they all got on the dole, built treehouses out of the old farm houses, grew pot and hung out in the nude.”
“Sounds like fun!”
“It was!”
“So, this would have been a Liberal Voting town back in the day?”
“Nationals.”
“And what happened next?”
“Well, the Hippies gave birth to lots of little Hippies, the kids I went to school with, and they took over everything, including the local council.”
“And how did this affect the town?”
“Little by little, they shut down most of the old businesses, the ones that actually produced something. Those who wanted to work had to rely on tourism. Now we have a nightmare with the whole AirB&B thing.”
“How did they shut down the old businesses?”
“They said they were bad for the environment.”
“I suppose these are the same people who see shark nets as bad for sharks.”
“Yeah, we’ve been netting the four local beaches for fifty years, and we haven’t had an attack. They’ve taken the nets down and we’ve had three deaths in one day.”
“What about what they say about unnecessary bycatch?”
“Mate, go and have a talk with Tony Templeton. I’ll give you his number. He can tell you about the dreaded bycatch”
The next interview Matt did was with Tony Templeton. In Freeport Park.
“Thanks for speaking with me, Tony. Tell me a little bit about yourself.”
“Me and my folks moved here in the early 80s, from Brisbane. Dad was a champion sailor, won the Sydney to Hobart twice, so I grew up on the water.”
“And Matt Carr tells me that you serviced the shark nets for many years.”
“You bet, twelve years straight.”
“And what do you think about them pulling the nets down last year?”
“It’s insane! The nets have proved themselves to be the best shark deterrent year in, year out, for over half a century.”
“Then why’d they pull them down?”
“The councilors think they need to have something only they can save us from. They keep inventing these things so they can keep their jobs.”
“But they say nets don’t work.”
“The nets work well. The sea life, including sharks, not only avoid the nets and stay out to sea, but they do so for about ten kilometers to the north and south, beyond where the netted beaches finish.”
“And what about bycatch?”
“Mate, there was only enough bycatch for me and a few friends to be eating seafood about once a week. Now we have to buy it at the co-op from Old Wally the Wire. Have you talked to him yet?”
“No, have you got his number?”
“Of course I do.”
Matt thanked Tony and went directly to the fish co-op, where Wally the Wire had worked for sixty years. They did the interview in the cutting room.
“So, Wally, how’s the fishing game changed over the last sixty years?”
“We’re just about fished out, Matt. When I was a boy, there were a hundred and fifty open sea trawlers and another sixty-five river trawlers.”
“How many are there now?”
“A couple of dozen.”
“What, all together?
“Yep.”
“And what about the shark population?”
“Well, we stayed on top of it by catching them and selling it as flake, but the Greenies are trying to put a stop to that. They say everything is endangered, except for people. I mean, what are we gonna eat, Matt, each other?”
“I doubt it, the Greens are all vegans, aren’t they?” Matt joked.
“We may end up eating them.” Wally laughed.
“Hahaha. Yeah, do as your mother tells you, eat your greens.”
“To be honest, there’s not much meat on ‘em.” Wally shook his head.
“When did all this madness start?”
“You wanna talk to Geoff Bridgestone.”
“Who’s Geoff Bridgestone?”
“The ex-mayor. Top bloke. Old school but very switched on. He’ll give you the drum.”
Matt’s interview with Geoff Bridgestone in his office revealed a force at work he didn’t know about. Something that explained a great deal about what was happening in Freeport and elsewhere.
“So, Geoff, Wally the Wire tells me you were a great Mayor.”
“God bless him.”
“He also told me you had a theory about what was going on here, with this council prioritising the lives of sharks over people.”
“It’s not something I’ve talked about, on the record, as they say.”
“Why not?”
“People don’t seem to know how to hear the truth of what I’ve seen. What I witnessed firsthand.”
“So, what is it? Are you prepared to go on the record?’
WOMAN TO BLAME FOR SHARK ATTACKS
“I don’t have any choice. Things have gotten too crazy. As mad as it might sound, I believe it’s got to do with how many women the mayor is surrounded by.”
“You’re not a misogynist, are you?”
“No, far from it. I love everything about women. I was the first mayor of Freeport to have a predominantly female cabinet. We appointed women to head various operations. Not just that, we surrounded them with lots of other women.”
“So, what is it that you think went wrong?”
“What I noticed is that men and women approach problems very differently. Men work together, unconcerned about upsetting one another, all focused on solving the problem at hand in the most expedient and affordable fashion.”
“And what did you notice the women were doing?”
“Well, when there’s a majority of women in a group, and they have the ultimate decision-making power, they spend a lot more time concerning themselves with how everyone feels about the situation, and they don’t have any worry about blowing the budget.”
“And men don’t do that?”
“Not at all. I realised that we are more interested in the practicalities, women are more concerned about their relationships. We don’t care if we hurt anyone’s feelings, they do. That is, until they see you as the enemy. Then they don’t care about your feelings. Then they start seeing you as an existential threat. Some of them quite literally turn into monsters.”
“What’s an example of that?”
“Well, the very reason I stepped down was because the many women I surrounded myself with all voted to pull down the shark nets, when we had lots of clear evidence that they were the very best, cheapest, and safest shark mitigation technique. They’ve proved themselves over many decades.”
“So why did the women decide they wanted to pull them down?”
“Well, I was there when this happened. We had a big meeting where we were all sharing the data and statistics, and our thoughts about the situation, and a few women shared how they felt about it. One said that it made her feel sick to think of sharks and other sea life dying unnecessarily in the nets, while another said that she had bad dreams about the bycatch”
‘Wow, is that all?”
“No, the final straw was when one of the women present started to cry, which set off another one. With that, the decision made itself. None of those women could sit by and watch another woman in so much discomfort and not do everything they could to prevent them from experiencing those feelings. No matter how irrational the decision-making process became.”
“Weren’t there any men there to balance things out?”
“Not what you might call real men.”
“What do you mean?”
“By then, the only men in the council were the leftover Simps and Sneaky Fuckers.”
“What are they?”
“The Simps over sympathize, ignoring their own dignity. They’re always saying things like – I’m looking forward to when women rule the world! They pretend they’re so secure within themselves that they don’t mind showing their vulnerability.”
“What’re they after?”
“I don’t know, power, maybe? Or proximity to power.”
“And the Sneaky Fuckers?”
“Oh, them! They’re the guys who, unlike the Simps who don’t get laid, have found a way to keep getting laid.”
“How?”
“They’re super sly and very manipulative. They’re deceptive and hide their true motives.”
“Which are?”
“Getting laid. It’s always getting laid.”
“How do they achieve that?”
“Rat cunning constant appeasement and fake adulation.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
YouTubers Finn and Tammy Bilson were following Peirce Davidson and his wife, Charlize, on the final leg of their annual Bite Club Australian tour. Both couples were in matching campervans, supplied by their main sponsor, Toyota.
Peirce, a shark attack survivor, had met Charlize in the hospital after she lost her right hand to an inquisitive young reef shark she was feeding off the Great Barrier Reef almost a decade earlier. Coincidentally, Peirce was in the area at the time, holidaying at Airlie Beach with his wife, Sam, and their two kids, when they heard about what had happened to Charlize. In the hope of comforting and encouraging Charlize, Peirce and Sam visited her in the hospital.
The connection that Peirce and Charlize experienced was not only obvious to them, it was also clear to everyone else present. When Peirce explained to Charlize for the first time that he too had been bitten by a shark, something unexpected happened, something akin to a chemical reaction. Another thing no one expected to happen, least of all Peirce’s wife Sam or Charlize’s husband Bruce, was that Peirce and Charlize would not only form the shark attack survivor group the Bite Club together, but they would both also ask for divorces and marry one another.
Finn and Tammy had been following Peirce and Charlize on their ‘Around Australia Bite Club Tour’, from North West Australia, down through South Australia and Victoria, and up the East Coast, while posting weekly Bite Club Tour interviews to their travel-blog documentary.
They heard about the shark attacks in Freeport on the radio, when they were only about two hundred and fifty kilometers south of the town everyone was now talking about. While Finn drove, following Peirce, Tammy rang Charlize on speaker and both husbands agreed with their wives that they should visit Titus in Freeport as soon as possible.
But Peirce was adamant that they first meet with Riley ‘Shark-bait’ Parkes and Jamie Fittler, as planned, on their way. Titus would hopefully be the last shark attack survivor they would visit on their long adventure. That is, as long as no one else got attacked in the meantime.
Shark-bait, barefoot and wearing long blue jeans with no shirt, was, as usual, thrilled to see Peirce and Charlize.
“My shark-attack brother and sister!” He chortled while hugging them both.
Peirce handed Shark-bait a new Bite Club T-shirt, which he examined proudly and tied around his head like a bandana. During their meeting, which Finn shot with a handheld video camera while Tammy did sound and asked occasional questions, Shark-bait took them on a tour of his expansive farmer’s market vegetable patch.
“So, of course, you heard about the attacks at Freeport,” Peirce asked Shark-bait.
“Yeah, fully triggered.” Shark-bait shuddered.
“Same with us,” Charlize confirmed.
“How did that manifest for you?” Peirce asked.
“The usual stuff. Pounding heart, racing thoughts, cold sweats. You know the drill.” Shark-bait shared.
“Same,” Peirce admitted.
“Are you going to try to visit the survivor, what’s his name? Or the families?” Shark-bait asked.
“We’re going to make contact with Titus, and hopefully talk to him. But we might leave the families alone for the time being.” Peirce informed Shark-bait.
“God only knows they would be under attack themselves right now,” Charlize added.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. You know, for me, with both of my shark encounters, despite the fact that during them I thought I was going to die, they were nothing compared to the media. And the media were nothing compared to the activists.” Everyone went silent for a while, while Shark-bait pulled a bunch of carrots out of the ground, washed the remaining soil from them under a tap, and gave them to Charlize, who thanked him.
“What do the activists do?” Tammy interrupted, fearing that no one would follow up on the interesting aspect of the story they had discovered along the way.
“Oh, the activists are the worst. First of all, they attack you viciously online, accusing you of doing all sorts of things wrong to invite this tragedy upon yourself. Then they troll you unmercifully.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, while the shark attack only goes on for a few seconds or minutes, the media pesters you for hours and days, acting like your best friend and then dropping you like a hot potato. Whereas the activists troll and harangue you for weeks and months. Hell, some never really go away. There’s one guy from Queensland who never leaves me alone. He’s threatened to “finish the job” on many occasions.” Shark-bait told Tammy.
“What do you think he means by that?” Tammy asked.
“He threatens to kill me. Straight up. Calls me on the phone, all demonic, and shrieks like a madman.”
“What does he say exactly?” Finn asked.
“I wish you’d die, mother fucker, die!” Shark-bait whispered, while looking into the camera Finn was holding to make sure he captured the terrible truth.
Only eight kilometers south of Freeport, twenty year old Jamie Fittler, who was still living with her parents, welcomed Peirce and Charlize.
Finn and Tammy set up their camera gear while the others engaged in small talk. Peirce hated this part of every interview, missing what was said before the cameras were rolling. As usual, Jamie’s overprotective mother spoke incessantly while her husband sat silently, nodding, while Jamie tried to get a word in. They were on the shady back veranda of the Fittler home in Port Fortdale.
“Jamie’s not allowed to go swimming at the beach anymore,” Mrs. Fittler stated boldly.
“I’m allowed to go swimming at the community pool, but it’s not the same. I love the ocean.”
“Be that as it may, my dear girl, the ocean does not love you! That has been proven beyond reasonable doubt.” Her mother chastised her judicially.
Yes, it does. It’s my Mother Ocean,” Jamie defended the beach.
“We’re rolling,” Peirce let everyone know, while Tammy used the boom mic to capture what each of them was saying.
“Film the scar on her leg. Show these nice people the scar, Jamie. What man is going to want a wife with a horrible scar like that on her leg? I ask you? There goes any chance I ever had of having grandchildren.”
“What do you like most about being visited by Charlize and Peirce every year?” Tammy asked Jamie directly, trying to get something on tape other than Mrs Fittler’s demonstrations of control.
“I love the way they never talk about anything to do with politics or controversy. They only ever ask me about my feelings, how I’m doing, and if I need anything.”
“And is that helpful?”
“Yeah, no one understands what you’ve been through like someone who’s been through the same thing. It’s kind of like AA for shark attack survivors. I love it. I love them.”
“Just to be clear, no one in this family has ever had a problem with alcohol.” Mrs Fittler assured her visitors. “The only problem we’ve ever had, apart from the shark that attacked and almost killed our only child, is the weirdos who still try to contact her, having seen the old school photo of her on the news or in the newspaper. That photo is over five years old! She’s only fifteen in it. The bloody pedophiles!”
“And how are you feeling at the moment, Jamie?” Charlize asked.
“I’m brokenhearted for those three who were killed up the coast and their families and friends.”
“No one ever thinks of the families. It’s us who have to pick up the pieces and move on.” Mrs Fittler complained.
“Yeah, it’s so sad, isn’t it?” Peirce agreed with Jamie.
“Will you go and visit them? The families, I mean.” Jamie asked Tammy.
“We’re trying to organize to meet Titus, the survivor, but we might leave it for a while before we make contact with the families. You know, let them grieve in peace, if you know what I mean.”
“There’s no grieving in peace, I can tell you. And no healing or closure either. It’s been what, almost six years? And still we have nightmares.” Mrs Fittler looked to her husband, who nodded in agreement.
After they finished the interview, Tammy gave Jamie one of the new Bite Club T-shirts, and she put it on over her top.
“Go and get changed, you silly girl. You look like a crazy person with a T-shirt pulled over that nice shirt I gave you. Oh, and just look at that picture on the front! It’s like the poster for Jaws. You can’t possibly wear that outside. Imagine the fuss.”
Driving into Freeport a few hours later was like arriving on the set of a film production.
People were picketing in the outdoor food court while someone on a megaphone led them in a chant.
“Save the Sharks! Kill the Snarks!”
They parked their vans alongside one another at the Freeport caravan park by the river, and Tammy used their drone to get some footage of the picturesque area, while Finn set up their camera and sound gear. Titus rolled in on his pushbike about an hour before sunset, wearing thongs, board shorts, and a Bintang singlet. Finn was pleased with the ‘Magic Hour’ late-afternoon light, and he was able to capture Titus meeting Peirce and Charlize for the first time.
“Hi, are you the guys from the Bite Club?” Titus asked, dropping his bike to the ground.
“Yeah, I’m Tammy, I spoke to you on the phone, and this is my husband, Peirce.”
“Here’s a Bite Club T-shirt, Titus. It’s the club no one wants to be a part of.” Peirce handed him a shirt.
“Thanks! Yeah, it’s quite the initiation, eh. I bet you’ve heard some stories, eh?” Titus quizzed them.
They were interrupted by a loud explosion and the sirens of police and fire engines, which made it impossible to record the sound. The sun set quickly, and it became dark, and the mosquitoes started biting, so they decided to reconvene the next morning.
Later, they discovered that some of the activists had set fire to a car and smashed the windows of the police station.
To be continued!