“How could you be so stupid as not to heed the warnings of the local fishermen?”
(Editor’s note: This an eight-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.)
By midday that Tuesday, it was a stinking hot 30 degrees. City-based television news teams and newspapermen and women were descending on the town like a feeding frenzy of sweaty, flustered animals in the wild, attacking Mayor Maddison during a press conference.
“Why isn’t the air conditioning on?” Mayor Maddison asked, trying to maintain her composure.
“It looks like someone has tampered with it,” she was informed by her assistant, before she addressed the tightly packed audience and media.
“My heart goes out to the family and friends of those who had negative outcomes due to their interactions with some of the sea life here in Freeport this morning, but as I stand here, I can report on good authority that those species responsible were, in fact, visitors to our usually safe little town and were just passing through.”
Mayor Maddison looked to her left and right for support from the university-educated professors, who nodded sagely at her initial statement.
One of the reporters attacked her from the front row.
“How could you be so stupid as not to heed the warnings of the local fishermen?”
Another inquired from the middle of the media scrum.
“What about the hundreds of surfers who signed the petition at the surf shop calling for the reintroduction of the nets?”
A question was fired aggressively from the back of the crowded room.
“How many more deaths will it take for you to reintroduce controlled culling? These animals are eating your constituents!”
“One at a time, please,” Mayor Maddison answered. “What I can tell you is that we are consulting with a team of top scientists in the field, they’re marine experts, and we’re expecting some representatives from the DPI, the Department of Primary Industry, to arrive tomorrow. Hopefully, these specialists will help us work out what’s going on and offer some recommendations based on the most recent data and statistics, numbers they have been gathering over the last few years and…” she was cut short when the microphone stopped working, which brought her some relief as it meant the meeting came to a premature end.
After an initial onslaught of news reporters, a variety of news professionals made plans to visit Freeport for a longer stay to file long-form stories to their networks and viewers. Circling like vultures, they closed in on the small town from every direction.
Bill Cunningham from Sky News in Sydney was the most prominent and well-known name to organise a few days in Freeport with his producer and camera crew. Bill was an old-school news guy who was not only politically conservative but also a famous anti-environmentalist.
As soon as he heard about the first attacks, he spoke to his producer, Pedro Malone, and they agreed to do a story on it for their weekly program, As Bill Sees It. Bill had already decided on his angle: Progressive politicians and left-wing lunatics have blood on their hands after twenty-five years of protecting White Pointers.
Milly Parsons from the ABC in Melbourne was not as old or famous as Bill, but she had secured herself a strong following at the national broadcaster with a series of Four Corners presentations about environmental issues and the connected corruption of big corporations.
Another of her interests was climate change, and she believed she had good reason to link the recent spate of “unusual shark behaviour”, shark attacks, with rising sea temperatures.
Noni Fortiscue was an ex-model and an independent content creator with a huge online following who was famous for exploring the “human side” of catastrophic events, like homelessness, unemployment, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
Noni wanted to do intimate sit-down interviews with the families of those who had lost their lives, and the only survivor, Titus Bartholomew, and find out how they were coping. Her cameraman Brian Trimbole was with her.
Matt Carr, an investigative journalist for Channel Nine in Brisbane, was also a surfer, sailor, and fisherman, and he had his own theory about the rise in shark attacks. He believed it had more to do with councilors altering successful shark attack mitigation programs to appease their growing electorates of city-born elites who had moved to small country towns like Freeport to escape the city’s pollution and chaos.
Married YouTubers Finn and Tammy Bilson had been working with Bite Club organisers Peirce and Charlize Davidson for six months on a documentary about their shark attack survivor group. They had been following the two shark attack survivors as they drove around Australia in their camper van, calling in on the many members of Bite Club, who had all survived attacks themselves.
When, toward the end of their trip, Pete and Charlize had decided to visit nearby Freeport, to hopefully comfort and encourage Titus by sharing their own shark attack survival stories, Finn and Tammy followed.
Graham Piper was a recent Australian Film and Television School graduate who was working on his own self-funded documentary, the working title of which was The Activists. He shot everything himself and had embedded himself with a variety of activists in Melbourne who defended many different causes. He travelled to Freeport with the activists on their bus, Father.
Twenty-year-old Benny Wilson was in high school in nearby Davenport and was already halfway through his assignment on shark attack mitigation techniques. The working title of which was: Shark Safe? He decided to go and stay with his grandparents in Freeport to research the end of his school project.
When Bill Cunningham and Pedro Malone arrived at the four-star Freeport Hotel with their four-man camera crew, they were treated like celebrities.
“Mr Cunningham, Mr Malone, what an absolute honour to have you stay in our hotel,” the concierge fussed over Bill and Pedro. “The owner of the hotel, Mr. Gerald Hopkings, would like to buy you two a drink at the bar, that is, if you’re not too busy.”
“Very good of you, Craig,” Bill read the name on the concierge’s badge.
“You boys take all the gear upstairs, Bill and I are in rooms 327, 328, and you’re sharing 329 and 330,” Pedro handed the camera and sound guys two sets of keys each.
In the marine-themed barroom, Gerald Hopkins greeted Bill and Pedro like old friends.
“Damn good to see you two on the case, God only knows how the dreaded ABC will play this nightmare,” Gerald shook their hands and guided them to a private booth adorned with a decor of rope fishing nets and old glass buoys.
“So what’s the inside story, Gerry?” Bill asked.
“This is an absolute nightmare. Christmas bookings are being canceled left and right. We have to somehow convince people that, despite what has happened, the sharks will be gone by the school holidays.”
In the nearby three-star Biltmore Hotel, Milly Parsons was ordering a Chinese meal in the downstairs restaurant with her producer, Patsy Thring.
“I’m going to have a chicken chow mein without any chicken,” Milly confused the Chinese waitress.
“No chicken in the chicken chow mein?” The waitress inquired.
“No, no chicken, just vegetables and noodles, please. Say, do you know anything about the shark attacks that happened here yesterday?”
“Yes, a terrible story. You want fish in chicken chow mein instead?”
“No, no fish, I’m interested in the sharks.”
“No, no shark, we no use shark here, all fish come from Vietnam.”
Meanwhile, Matt Carr was sharing a joint with his old surfing buddy Brian ‘Bad-man’ Doherty in the boatshed by Freeport Estuary.
“We’re staying in the two-star Freeport Freemont,” Matt explained between puffs. “So what’s up, Bad-man, three attacks in one day!”
“Mate, if you stepped off the back of a trawler, you could walk around on the backs of Tiger sharks and Great Whites,” Bad-man explained.
Noni was on the phone with the relatives of Frank Marpazzo, who were the only family of survivors who were willing to talk to the media about the tragedy.
“He was such a beautiful, happy, friendly boy. We can’t let this happen to another family.”
“How are you coping? I know it’s only been a day since you lost Frank, but I was hoping to have an on-camera sit-down interview with you guys tomorrow so my audience can share some of your pain,” Noni all but begged them.
Having arrived in Freeport, Benny Wilson wasn’t having much luck researching his assignment on shark attack mitigation techniques. Everyone was too angry and more interested in what had gone wrong, who was to blame, and retribution, rather than what changes could be implemented or how laws and practices might be improved to avoid such a tragic loss of life in the future.
On the beach at Freeport, Benny met a guy who was sitting on the break wall at a fold-out card table, flying a drone.
“What are you doing?” Benny inquired. “Looking for sharks?”
“Yeah, they’re everywhere, take a look,” he offered.
“What are you going to do?” Benny asked, pointing at a small group of young swimmers standing on the sand daring one another to go swimming.
“Watch this,” Benny advised him, and flew his drone down to the group of kids, where he hovered it between them and the water, and set off a loud siren and red flashing light.
This proved effective in deterring them from entering the water.
Even though they didn’t know what it meant, they could guess.
