"Look at that. Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge, bull shark."
After one of the gloomier weeks for Sydney surfers, five bull shark hits, one kid all but dead, a surfer might lose his leg, the water has cleared, the clouds have parted and a four-foot south-east swell has kicked off the weekend.
A little swish in the warm green water revealed little bull shark paranoia within, rare for your ol pal DR who is wildly sensitive to the idea of being un-alived or made into a amputee ’cause he wanted to ride a few head-high waves.
Back to normal-ish, you could say. Like Bondi after the Hanukkah murders. Normal. Ish.
Anyway, two days back, Newcastle shark fisherman Joel Nancarrow, a man with “a deep dislike for bull sharks”, reeled in a half-ton bull shark just off the beach at Camp Cove. It’s the prettiest of the Sydney Harbour beaches, north facing means it eats up the sun all day, and at the southern end, oowee, my pal Omer has the sweetest cafe you could ever imagine. Order the Salted Sardine Bruschetta or the Smoked Eggplant with Tahini and pomegranate.
“I’ve never fished down in Sydney before and found the sharks so fast. There were people swimming when I was fighting this one,” Nancarrow wrote. “I was at Camp Cove next to the pink public mooring. Please don’t swim off boats at the moment.”
Anyone who might’ve wondered what happened to this majestic bull shark, one of the kings of Sydney Harbour, will be pleased to learn it was given a final tour of the harbour’s many sights, including the Sydney Opera House, one of the world’s most iconic buildings, perched on Sydney Harbour’s Bennelong Point there, and designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon.
(A curio of the design competition process was Utzon’s design being thrown in the trash only to be retrieved by Eero Saarinen – you got a tulip table? That’s a Saarinen – and then successfully advocating for it.)
“Look at that,” says Nancarrow in a piece to camera. “Opera House, Sydney Harbour Bridge, bull shark. How good’s that!”
Below the line was a battle between the realists and the dreamers.
“Another potential human life saved! Well done champion, love your work.”
“Everyone should know the dangers swimming in the ocean by now. If a shark has a bite of me or even kills me I wouldn’t want that shark tracked down and killed, we are going into their environment and they are curious to see what is on the menu.”
“Ur a fucking grub mate! We’re the ones in the wrong u grubs!!”
“Come over to Bondi and get a few!”
Question, do you lean realist or dreamer?
Do you believe in a world where a small number men do the unpleasant biz that keeps regular people safe and fed or are you more a utopian where, ultimately, the planet lives in a cosmic harmony, a few eggs broken here and there, surfers and Jews etc, but otherwise all very nice?