FACE WITH A
leaving huge cuts in it.
It was only half a metre from my face – we were virtually face to face!
‘We’ve got you,’ came Dad’s voice.
I felt my brother’s hands around my shoulders, then he dragged me over the back of the shark and into the tinnie.
On the floor of the little boat, my heart was racing and my hands were shaking.
Looking down, I was covered in scratches and bruises – but I was alive.
I’d been in the water with a great white and survived!
‘Are you okay?’ Dad asked, looking as shaky as I felt. They had seen the whole thing.
As I nodded, Misty wrapped me in a hug.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said.
In the chaos, the fishing line from my kayak had got tangled up in the tinnie and as we started motoring back towards the beach, my kayak dragged along behind
us. ‘Oh my God, the shark’s following it,’ Misty gasped as we saw the telltale fin stalking behind us.
Waving madly at Mum, who hadn’t realised the enormity of what had happened, we signalled for her to get onto shore, fast.
Within a few minutes we were all on the beach as sirens wailed towards us.
Dad had called an ambulance, thinking it was going to be so much worse. A helicopter arrived to chase the shark out to sea, and when I was in hospital getting checked over, we had reports that it was a 4.5m great white.
It must’ve been pretty keen on me or my kayak for lunch as it spent an hour swimming in the bay.
Back home that night, it hit me how lucky I’d been.
The shark could so easily have taken a bite out of me.
‘It was the kayak, or more specifically the vibrations the kayak was making with the music speaker on it that the shark was interested in,’ I was told by various experts later.
Another theory was that from underneath, the shark may have thought the kayak was a seal.
I guess I’ll never really know, but one thing’s for sure, I won’t be letting it happen again.
I haven’t kayaked or even surfed in the ocean since.
I think the shock from what happened caught up with us all and affected us mentally in different ways.
Water doesn’t hold the same appeal for us that it did – and for now, that’s fine.
I was lucky once but
I won’t be testing that luck again anytime soon.
over by
Walking out of the school gates, I glanced over at the worn and empty church across the road, imagining all the happy occasions that had taken place there.
I was nine, but for as long as I could remember, my mum, Jenine, had always told me how special it was to our family.
‘Your great-nana Dorrie, Gran Faye, and me and your dad all got married there,’ she’d say.
In fact, Mum and my dad, Steve, had been the last couple to wed there before it closed.
The church was located in our hometown of Woomelang, Victoria.
It was sad to think this precious place was now just a derelict building.
A year later, Mum, Dad, my big sister, Hayley, and
I all moved to Sea Lake.
Not forgetting the church, Mum hung a
Amy’s family tradition stopped when the church closed, but then something magical happened