SHADOWS IN THE WATER
The exclusive club of Gold Coasters who have stared down a shark and survived all have their own way of dealing with the fallout
SOME don’t emerge from their encounter alive. For the lucky ones who do, everyone has their own way of processing it. For Surfers Paradise resident Mike Hoile who had a run-in with a great white at Lennox Head earlier this month, there was no way he was getting back in the water soon after.
He was knocked off his board after the shark he tangoed with attacked its back end: “I had another day (on holidays) at Lennox. I was not going back into the water.
“You’re just not ready for it,” he told the Bulletin this week.
Mike eventually did return for a surf at home at Surfers Paradise but says it was “creepy” and “you’re looking at all the shadows”.
But for the 51-year-old he doubts he’ll ever go out surfing alone again and says it has given him a newfound appreciation for the important things in life.
For fellow shark attack survivor Jabez Reitman, who had a chunk taken out of his back by a shark while at the same spot south of Byron Bay, it was over quickly but will stay with him forever.
He estimates the attack lasted all of five seconds, telling Coast Weekend in April that he was shaken like a “rag doll” before being let go.
At the time, Jabez doubted he would return to surf the same spot at Lennox Head but didn’t think it would put him off the water for good.
“I will ease myself back into it and surf with a lot of other people to reduce the chance of getting attacked again. I have a one-year- old daughter and she’s a water baby. I can’t keep her away and can’t wait to surf with her.”
Jono Beard, hit from underneath six years ago by a shark which lifted him out of the water at Fingal, was lucky to live.
The jaws wrapped around his board and his left thigh, leaving him with a gaping 42cm wound. It missed an artery by about a tooth width.
It also missed a bunch of nerves which would have left him with little feeling. Thankfully after three operations and skin grafts he recovered and surfs to this day.
He has even gone on to use the incident as inspiration for the name of his machinery business called Take a Bite Earthmoving – its logo includes a digger bucket characterised as a shark mouth.
Almost two years later, in October 2010, he told the Bulletin he was back in the water making the 4km paddle from the Broadwater to South Stradbroke Island for surfing missions but the memories still lingered at the forefront of his mind.
Of the South Stradbroke paddle, he said: “I’d be lying if I said it was my favourite thing. There are times on the way across I panic and think a shark will get me.”
It’s a window into the mental scarring that will no doubt remain with Gold Coast surf star and multiple world champion Mick Fanning after his huge scare in South Africa last Sunday.
Fanning, back on the Gold Coast to recover, somehow emerged without a scratch on him.
Understandably, he’s unsure how long it’ll take to deal with what happened to him on live TV while loved ones watched from afar.
He said this week: “It will probably take … a couple of weeks, months ... I don’t know how long.”