Mills reported this evening he had been attacked by a shark at the harbours mouth. It was larger than the jolly boat, came up astern with 2 others & on his trying to strike it with the gaff, it had made a rush at the boat, striking it first with his head & then with the tail. It afterwards came alongside, the fin was higher than the gunnel. They threw fish to it to amuse it until they got into shallow water.
Extract from Collett Barker's King George Sound Journal 29th April 1830
We were drifting for King George Whiting half a kilometre off the beach at Hamelin Bay when I first saw a Great White. Hamelin is just around Cape Leeuwin from Augusta. During the late 1800's it was a timber port, one terminus of an 100-km rail network which ran out straight out onto a deep water jetty. The other ended in Flinders Bay and at one stage, between the two ports, the M.C Davies logging company exported a third of all the timber cut out of the state. That early logging is the reason the Boranup Karri's appeal to the human eye so; uniformly sized trees, evenly spread, no under-story, a giant zen garden where the hand of the gardener is generations lost. These days, like in Flinders, only the bones of the jetty remain. Hamelin was always a lousy port. Right at the southern end of a long wide j shaped beach it faces N'NW and the scant lee of the near shore island of the same name could not save a ship in a winter storm. The maritime museum has at least a dozen wrecks recorded from this era. The odd cray boat still uses it when a big high in the bight cranks up the summer south easterly wind patterns, but a camping ground, kiosk and boat ramp are about it now. Those constant summer winds were what drove us around the corner from Augusta to fish and swim in the early to mid mornings before the wind really howled.
Dad had borrowed Athol's 12 foot tinny because it was easier to launch there than our bigger Clark and we were drifting mid-morning, across the middle of the bay; all emerald green and turquoise, fading near shore to arayan blues. Polarised glasses for picking the seagrass banks, terry towelling hats, white zinc for cracked lips, a little leftover steak on a no.6 for the first fish and shiny cubes of whiting thereafter for the rest, a white bucket, driftwood cutting board, boning knife ground past slaughtering a lamb, and a red fuel tank sloshing to the peculiar drumming rhythm of a drifting tinny.
"Is that weed moving?"
"Where?"
"Over there"
"Na......."
Pause.
"Must be a raa......."
"Oh Fuck me!"
With this a White cruised up alongside and we both lost the power of speech. At least 4 foot longer than the tinny, maybe more, the shark was huge. It circled around us casually at a slight distance before sweeping in close and rolling side on, to eyeball us impassively; in doing so revealing that smirk with it's row, upon row, upon rows of teeth and the vivid mottled graduated hues of it's hide, concrete grey fading to the unbearable whiteness of it's enormous belly. I had the urge to reach out and stroke it like a dog, to feel the cold sandpaper rasp of it's hide. It was so close I could have. The old man finally snapped to and whispered,
"Don't make any sudden movements."
"I wasn't planning any."
A whiting tukk tukk tukked my line.
At this point the shark spooked. We don't know why, but later speculated it had brushed one of the whiting lines. Like a V8 auto when planted, the shark lurched, almost squatting under power, pectorals spread, the thrust emanated from the tip of its nose and shuddered through the body before erupting in it's scything tail and it was gone.
My old man nearly ripped the cord off the outboard a split second later and we were up and planing instantly in a funk of fear and 2-stroke fumes, skipping whiting rigs along the surface, hand line reels merrily un-spooling before I could get them wound in and sorted, feet dancing to avoid the bait board and knife as it flipped off the seat. Dad forgot about the landing and pointed straight for the beach and we shot full throttle through the surf and halfway up the beach before we came to a stop.
We sat there in the sun for a long time and debated if we should tell the swimmers and families near the jetty. We decided not to, the shark had gone the other way after all and was probably several kilometres away by now.
"Shall we go back out?"
"Nah, lets go have a look at the island, hey."
