Kalgoorlie Miner (24): Shark

In the nanoseconds that elapsed between hitting the water and the commencement of my frenzied swim back to shore, I painstakingly reviewed how exactly I had come to be in this situation; immersed in the dark, heaving Southern Ocean with a large squid head and a decomposing herring attached to my leg.

The most immediate reason was my clumsy unintentional dismount from the sea kayak that had carried me out from the sloping migmatite (granite for non-geologists) coastline; an ironic occurrence you’ll agree, given that my sister is an Olympic oarswoman, but not nearly equalling the looming potential irony of being eaten by a shark while setting a shark bait. I had one quivering hand on a Darwin Award.

That I would soon be dismembered and/or devoured was, I felt, a fait accompli. It was twilight and slightly overcast, there were 40 rotting pilot whale carcasses on an adjacent beach, and some weeks earlier my brother had flippantly informed me (now a thudding internal reminder on loop) that Great White sharks were frequently tagged at nearby Doubtful Island.

Unhappy with the initial conclusion that my own poor seamanship was to blame for my predicament, I began racking my brain for alternative scapegoats. Thankfully several years in the mining industry had left the knuckles on my blame-assigning finger well-lubricated and it’s tip extremely pointy.

I was only on the dilapidated kayak, I now figured, because Sam – who was visible on the rocks alternately doubled over in laughter and yelling encouragement or criticism (I suspected the latter) – was unable or unwilling (again, the latter is favoured) to paddle out himself. His concern may have stemmed from the fact that he shares a name with a breed of charitable seal.

But was I really even in danger? As a teenager on Perth’s coastline I had traversed the ocean without fear, so why now did I feel like a lone springbok drinking from an eerily deserted waterhole? Were Channel Seven and the Sunday Times to blame?

Ultimately I put the paranoia down to the circumspection that comes with age, the ceaseless shark-related comments around the camp and the xenophobia caused by seven years in the Golden Outback. Oh and there was the bait dangling from my leg.

Alas with this answer came another question: When Sammy opted out, why had I cast my hat into the ring ahead of Rhett and Christian? For this the blame lay squarely with Ajax the dog, whose words from last week were still echoing: “It’s the ‘I wish I did’ regrets that haunt you,” he had explained with wisdom beyond both his years and his species, “not the ‘I wish I didn’t’ ones.”

“Sure,” I had therefore mused on the rocks, “I may lose a leg, but at least there’s a Kalgoorlie Miner column in that. If I don’t go I’ll have to write about Brian Burke or mobile phones or the wall outside Woolworths and no-one deserves that.”

And so I had entered the surging ocean with Ajax’s urging voice in my head and with your appeasement – yes you, my bloodthirsty reader – as my motivation; a wannabe Gonzo journalist risking limb and/or life to relay news from The Great Shark Hunt.

It was following this thought that I screamed “Oh fuck! Oh fuck!” several times and set off in a frenzied primal freestyle, pausing momentarily to shove the slapping kayak landward.

The 200 lb monofilament had come loose from my leg, but three days spent wallowing in berley, mulies and fish intestines meant that I alone would have made a delightful hors d’oeuvre for any passing monster. The herring and squid were mere parsley on the parmiagana.

As I finally slithered back up the migmatite slope, babbling incoherently and with my nerves horribly jangled, a stunning adrenalin-driven revelation dawned upon me: I was no longer in the acceptably reckless age group of 18 to 25, having turned 26 just two days prior. The dream was over, I decided there and then. It was time to grow up.

The stiff wind had almost dried my now goose-pimpled skin when I realised that without the fuel of youthful foolhardiness and adventure, the raging inferno that was “Out There” would soon wane, flicker and ultimately be extinguished. I had to call it a day.

Next week: my final column.

Footnote: We didn’t catch a shark. I told the boys the bait was in 3 to 4 metres of water. That was a lie.