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Most mornings I swim across Coogee Bay, in pretty much the same spot where Leah Stewart was attacked by a shark last Saturday. I don’t know her but I know the sort of person she is because, as an ocean swimmer, she is one of my tribe. Like her, I am a mother who takes a daily dip in saltwater when I can as a sanity saver. This beach is where I go to find peace. I know to the rest of the world, right now, that may sound crazy. But hear me out.
When I moved back to my home town of Sydney from California, after my husband William’s death from an extremely rare brain tumour in 2005, I vowed to live by the beach. There was always something about the rhythm of the tide that comforted him in his illness and me in my grief. His ashes are scattered in the San Francisco Bay, so for me, swimming in Sydney on the other side of the same waters of the Pacific Ocean was like the caress of a daily hug that my husband could no longer give.
I swim often with the 6.30am crew. Or later in winter, when the sun rises after 7am. We jokingly call it our appointment with Dr Pacific, a simple saltwater cure.
For those of you who question the risk that ocean swimmers take, do not for a moment think we don’t think about the risk of sharks with each stroke we take. I have imagined a shark attack almost every time I have swum in this same spot. It is, ironically, not too far from the rusty old shark bell on the ocean floor that lifesavers once tolled to warn swimmers of impending danger. I have seen that bell only a handful of times after swimming here for 17 years. Each time I see it I marvel at the fact I have never heard the shark alarm ring at Coogee Beach in all those years.
Every time I imagined a dorsal fin I’d try to convince myself I was overreacting. To allay my fears I did some research. I knew the last two shark fatalities occurred at this beach more than 100 years ago. What would the chances be of that happening again, I’d reason.
Almost like an insurance policy against it happening again, I became obsessed with the details. I knew the names of the victims – Milton Coughlin, 18, and Mervyn Gannon, 21 – and that they died within a month of each other in February and March, 1922. I knew Coughlin was the son of the Coogee postmaster and he was body-surfing off the reef at the southern end of the beach where about 6000 people had gathered to watch a surf carnival.
A shark struck him while he was swimming ashore. Olympic swimming champion Frank Beaurepaire and another lifesaver, Jack Chalmers, came to his aid. Sadly, Coughlin, a former Trinity College student, died not long after the rescue. But Beaurepaire and Chalmers were awarded the Royal Humane Society gold medal and £500, a significant sum for that era. Beaurepaire used this money to start Beaurepaires, the tyres business, which operated for more than a century. Beaurepaire went on to become mayor of Melbourne and was eventually knighted. In the surf he had shown the sort of selfless courage that lifesaver Charlie Verco did last weekend in rescuing Leah Stewart at Coogee.
Gannon, the second 1922 victim, was a Coogee local who lived on Vicar Street, and was in shallow water when a shark attacked. He was whisked out of the water by lifesavers and to St Vincent’s Hospital, where surgeons tried unsuccessfully to save him. He died of gangrene from his wounds.
There was huge public interest at the time. There were calls for shark culls and even a suggestion the bay be bombed to kill the culprit.
I’ve thought a lot about these two men in the years I’ve swum at this beach, as no doubt many Australians will think about Leah Stewart as we await updates on her condition.
I know statistically I am more likely to be drowned at Coogee Beach than I am to be attacked by a shark. But statistics don’t reveal the full story. My son, Liam, was hit by a bus on Coogee Bay Road – what were the chances of that? – and miraculously survived with minor injuries. This hasn’t stopped him crossing roads, though at first he was cautious.
Just as I will be when I return to Coogee Beach from holidaying in France, where even the locals here on the Mediterranean are asking me about the sharks in my home town. And where the news has made the RTE news bulletins in Ireland, as Coogee is home to many Irish expats.
As my husband used to say, while the brain tumour that killed him grew in his head, it is the shark in the mind we need to fear more than the shark in the ocean. Will this attack on a 35-year-old mother and teacher stop me from ocean swimming? Perhaps for a while. Fortunately, in Coogee I have ocean pools to choose from before I brave the ocean again. But I won’t stay away forever. I can’t stop doing what I love, whatever the risk. I hope Leah Stewart and her family understand that.
Helen Pitt is an Australian author and former journalist with The Sydney Morning Herald.
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