Luke Allen (L), and what’s left of his boardshorts (R).

“The Sea is not for you or against you, it’s just very unforgiving of errors”.  Joseph Conrad.

When your national anthem has within it ‘our land is girt by sea’, it makes sense that the inhabitants have a relationship to the sea. If we’re in the sea, we accept the risks. Most of the time it’s just Bluebottles and sea-lice, they sting and itch but we move on until the next time. Occasionally however, encounters with more notable marine types have us breathing a little heavier.

Terra Firma poses far more dangers to us than the sea, but the sea and its inhabitants are renowned as poor negotiators in a brawl, often unpredictable and wild. Over the years we are familiarised to strategies on how to avoid altercations with sharks, such as avoid surfing early mornings, late afternoons leading into night and after heavy rains.

An equal share in most attacks the Bull is known as a gangster amongst sharks, it dislikes walks on the beach, it probably mugs old lady sharks, likes murky and turbid water and has a general contempt for anything that floats, sinks, exists. They are picked on by dolphins but fail to get the hint. Brutish, foul mouthed and equally adept at swimming with ducks in ponds, the Bull Shark is at home in fresh water as it is in salt water.

Recently Luke Allen of Wamberal had to duke it out with a 10 foot Bull shark on the mid north coast. On this day at Diamond Head in New South Wales, the conditions were the opposite of what we know Bulls like to be in. Turquoise green and bright blue, the sun splintered equally in every direction at 11am, water visibility that ran into the double digits and a pod of dolphins playing nearby.  Not Bull conditions.

Luke’s fingers and thigh post operations.

Luke describes the 2 minute brawl in sequences of instinct, luck and a battle of wills. The attack was pure stealth, sneaky, silent and body jarring onto his right side. Looking down to see his right thigh halfway into the Bulls mouth Luke recalls thinking, “I’ve gotta get myself away from this thing! It just seemed to have these enormous shoulders, there’s its head and jaw and there’s just like, these big massive, shoulders”.

Instinctively Luke tried to separate himself from the pest, a push and shove takes play.  The shark seems to of got it’s jaw stuck on the bottom of the surfboard, this has given Luke some precious time to get a good shove into the burly Bulls snout. Pushing the shark from his thigh the Bull then sent two quick ‘love taps’ (bites), a ‘piss off somewhere else’ love tap that chipped the femur of his right leg and the other  ‘love tap’ redesigning a couple of his digits. A gap in one of the bites on his shows where Luke has shoved his hand, his digits taking one for the team.

Downplaying the attack would surprise most of us but a possible legacy of Luke’s escape may lie in his ability to remain calm in similar situations of high stress and trauma.  Previous to wrestling sharks Luke worked as a firemen often attending to the horror of car crashes.  Remaining calm and focused in those situations possibly prepared him for Bull Shark wrestling. The only sense that Luke gives you he has survived something extraordinary is a hat he now wears,  which reads “I Punch Sharks”.  His mates had to give him that.

Tempered by the threat of a third attack Luke paddled determinedly for shore. Not looking back, adrenalin, froth, blood and bubble blocked out for the paddle onto the sands some twenty feet away. Bloodied, a large wound to his thigh extending into his hip, but with the presence of mind to stay calm and with two mates on hand a tourniquet was rigged across the groin and the hand was elevated and bound with a rash shirt. The pictures explain how lucky he was. Back on shore Luke diagnosed that he’d be okay and he set about trying to lower his heart rate.

Now, back in the water and loving his surfing Luke reflects, “there’s no science on conditions, and that’s coming from the experts, there’s no data that can say the Bulls like some conditions over others, I was just lucky and unlucky on this day”.

True that.