Ummm? Maybe not today!

After spending the morning yesterday with my youngest son in the old home town, I headed home for a quick lunch and then straight down to the point to see if there was a wave on offer. I chose to go down to the boat launching area tucked right in the corner to check the conditions from the car first rather than park at the top and walk down with my gear. There were two other vehicles there and, strangely, there was no one out considering there was plenty of wave action and offshore conditions? I was quickly informed by one of those vehicle owners that there had been a 2 metre shark at the point in the morning which had knocked one of our up and coming young shortboarders off her board!

Not what I wanted to hear but lately I have been a little spooked and found myself tending to hang around waiting for waves with the sun at my back. This was the advice that GG gave in a great article on dealing with shark encounters that I posted about here. Anyway, I decided to go to the lookout directly above the point to see if I could spot anything although it was doubtful the shark had hung around. Our friendly family of dolphins that inhabit the bay were out enjoying themselves amongst the plentiful waves that were coming through but no sign of anything more sinister.

Having returned to the car park and wandered down to the beach to have all I have spoken of above confirmed with the above sign, I decided that the most sensible course of action was to head home. 

On the way back I picked up local hellman Kane and his cute little daughter who were hitching in to town together as he had to go to work. As I pulled over so as they could get in the car, one of the other young guns who was also out at the point in the morning filled in a few details for us. 

There were a bunch of kids out there, when suddenly Ruby disappears off her board. Ruby's Dad Albert, who also happens to be out there, charges over and starts to beat the shit out of the shark in an effort to make it leave the area. Ok, now I know you and I probably wouldn't be likely to do that but this is what you instinctively do when your kid is threatened. It may have helped that, Albert is an arborist and used to blithely scaling towering Karri trees with only a belt and spurs on his feet.

I know this because, before we started our mammoth self build, he took a few trees down for us. Including this huge one, which he had calmly scaled to lop the top off so it would fit inside the boundaries of the block when it was felled.

Anyway, the commotion this caused apparently prompted one of our local dolphins to get involved, with the result that both it and the shark moved away from the group of surfers and ended up having a water thrashing stoush of their own! This is pretty compelling evidence to support the notion that dolphins will try to protect humans from a shark if they are around.
Never a dull moment here on the South Coast of WA!